My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs Southern, handed out weekly spelling lists and asked us to write a story using all the words. What a fun challenge! The pain and joy of story-birthing had been installed.
I experience an alteration of the psyche upon reading writers such as James Thurber, Fran Lebowitz, and Flann O’Brien, plus repeated listenings to Firesign Theatre trippy comedy albums.
Along the way I’ve been a pipe and tobacco sales clerk, a skilift operator, a dishwasher at an Italian vegetarian restaurant, a bay-leaf harvester, a bookstore clerk, freshman English instructor, proofreader and stockboyperson for a publisher, harmonica player in rock band, the only dues-paying member of an improv group, freelance writer and editor, staffer for a weekly news and entertainment magazine, short story writer (ongoing), web content writer, director of communications at a health foundation, and a communications specialist for a university. In addition to short stories, essays, interviews (Patrick Stewart, Leonard Nimoy, James Cameron!) and news feature stories, I’ve written a whimsical novel, Thinks Out Loud, A Blog at First (Marrow Press). thinksoutloud.com.