What I do (for a life)

Sometimes it seems the main thing I do with my life is work, but I know that's not right. There's lots of other things I do, really! There's, mmmm, let's see. . . .

Cooking

I cook a lot! I'm the one who cooks most of the meals at our house. Being that we have two children, born 1990 and 1992, I can't always be as creative in the kitchen as I might like. But there are a few dishes I'm very proud of, and the kids actually prefer my homemade bread to store-bought, which I think is the greatest compliment.

The dishes I'm particularly proud of are a spicy risotto that contains finely-diced onions, red bell peppers, carrot, and habañeros; a homemade fresh salsa that contains tomatoes, onions, cilantro, lime juice, sugar, and habañeros; and a maki sushi that contains rice, avocado, cucumber, wasabi, grapefruit and no habañeros at all. There is a disclaimer associated with this last dish: the day after a particularly delicious batch of these maki I ducked into the office of my best Japanese friend at SAS and asked her if she'd ever had sushi that contained grapefruit. Her answer was "No, I haven't, I don't ever want to, I don't even want to hear about it, it's an abomination, and get out of my office" without pausing to draw breath. So there's something cultural going on there, I think. If you find you like grapefruit sushi, you probably don't want to mention it to anyone of Japanese extraction. It'll be our little secret, okay?

Writing

I write fiction. So far I've written one whole novel, titled Remote Control, and started two others, titled Between 2:00 AM and Dawn, and The Republic. I shelved Dawn about half way through because I just didn't feel all that involved in the protagonist's story, and I figure if the author isn't all that interested, what are the poor readers going to feel? I'm actively working on Republic when I can find the time, and enjoying the hell out of the story. Folks who've read it in progress love the protagonist, want to take him home and mother him to death, so I think maybe it could really go somewhere.

I've also written lots of short stories and some poems. I'd write plays, but given my experiences getting fiction published, I kind of feel that would be like moving from attempting to climb Mt. Washington blindfolded to attempting to climb Mt. Everest naked and blindfolded. Challenges are good, but there have to be some limits.

You can read more about my novels, with excerpts, and some of my stories and poems, under the Fiction heading on these pages.