I have been a celebrity biographer for thirty years. My subjects include Princess Grace, Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford, Ronald Reagan, the Bush family, Jackie Onassis, Barbra Streisand and Marilyn Monroe, among others. I have always had a compulsion to write and a fascination with larger-than-life figures, and I have been fortunate enough to make a career combining both. As a boy I loved reading Edgar Allan Poe stories. To write a novel about him was inspired by "Girl With a Pearl Earring." As I was reading it on a train back to Boston from New York City, I wondered what real-life artist I might write a novel about, and I thought of Poe. When I researched his life I knew that the story was incredible and I had to write my take on it. The novel's narrator is a 20-year-old student/aspiring poet who become Poe's protege. Like many characters in fiction, he is like the book's author (me) in many ways and very unlike me in others.  

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