Bio
While my career as a professor of Environmental Health Sciences, and Director of the UCLA Environmental Science and Engineering Program, kept me focused on research and teaching, I always wanted to write a novel. In what little spare time I had, I took evening classes at the UCLA Extension program in fiction writing and early on the seeds of the story that is now Shearwater Storm took hold. Eventually, in the master class in novel writing, I produced a first complete draft. That was almost thirty years ago.
After Judy and I retired to Orcas Island, and later when the pandemic began, I found myself re-writing the story, polishing and refining it, this time with my full attention. It took three more years to complete the novel in final form and find a publisher.
My other passion is sailing. The settings of forests, waterfalls, log-strewn beaches, and the sea in Shearwater Storm came from notes I took over years of sailing in the San Juan and Gulf Islands, and up the Inside Passage of British Columbia. Every day was an introduction to more beauty, all seen up close and slow from a sailboat's deck. I am beyond grateful to have been able to meld my passion for sailing into the writing of this novel, which has been a labor of love.
I hope you enjoy reading the story of Charlotte and Michael as much as I enjoyed writing about them, and about the lush scenery of Cambria Island and the sea.