I'm also a freelance editor and ghostwriter.

In the business world I’ve held titles such as Manager of Corporate Communications, responsible for public relations and for producing company publications, speeches, presentations, newsletters, white papers and brochures.

I've conducted business-writing seminars at a corporate level. I've even done technical writing.

As a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in the early 1960's, I did analysis and wrote intelligence reports that -- I suspect -- nobody read.

On assignment, I do an occasional feature article for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a group of eight suburban papers.

Yes, like everyone else, some day I was going to write that novel we all carry in our heads. Ah, but life kept getting in the way with promises to keep, bills to be paid, children to be educated, and a loving wife to be kept happy.

Then after I lost my wife of 36 years to heart disease I knew it was now or never. I should add that our two kids had long since left the nest.  And, I was lucky to re-marry three years later.

So, alone and in my 60th decade -- except for our late tabby Nadia supervising from atop the monitor -- I wrote my first piece of fiction. The year was 2000. It took six months for a first draft. Then the real writing -- revision -- began.

In the process, I re-discovered two truths that writers have always known: that writing is a balm for grief and that a cat is a gentle taskmistress to a widower.

I chose to write a private eye novel because, like so many readers worldwide, I admire the fictional sleuth. He or she is a moral and intellectual force driven to find justice for those unable to find it for themselves.

As I see it, that’s the parable between the lines in all private eye murder mysteries. I hold to the view that the genre belongs to the chivalric tradition with its lone knights or wandering samurais.

My book, "The Examined Life," is a private eye novel with a backstory about men and warfare. A woman friend tells me believes that it also speaks to the healing power of women.

For what it's worth, it's not self-published. Indeed, it took me nearly three years to get published.

The book was inspired by real events.

With all that, I was thrilled to read a review our our ebook edition by Aldo Calgagno in the September 2005 issue of Crime Spree Magazine. He called my book "one of those gems that deserves being dug out of the tens of thousands of books that are published each year."

I've never met Aldo, but I owe him a drink -- and soon, I'd hope. "The Examined Life" will be available in PAPERBACK April 30, 2008 at www.rockpublishing.com or www.amazon.com  ISBN 978 1 59663 569 2

Those interested in advance review copies contact Rock Publishing above.
Since January 2005 it has been available as both a text CD and as an Ebook at www.fatcatpress.com 

Scroll down for more info or click on Articles and Success stories on the upper left of this site. 

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