J.D. Salinger was the author who first inspired me to someday write something quirky like my first novel, "Hell Year." I loved the way his main characters poked fun of themselves, and how he told the story of "The Catcher In The Rye" in first person through Holden Caulfield. Despite an uncanny knack to write sing-song poems in the seventies for not only myself but for friends in English class, I never thought of becoming a writer until the early nineties. I was never much of a reader as a youngster but became an omniverous one in the eighties, devouring titles by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Mario Puzo, John Jakes, James Patterson, Arthur Hailey, Peter Benchley and others. I also read the classics by James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens and Nathaniel Hawthorne. But it was James Herriot's series about his days as a country vet that really got me going. I knew I had a lot of weird experiences that I could write about. After all, I told quite a few tall tales in my childhood and always liked to tell my mother and father (in detail) what transpired each day at school; or wherever. I later started writing in a daily diary in early 1992 in an attempt to hone my skills. I wrote about anything that was on my mind at that particular moment. And I wrote with as much of a literary spin as possible. I found writing very rewarding but it's one of the most difficult and frustrating endeavors one can endure. There's nothing more satisfying than finishing the first draft of a novel. Well, maybe one other thing. I like to create new and different types of stories which are more than a little bit weird. But they are all about life's experiences.  

Former top 20 business and nutrition writer on several well-known online sites.