The first time I visited the Big Island of Hawai'i in 1996, my initial thoughts drifted to "hmm, this would be a cool place to set mysteries featuring a female private eye."
Sadly, this notion sat on a back burner for many years, until I at last mustered the ambition to write and self-publish the first novel in my Noelani Lee mystery series in 2013. There have been a bunch since.
I suppose writing is in my blood. As a kid growing up in rural south-central Pennsylvania, I was a voracious reader and, inspired by the likes of A.C. Doyle, Joseph Wambaugh, Dame Agatha, Stephen King, and many others, I set pencil to paper to write numerous short stories and even a play. Where these artifacts of a bygone era are now, nobody knows.
Realizing I would one day need to make an honest living, and with visions of becoming the next Woodward and/or Bernstein lighting my path, I set my sights on becoming a journalist. Which I did in a roundabout way, first in the U.S. Navy and later reporting for community and daily newspapers in San Diego County.
But San Diego is an expensive place to live, so I crossed over to the other, somewhat more lucrative side and launched a career in public relations in Las Vegas and San Antonio.
Yet still I write, albeit at a pace best described as glacial. And when I'm not writing, I can often be found reading, watching far too many foreign crime dramas on TV, and shopping for unusual craft beers.
I hold a B.A. in Communication from National University in San Diego, and a M.A. in Strategic Communication & Leadership from Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J.
I'm a proud member of the Private Eye Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and The Authors Guild. My patient wife, Donna, and I live in a stucco-and-red-tile roofed suburban cookie-cutter as guests of a Bengal cat named Malia and a not-so-temporary basset hound hereafter referred to as Mimi. (RIP Lola Dawg.)