I was born in Maine and grew up there, taking its beauty completely for granted. (Every other state must be just as beautiful, right?) I left home at 18 to go to college at Michigan State, followed by graduate school at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, where I earned an MFA in Writing.After grad school I moved to New York, where I lived for seven years, mostly in the East Village. The best part about living in New York in the early 1980s was that you could make a decent living doing freelance word processing. All the writers, artists, actors, and musicians were doing it. The word processing machines of that era were very large and very scary to the executives who purchased them. Enter the freelancer who knew how to tame the machine and calm everyone's nerves.The bad part about living in New York during the 80s was...well, there were many bad parts, not the least of which was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. By 1986 I was more than ready to leave, and when I had the opportunity to move to Kansas City (to culminate a long-distance flirtation...hands up for 'who's been there?'), I took it. My flirtation-turned-relationship in Kansas City didn't last long, but I decided to stay because I loved the place, and still do. It may be one of the last of the truly livable big cities in the country. I met my partner, Ralph, in the fall of 1988, and we started dating in January 1989. We moved in together in the spring of that year and have been together ever since. I've been writing from as far back as I can remember, but most of what I've had published has appeared within the past several years. I was lucky enough to get the attention of Greg Wharton, publisher at Suspect Thoughts Press, who placed stories of mine in several anthologies and brought out my first book, an erotic novel called 'My Name Is Rand,' in 2004.'A Report from Winter' orignally appeared, in condensed form, in the book 'Walking Higher: Gay Men Write about the Deaths of Their Mothers.' My search for a publisher that would bring out the full-length version of 'Winter' led me to Steve Berman at Lethe Press. Steve and his staff do a phenomenal job of bringing LGBT-related books to the community. As I mention in Winter, my "day job" life has been a pretty hit-or-miss affair, but I was fortunate enough to be an HIV educator for several years. While I was in that job I began grantwriting--everyone who worked in HIV/AIDS services was a grantwriter--and got a job as full-time grantwriter for Kansas City Hospice. During that time I worked on a capital campaign that brought the first freestanding inpatient hospice facility to the area. Since 2006 I have been managing grant programs in the arts and culture field. I received my Grant Professional Certification (GPC) in 2010.Read more about this authorRead less about this author