Born March 18, 1970 in Manchester, CT. We moved a lot because my parents were stationed on the East Coast in the Navy. When my dad joined the Coast Guard, we rolled down south from Boston to Tampa, FL. A few years later we headed west to Mobile, Alabama until my father was honorably discharged from the Coast Guard. They said California was the place to be, so we loaded up the Buick and moved the fam-ah-lee! That was in 1979; I have lived in northern California ever since. I wrote my first novel at the age of thirteen. I did not write a second novel until 1997 when I was down with walking pneumonia. Interestingly enough, I sold my second novel to Random House only after selling the rights to a book of short stories to Viking--a book of short stories that never saw the light of day. I have published two short stories with "The New Yorker" and "Playboy", although I still write for science fiction and university magazines. Currently, however, I've sold the synopsis and rights to (drum-roll, please!) a series of novels to Little, Brown. (My agent has promised me they will not pull the proverbial rug out from under me the way Viking did years ago.) That said, I am working towards a master's degree in creative writing with a minor in psychology at the same university where I caught walking pneumonia and published my second novel. I have a profound love and respect for women. Raised with two sisters and an open-minded mom, my father taught me early on to treasure women with three simple rules [which I call the three l's]: 1) listen, 2) learn, 3) love. "Above all," he told me, "L-I-S-T-E-N!" Now that I have been married for seven years with three children of my own, I fully understand that a man cannot love a woman--or learn from her--without keeping his mouth shut and listening.