ABOUT ME
I grew up in and around New York City, traveled extensively, then returned for good in the mid-’80s. I have a B.S. from Northwestern and an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School, and have worked as an editor, political campaign staffer, actor, voiceover artist, stand-up comic and other jobs too numerous to mention… but my first love has always been putting words on paper.
I have been a professional writer since high school, producing novels, short stories, plays, film and TV scripts, essays, reviews, journalism – I like to joke that I’ve done just about everything except haiku.
NOVELS
My first novel, Frank: A Creature’s Tale, is a new twist on the world’s most famous horror story. The protagonist, Frank Percy, is a cultured European gentleman – impeccably mannered, fluent in numerous languages, a connoisseur of fine wine and classic cinema. He is also nearly 200 years old and seven and a half feet tall. Created in the basement laboratory of his scientist “father,” he has always been bitter over the “myths and canards” perpetuated about him by a certain “Mrs. S______” and the film version of her book (“I do not have green skin… My head is not flat-topped… I have never killed anyone”). With the dawn of a new century, Frank decides to leave his ancestral home in Switzerland and come to the United States to set the record straight. In depicting his encounters with (among others) a veteran police detective, a troubled young publicist, a slasher-film producer and the Department of Homeland Security, Frank takes a broad, bitingly humorous look at American society through the eyes of an intelligent but naïve visitor. But also – through Frank’s struggles, if not his very existence – it raises a basic, profound question: Exactly what does it mean to be human? Click here to read the first three chapters.
“This is Rick Waisell…” – a work in progress – is the story of a different kind of “monster” in the last three decades of the 20th Century in America. Richard “Rick” Waisell gets involved in politics through the anti-Vietnam War movement while in high school; he quickly rises from obscurity to prominence – elected to Congress before his thirtieth birthday – and falls just as swiftly. Moving to the right, he gets a second chance at the spotlight as a newspaper columnist and later, a radio talk-show host. To his fans, he is a courageous truth-teller who perfectly expresses their anger at the liberal establishment. But in reality, Rick is cynical, self-centered, filled with grudges and resentments… and above all, concerned with preserving his power. In the attached excerpt, set in 1983, Rick confronts a crisis that threatens to destroy his career.