I was born on a mountaintop in the East Bronx; ok. it was a hill. Catholic School, Air Force service, worked in a bookstore (Strand) and a library (NYPL). Tried stand-up and acting. Along the way, picked up a couple of Master's Degrees (NYU, Columbia) and a black belt in karate. I'm proud of the black belt; the two degrees, not so much. Have been writing fiction most of my life without thinking of myself as a writer and submitting very little. Then I turned sixty and decided to give it one real go. After repeated rejections, actually managed to be selected as a finalist in a short story contest by Wordstock and was published in the chapbook, The Wordstock Ten. Didn't win, by the way. My theory of writing is simple: try to tell a story I would like to hear or read. My heroes and sometimes models: Poe, Kafka, Borges, Shirley Jackson, Bolano, Paul Bowles, etc.