I was born on New Year’s Day in Galax, Virginia.  I was not the first baby born in that small town so I did not get my picture in the weekly paper nor did I win any prizes.  There were no other babies born in Galax for weeks afterward, a happenstance that chiseled my personality over the years and remains carved into my psyche to this day.  I wrote my first story at the age of ten.  It was about a little boy who was kicked by a cow and took flight around the planet. . .  and take flight I did after graduating high school in Roanoke, Virginia in 1973. 

After much transferring and deliberating, I graduated from Thomas Jefferson College in Michigan with a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy.  (It has served me well.)  Before that, I attended Hampden-Sydney College in central Virginia; Southern Seminary in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia; and Penn. State University in State College, PA.  I was also accepted at what is now known as Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Newfoundland.  My college tour there during my senior year was frigid and icy.  My father really wanted me to attend the college.  But in the end I could not fathom walking in tunnels between the University buildings.  After I graduated from Thomas Jefferson, I moved to Hollywood to become famous.  I achieved fame through fame itself but that was not enough.  I was deft at many things - modeling, acting, writing - but it was hard for me to focus in LA during the seventies.  I had lovers - writers, actors, dancers, painters, surfers - and we were companions, allies, and friends - friends who I thought would move through life with me.  I decided to study dance.  I was told about Bill Evans, who was 6′4″ like me, so I relocated to Seattle for a few years and studied and performed modern dance with the Bill Evans Dance Company.  But soon my writing Muse hollered louder than my dancing Muse and I wrote my first novel in 1978, © OF PEE CABIN FAME, in which I predicted the rise of the Moral Majority in American Politics.  

Speaking of politics, I attended the Carter/Mondale Democratic Convention in New York in 1976 and the Mondale/Ferraro Democratic Convention in San Francisco in 1984.  The best line I heard at either convention was in San Francisco when I was trailing Sen. Ted Kennedy into a hotel press conference.  There was a reporter directly behind Sen. Kennedy, following him so closely that when the Senator suddenly stopped and his spokesman turned abruptly to the reporter, the reporter almost body slammed Kennedy.  “Senator Kennedy does not like to be approached from the rear,” the spokesman said.  I was unable to stifle my laugh.  Kennedy turned and smiled at me before continuing his march into the hotel.     

I moved to Vashon Island off the coast of Seattle when the eighties kicked in.  My goal was to hide out.  I was scared and emotionally exhausted.  My friends started dying of AIDS in the early eighties and by the end of the decade nearly all my male friends and creative comrades in LA had died.  In Seattle, the painter and writer Tom Young and I finished an original screenplay, © STONEWALL, later titled, © A FULL MOON AND JUDY GARLAND’S FUNERAL, based around the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969.  The screenplay was a finalist at the Sundance Film Festival Screenplay Competition in 1987 and was dedicated to Tom Young.  He was too sick to attend the Festival with me.  He died of AIDS in 1988. 

Before I moved from Vashon Island, I wrote the essay, © LELA MAE, about my maternal grandmother from Flatridge, Virginia who died in 1991.  (I told her when I was six years old that I wanted to be a movie star.  She said that was worse than being a whore.)  The essay appeared in the Anthology, © BOYHOOD, GROWING UP MALE, which was published by The Crossing Press in 1993 and republished in 1998 by The University of Wisconsin Press.

DANCING ON THE CELLAR DOOR, my second novel, was published in October, 2002, and is still available worldwide.

From 2003 through 2006, I continued promoting © DANCING ON THE CELLAR DOOR and pursued my work as a member of the national organization, PEN, specifically on the Freedom to Write Committee.  On my 48th birthday, I freaked.  It struck me that I didn’t have much money, invested or otherwise, and my life was most likely half over.  I was living in San Diego at the time so I started investing in real estate.  I thought artists were strange but then I met real estate people.  Let me tell you, afer a few years I couldn’t wait to get back to artists. . .  and from them I will never again depart. 

In 2007, I bought a place in Palm Springs and moved there to start my new novel, a story about a boy and his mother, a boy and his father, a boy and his son. 

In 2008, I returned to San Diego and married my beau of 25 years, Luke Terpstra, during the small window of opportunity we had when marriage between two men was legal in California.  The actress and author, Carole Wells Doheny Vanier, married us in our living room in front of eleven of our closest friends.

On June 14, 2010, I completed © BEND, an original screenplay, from a story told to me by Brent T. Barker, a remarkable storyteller and an honorable man. 

BEND is now in pre-production. 

Currently, I am finishing the novel I started in Palm Springs, © RATTLESNAKE MOMMA, along with its screenplay equivalent under the same title.  And, to tell the truth, I’ve been bitten by the screenplay bug again after writing © BEND, so I am polishing the screenplays © LOVE IN HIS VEINS and © A FULL MOON AND JUDY GARLAND’S FUNERAL - along with compiling my short story collection, © SANDED AND STAINED.