I live at Two Mile Ranch, a small ranch in Iowa. Iowa is in the middle of the States, between Kansas City and Chicago. It's also home to Iowa Writer's Retreat. When I'm there, I write, I farm, I cook. I'm a digital storyteller turned author, and after helping others tell their stories for the last 30 years, I'm writing my own stories and released my first novel this year.
What first inspired you to start writing?
I began writing fiction in high school and then began working in traditional media. I moved into multimedia and the Internet. I actually designed my first website for a client in 1994. So I was always writing, but the end product was usually not the printed page. I think my recent inspiration came when I moved to Two Mile, the space and the vibe is very conducive to writing here.
If you could spend a day with anyone from history, who would it be?
I think any of my Swedish ancestors, especially the ones who immigrated to farms when they arrived in the States. I recently re-read Will Weaver's "Grave Stone Made of Wheat". He captures so much about the time in a short story.
Where do your best ideas come from?
I get many ideas from current events -- human drama and the stories behind the headlines. My current project includes a country music singer, so these day's I'm getting ideas from country songs.
What is your favourite word?
It's a word from Norse mythology, Fylgja, a supernatural being who accompanies someone to his or her fate or destiny.
What do you find most rewarding about writing?
I love listening to readers talk about the stories I share. Each reader brings their own perspectives and reactions to the words on the page. Everyone I talk to gives me a new and fresh insight to the characters. I think the reader is the most important "character" in a good book.
And the most challenging?
I imagine I'm like many authors, my challenge is finding concentrated blocks of time where I can focus and be alone with my project. A week or even a weekend where there I can write, or edit or diagram or even just imagine. That's one of the reasons I opened Two Mile Ranch to other authors as a retreat. I love lending the space to their creativity.
What are you working on at the moment?
When I finished Concealed: The Book of Joshua, I found myself thinking about the lead character, Joshua Stone. I wondered where his life would take him next and whom he would meet along the way. In real life, we meet people out of coincidence and circumstance, so my current project begins with the next person Joshua meets: Kolby Rae, a country singer with scars of her own. Her given name is Ruth. The working title is Unplugged: The Book of Ruth.
Tell us about your latest work and how we can find out more.
Concealed: The Book of Joshua is available via Amazon and Kindle. I'm flattered by the reviews at Goodreads and Amazon. It's the story of a college professor at a very typical Midwestern liberal arts college. He's quirky: he rides his bicycle everywhere and lives alone with this dog. He is social, outgoing, and well liked. After he's assaulted and left to die, he struggles to find a witness and make sense of the violence
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