About

I grew up in Minnesota and moved west in my twenties with a truck full of books and not much of a plan. I eventually landed on Gooseberry Point, a small waterfront neighborhood on the Lummi Reservation in northwest Washington. I expected to stay for a while. I stayed for ten years.

Those years became the heart of The Lummi Tabernacle Choir, my first literary memoir. It's a book about the people I knew there, but also about the life I carried with me when I arrived — losing my mother when I was young, growing up with an alcoholic Vietnam veteran father, and learning early how to rely on myself. The book follows those threads through addiction, faith, fatherhood, friendship, and the complicated distance between finding a place where you belong and learning how to stay.

For seventeen years, I owned and operated a water-delivery business in Whatcom County. I later earned degrees in accounting and business administration and now serve as Director of Ecommerce at Barlean's. Writing came less directly. For years, I accumulated stories without thinking of myself as someone who would eventually put them into a book.

I also write for younger readers. Gene Drives is a ten-book children's series about Gene, a boy who can drive anything. Whatever the adventure, he finds a way to bring everyone home.

I live in Ferndale, Washington. When I'm not writing, I play music, work on my small farm, and spend as much time outdoors as I can.