About Myself

I am a self-taught historian and published author of historical fiction. I am also a nature photographer, an artist in the wood art media, and I am a custom woodworker.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan, lived in Dearborn until I completed 6th grade. That summer my parents had a house built in Plymouth, Michigan, where I graduated from high school. Plymouth was still a small town back then. I hate to admit it but, I did not realize how much I loved Plymouth until years later while living in Florida. When we were living in Dearborn I spent a couple weeks each summer at Camp Dearborn. While there, I wrote letters to my parents. My mom told me that I wrote really well, and my letters were very detailed when I related my experiences at camp. One day she told me that I should consider being a writer, or even an author, but I had little interest in doing such a thing, doubted that I really had the ability, and besides, I was still a young boy and more interested in the typical pursuits of a child. I was in no hurry to become an adult. Well, as my mom sometimes said, “You’re just a late bloomer.” I guess she called that one right, but many years passed until I made my first attempt at writing.

If you wish to learn how it is that I came about writing my historical novels, go to the menu above and select Published Books.

Serious woodworking, or practicing wood art, also came late in life. It is just something that interested me so I made an attempt to learn it. Just like writing, my first attempts were not nearly as good as what I do now.

Nature photography? I have loved nature as far back as I can remember, but what piqued my interest in photography was having had the privilege of traveling extensively throughout Colorado, with side trips into Utah, back into Colorado, and then north to Cheyenne, Wyoming to attend their Frontier Days. My dad had bought me a small, simple, Kodak Instamatic camera, and about five rolls of slide film. During the trip I sometimes got creative with my photography, a couple of times I put the camera’s lens against one of the eyepieces of a pair of binoculars, sort of a crude telephoto lens. When I finally returned home and had the film developed into slides, my dad set up his projector and screen. We all sat down to watch, and take the journey with me. After the last slide was shown, my dad expressed his amazement. “It is hard to believe that such wonderful photos could have been taken with a cheap and simple camera such as that Kodak Instamatic, and for someone with no photographic experience, your composition in many of those images was very professional.” My dad’s compliments made me want to do more. Later, during my college years, I saw the movie Blowup starring David Hemmings, with Vanessa Redgrave. It was about a fashion photographer who one day took a photograph in a park. On the edge of the park were shrubs and trees. What he did not know at the time, he had inadvertently taken a photo of a murder being committed in the shrubs. After learning of the murder, he began the process of enlarging the image, each time larger and larger, until he could make out the actual event. Now, not that I wanted to take photos of something like that, but it did make me want to be a fashion photographer. I never did follow up on that though.

After I joined the Navy I got orders to the Philippines. As I was still living a carefree life and could spend money for whatever I could afford, I bought a Nikon F, which back then was considered the best. It was not until I left the Navy that I began taking nature photographs. A few years ago, I was blessed at having been given the opportunity to spend a few years in the great north woods of the lower peninsula of Michigan. I finally found my element and my love of nature photography began in earnest. I had also upgraded from the Nikon F to my dad’s Nikon FN, both were manual cameras, and finally to my first automatic digital camera, a Canon Rebel T5.

Go to the menu and click on Nature Photography in order to view many of my nature photos.

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