I was born on a military base in Montgomery, Alabama, during the early years of the Civil Rights movement and grew up in a small cotton town in the northern part of the state. Educated in Birmingham, another center of civil and social change, I worked in live theater, waited tables, and illustrated supermarket ads until I found my way into the broadcast television industry. For the next quarter-century I worked in television news in Birmingham, Miami/Fort Lauderdale, and Dallas. I now live in a cabin in rural northwest Arkansas where I grow orchids, play the tenor saxophone, paint, and write novels.