At age eighteen during the turbulent 1960s, the author volunteered for the draft and served a year in Vietnam, receiving a Combat Infantryman Badge and a Bronze Star for service. Upon returning home, he resumed his music career and his studies, eventually graduating summa cum laude and receiving the college-wide award in creative writing at Hobart and William SmithColleges. At the time, he began working on a manuscript titled “Idiots on Parade,” drawing on his experiences as a drafted soldier during the great buildup of American troops in 1966 and 1967. Plans at that time to sell his antiwar novel to a filmmaker broke down, suddenly raising questions that would be left unanswered. Lucas decided to shelve his controversial story and moved ahead with his career as a singer-songwriter. In the following years, he composed, recorded, and released four albums of original songs reflecting his hard rock roots: “Red Letter Day,” “Lifeboats,” “Millennial Sequence,” and “Rock Psalter.” While he pursued his music career publicly, he continued to devote his creative energies to fiction, poetry, and a one-act play, The Spectral Wedding, which was staged in Buffalo, New York, by the SUNY Buffalo actors’ workshop while Lucas was completing a master’s degree in creative writing. Working as a college professor of writing and literature for twelve years, he mentored numerous students while continuing to perform publicly. While teaching, he met and married his wife of thirty years, Lisa DeMarco, a math instructor. They had two children, Bianca and Blake (deceased), losing their beloved son Blake in a tragic MVA when he was eighteen and about to leave for his first year of college. Their daughter Bianca is a talented musician currently enrolled at Boston University. Lucas and his wife left teaching and studied at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where theycompleted their master’s degrees in psychology and psychotherapy. For twelve years, he and his wife worked as psychotherapists in positions in New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. Throughout his life and career, Lucas supported numerous causes involving human rights and social justice. This included a stint working as a boycott organizer in New York City for the United Farm Workers in 1975. Since then he worked actively on other causes including the environment, nondiscriminatory housing, and equal educational opportunities for all. His second novel is finished and due for release in late 2023 or early 2024.Read more about this authorRead less about this author