About Me
Let's see.
I grew up in Long Branch, New Jersey, about the same time that poet Robert Pinsky and cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty did. One summer when I had whopping case of whooping cough, my mother took me to play in the sand on an isolated stretch of beach. I thought that the ocean made me well and maybe I was right. I still go to the ocean every chance I get.
My grandmother used to tell me stories she had heard in Eastern Europe, and I made up quite a few of my own. I also made up imaginary friends and enemies, and I still do. Only now I call them "characters."
When I was 17, I joined my high school's chapter of the Quill and Scroll Society for journalists. As a high school correspondent for the Asbury Park Press, I earned ten cents per column inch. That was in 1964. Thirty years later, I got really serious about writing. By then I was a legislative attorney at the U.S. Department of Education, drafting bills to send to Congress. In the meantime, I had:
- studied international relations in college (University of Pennsylvania);
- married Michael Feldman (a computer science professor, not the guy from the radio show);
- graduated from law school (American University Washington College of Law);
- lived for a year in Bologna, Italy, then in Leiden, The Netherlands;
- had sons Ben (now married to Kate) and Keith (now married to Amy); and
- settled down to raise a family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Now I live in Portland, Oregon,
and writing is my
full time job.
Her Royal Furriness, Guinevere the Pooch takes charge of my work and
lets me know
when it's time to go outside. She is bossy and fearless, except
when it comes to Mrs. Turtle, the large and ever-growing African
sulcata
who lives with Ben and Kate and has her own videos on You Tube.
Everyone makes way for the amazing Mrs. Turtle. Here she is with Kate.If I weren't an author, I'd be a zoologist. Odyssey magazine's "Animal Angles" column offers me an ideal way to research and write about dozens of animals. Of the hundred or so I've studied, my favorite are bonobos.
Yes, people are amazing, too. I enjoy digging into what and how events happened to real people, and how they reacted -- that's why I like to write nonfiction books and articles. And I also like to create stories from characters that live only inside my head.
One good
way to invent characters is to be one. Here's a picture of me in
a stretch role as President Clinton's dog, Buddy, in the Bannockburn
Spring Show,
a neighborhood satirical extravaganza that's nearly as old as I
am. I've written song parodies for the show, too, including a French
food song that was later aired on National Public Radio. Write to me
and
I'll send you the lyrics.Time to get back to writing.
Thanks for stopping by.
