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Welcome to my website. Writing for me, has been a long, strange road. I began to write as a teenager. Nothing spectacular, just some jotted inner meanderings.

In college, however, I had a wonderful Creative Writing Professor, Pat Urbas. She informed the class on the first day that 75% of our grade would be a 2500 word short story, the best of which she would read aloud on the last day of class.

I was very shy in those days, and was mortified when she read my story Race Against Love. While I thought it was a pretty neat story, I was not prepared for what followed. As I attempted to slink out of class with my 'top story,' Professor Urbas pulled me aside and said something  to me that I quote verbatim nearly 30 years later.

"Mike, you should consider writing as a vocation."

I am standing there in shock, thinking "I'm an accounting major, not a writer!"

The impact of her very kind and insightful comment was that for the next 20 years I wrote every chance I got. I wrote on napkins and envelopes. I constructed poems and essays. I began to dream of becoming a published author. I started to tell my closest friends and family that someday...

I am currently reading Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek) who stated quite accurately, "someday is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you." I felt my writing dreams slipping away as the years rolled by and my child count kept rising.

In November 1999 I nearly died on the operating table from complications of peritonitis. During my months-long recovery, I determined that I would pursue that "writing vocation" that Professor Urbas had encouraged.

Amazingly, it took four years for me to find a writer's group that led me down the path to authorship. Even then, another four years to complete the first book in a genre I never considered to be mine - nonfiction.

I love to write fiction, yet my first book is nonfiction, go figure. I have loads of short stories and poetry written over the years, and three stalled novels, one of which was misused and abused by the movie The Butterfly Effect. My novel, Deja Vu, was one I had in my head for decades. Just goes to show you, don't wait too long or someone else will think of it too.

I wrote a nanowrimo novel in November, 2007. What a rush! I completed 50,163 words in 29 days! I highly recommend that you prove to yourself you can do this. It is eye opening, motivating and rewarding to complete a writing task like that. Mark November 1, 2008 on your calendar, I have.