Although I majored in journalism, I spent much of my college career honing my writing skills under the guidance of  the university's writer-in-residence, a wonderfully gifted novelist.  He required not only that I dedicate hours each week to intensive writing exercises, but that I regularly read great writers: James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner and more.  He had me focus on writing short stories, explorations of a single idea in the space of a few pages. Under his tutelage, short stories became poems in prose. The words flowed rather easily, although the novelist's biting critiques sometimes left me wondering whether I should have majored in math.  I wanted to progress to novels, but they presented a wholly different challenge. The technical skills required to pace the storyline over hundreds of pages, develop multiple characters that evolve as the story progresses, and craft an intelligent, unpredictable yet compelling plot were quite daunting.  I finally told myself that I simply didn't have the time, but the truth is, as a young student, I had neither the patience nor the maturity to write a novel worth reading.

Whatever I have achieved, I owe to others:

My father, who showed me what courage looks like,
My mother, who taught me what poetry means,
My sister, who made me believe in dreams,
And my wife, without whom none of this matters.

My upbringing instilled in me a fascination with how people acquire and use language. Meanwhile, my chosen career path has introduced me to the intrigues of national politics. These two strands intertwine in my novel, The Messenger, in which freshman U.S. Senator John Peters vaults to worldwide fame and political prominence following his first speech from the Senate floor. Although he claims to have delivered his speech in English, according to amazed listeners he could be understood by all who heard him, no matter what their language. Some hail him as a prophet; others call him a fraud; most write off the incident as a practical joke. But when the "tongues" phenomenon recurs, several figures, ranging from a political power broker to an archbishop, seek to appropriate the apparent miracles for their own purposes. Senator Peters seeks to downplay any religious significance to the incidents, fearing they will undercut his efforts to be taken seriously as a politician, but exploits his newfound fame by declaring himself a candidate for his party's Presidential nomination. Meanwhile, two men following different trains of thought reach an identical conclusion: the Senator must die. Lurking in the background, a centuries old society known as the Order of Mani keeps watch. The Order believes that it alone holds the secret to the Messenger's true purpose, and it is determined to stop it.