I grew up in a small town in the Ozarks, playing baseball, riding bikes, mowing yards, and reading comic books, the youngest of eight children. Norman Rockwell could have moved in down the street and felt right at home. These days I live and write in Arlington, Virginia, with my understanding wife and a cat named Truman. Our three kids are grown, and we are begging for grandchildren.

After nearly a lifetime of writing nonfiction – essays and articles, lectures and lessons – I was rescued from my tedium and set free, liberated to explore life and faith in the realm of fiction. Unwittingly, I seem to have acquired an expansive cast of characters along the way, some begging to enter the story, others hiding in the background, hoping to go unnoticed, but I see them all. So many stories to tell.

I am, as Parker J. Palmer put it, “…one who loves to watch life become words and words become life.”