Hello

As a kid, I was not a prolific reader and was not particularly interested in writing. However, my father wrote poetry and had many poems accepted for publication; so, the idea of being a writer was probably planted in the back of my brain fairly early. Once I got to college, I ended up majoring in English and realized I had a lot of reading to do to catch up with my fellow English majors. Like a lot of English majors, I dreamed of one day writing the next great American novel, but when I actually started seriously trying to write for publication shortly after college graduation, I found that I had a lot more success publishing nonfiction than fiction. So, I gradually began to concentrate on nonfiction. My first sale was a personal essay based on my experience as a newspaper boy which I sold to American Newspaper Boy in 1974. I've been writing and selling articles fairly regularly ever since. Notable articles include a "Drama in Real Life" in Reader's Digest, multiple articles in Wild West Magazine, and a number of scholarly articles in history journals like the Missouri Historical Review. I contributed articles to the Harris Farmer's Almanac for 20 years, and I was a staff writer for Show Me the Ozarks Magazine for about eight years. 

Although I have concentrated on nonfiction over the years, I have continued to write fiction from time to time. I have published four historical/Western novels and about 30 short stories, and I still enjoy entering short story contests. 

While I was teaching and writing only part time, I mainly wrote short articles and stories, and I really had no particular specialty. I just wrote whatever struck my fancy or whatever I thought I could sell. I even wrote a few stories for confession magazines, women's publications like Modern Romance and True Story that used to appear on almost every newsstand in the country.

Since retiring from teaching, I have concentrated more and more on book-length works, and I've written about a book a year for the last 25 years. About the time I retired from teaching, I became especially interested in local and regional history, which was partly an outgrowth of my interest in family history, and almost everything I write nowadays pertains to American history, usually Missouri and Ozarks history. Even when I write fiction, it often has a historical basis. 

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