Welcome to my website and thanks for your interest in my fiction. I have been writing novels and short stories for many years with little encouragement from the commercial world, but with consistent support from a small group of family and friends. My wife, Pamela, has always encouraged my writing, even when she disapproved of the language some of my characters use, and she has allowed me the time to write, both at home, and during many weeks on the creek at Pawley's Island, South Carolina, which has been our favorite retreat for nearly forty years. Special thanks also to Bill Gutteridge, Cheri Peters, Whitney LaGrange, and Jamie Thompson who are the only non-family members of my fan club. Writing has been a welcome and perhaps necessary relief from my years of practicing law. The formal photo shown on the website was the last promotional picture used to support my legal career. It was taken about fifteen years ago. Like most lawyers, I stopped taking promotional shots at about age 55, the prime of professional life. In the interest of full disclosure, when I gave seminars on the internet during the last few years, I said, "Here's what I looked like fifteen years ago." That always drew a few nervous laughs, but only from the people my age who were doing the same thing and not owning up to it. All that being said, there's little to be gained from reading what an author says about his own work, so unless you really care about my childhood and my sailboats, go straight to the short story. I hope you enjoy it.
My latest novel, LAKE, was published in December of 2020 and is available on Amazon. Go to Amazon.com, select 'books' and enter my name. It will pop right up and after paying the sum of $.99 you will receive the book on your computer or Kindle reader. It's short. It's cheap. It's funny. The plot revolves around a Lake whose name has been abolished, two law-school classmates who would rather fish than be in an office, a very large fish, a food critic from California, a naturalist from England and a young lady who tries, unsuccessfully, to hide her good looks while working at the family fish and game restaurant and . . . OH! . . . a couple of day-traders who try to blow up the dam. LAKE was an interlude in a larger project of a series of novels tracing the life of a boy who came to Charles Town, S. C. in 1749 to inherit the estate of his Great-Uncle, a former pirate. The first volume is Heir at Law. The second is Manumission. I have written over 1,000 pages, but both volumes need more work. Historical fiction needs a core of fact and that means a mound of research as well as imagination. I may be working on this project for the rest of my life. I am only up to 1758 and it needs to get to 1800 or so for the planned ending.