I was raised during the sixties and early seventies in a rural enclave of Northern Westchester - a token Asian and "minority" in my class. Somehow I won a full-ride debate scholarship to Northwestern and escaped to Evanston and then Chicago. I joined New York City's professional workforce in the early 1980s, working all-nighters, jetting about the country, eventually rubbing elbows with corporate treasurers and CFOs - again as a token Asian and minority at my employer. I eventually formed my own firm (considerably more diverse), set aside enough to marry and raise a child, and lived in a spectacular apartment on Central Park South. In 2012, I began composing short fictionalized accounts of my neighbors. They included luminaries from corporate business and American theater, but also included the non-famous, everyday families that happened to save enough to risk everything on a mortgage that dwarfed their income. It took me until 2019 and my 60th birthday to hone the conceit that draws these separate fictional lives together: an M7 bus side-swipes one of the tenant-shareholders. This sets in motion a series of increasingly bizarre financial and intelligence investigations that expose the residents’ largely anonymous lives to unrelenting media scrutiny. Cooperative Lives is about the fragility and resilience of bonds – between family members, co-workers, building staff, lovers and neighbors – when tested by illness, differences of class, race, religion and age, seemingly trivial misjudgments, and unwelcome outside attention. The story centers on two middle-aged, multi-racial families – their professional and interpersonal misadventures and their considerably older and whiter neighbors. It is the culmination of seven years of writing, rewriting and editing, and thirty years of professional experience in the Big Apple.                           

Member, NY State Bar
Member, Board of Directors, The Skating Club of New York

Book Awards:

• Grand Prize Finalist, 2019 Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition


• Category Winner in Literary Fiction and Grand Prize Short List, 2019 Millennium Book Award


• Winner in General Fiction, 2019-20 Reader Views Literary Awards


• Winner in Fiction, 2020 Book Excellence Awards


• Seal of Approval and Gold Medal in Contemporary Fiction, 2019 Literary Classics International Book Awards


• Winner, 2019-20 Jack Eadon Memorial Award for Best Book in Contemporary Drama


• Winner, 2019-20 Author Marketing Network Award for Best Fiction Début


• Reviewer's Choice Award, 2019 Feathered Quill Book Awards


• Silver Medal in Adult Fiction, 2019 Wishing Shelf Book Awards


• Finalist in General Fiction, 2019 American Fiction Awards (American BookFest)


• Semi-Finalist, 2019 Somerset Book Awards


• Bronze Medal in Fiction Drama, 2019 Readers Favorite Awards


• Bronze Medal in General Fiction and Début Author Finalist, 2019 Feathered Quill Book Awards


• B.R.A.G. Medallion in Literary Fiction, Book Readers Appreciation Group


• Best Books in Literary Fiction, Fall 2019 NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards


• Long List, 2019 Cinnamon Literature Prize