About
Born in Richmond, Virginia, and carted back and forth between Virginia and Baltimore, I blame my rootless, restless personality on my father. He was and is a traveling salesman with a keen gift of gab, great wit, a ready joke, and could sell white tennis shoes to coal miners.
It was during these sojourns up and down the east coast I soaked up the stories that would later be Tobacco Sticks and Mica Highways. I think authors should exploit their family history before raping the rest of the culture for material.
Dad finally got tired of the east and moved to the Midwest when I was fourteen. We settled outside of Chicago. It is here I came of age and went off to college for seven years -- two degrees and one novel later I returned to Chicago and lived in many different apartments, trying to get a little two hundred page manuscript called Ripples published.
When a local printer said he would take a chance on my book, I jumped and had my first novel published by a man who had never published anything. Great reviews and moderate sales put me back to my jobs as a janitor, baker, waiter, construction worker, teacher, real estate tycoon, mortgage broker, professor, security guard, salesman -- anything to make a buck and keep writing. The printer lost his mind and published my second novel, too. That landed me with Bantam after some rave reviews and a paperback auction for my second novel, Tobacco Sticks.
A third novel, Mica Highways, was sold on less than one hundred and fifty pages to Bantam and then I did a strange thing -- I settled down to writing in Ernest Hemingway's birthplace in Oak Park, Illinois. I have since been looking for the Great American Novel up in the old red oak rafters and I think I might have finally found one... we'll see.
Description
<p>FBI agent Alexis Toles is dispatched to New Rochelle, New York, to investigate threatening letters sent to Congressman Christopher O’Brien, and to protect his ex-wife, Cassidy, and six-year-old son, Dylan. But when she gets to New Rochelle, Alex discovers that there is more to the situation than simple stalking or political agendas; she finds that she has growing romantic feelings for Cassidy—and that the feelings are mutual.</p><p>As Alex and Cassidy explore their budding romance, they must surmount many obstacles in explaining their relationship to those around them, including Dylan. All the while, the investigation continues, and the disturbing, convoluted, and complicated web surrounding the threats begins to unravel, placing the characters’ lives in grave danger.</p><p><i>Intersection</i> is a taut political thriller that combines the action and suspense found in hit television shows like <i>24</i> with the insight and drama found in the widely popular fiction of LGBT authors such as R. E. Bradshaw and Stacey D’Erasmo. It is sure to appeal to fans of intrigue, mystery, and romance, and to provide positive role models for marginalized groups and relationships.</p>
Story Behind The Book
My mother in law told me an old pitcher lived across the street from her in Florida. One night my son and I went out there to play in the street. I could see the old pitcher by his ankles with his garage up a quarter of the way. This went on for three nights and then on the fourth night he came out and watched my son pitch. He then gave my son his philosphy of pitching and went back into his garage. I found out later he had won the World Series in 1968. That's how I thought of The Pitcher, the story of a Mexican American boy and and a pitcher at the end of his career who coaches the boy to make the highschool team.
