sort of a bio

I write because if I don't I start feeling angry and bloated.

I've been an amateur blacksmith for almost 20 years. I've been writing longer than that. Swinging hammers brings me honest joy. Making a red-hot piece of metal behave like I want it to is fascinating and gratifying. But is an idea any less plastic, malleable, when it is first conceived? I think not.

Crossing the boundary between immutability and malleability also brings me joy.

I believe in the power of education, of the written word, and even - crazy as it sounds - of love. A description of my working life reads like an impassioned plea for higher education. The rough parts: I have been a farm worker, a truck driver, and one of those guys who crawls inside nuclear powerplants to look for cracks in the piping. The fun parts: I taught kids to swim, and for a time was a student/junior instructor in a kung fu studio. That didn't actually pay anything, but I got to play with swords. Recently, I have worked as a CAD/CAM draftsman. It's pretty much joyless, but it pays the bills.

Sooner rather than later, I hope to make a bigger footprint in the ongoing literary discourse, leave the 9-to-5 (or whatever time) alone, and start writing for a living. Or for a not-living, as the case may be, but writing a lot more, anyway. To avoid that angry bloated feeling. If I can do that and make interesting things out of hot metal until I die, I'll call it a good run.