Hawaiian Noir

Aloha, Y’all!

I am a native of St. Louis, Missouri and a lifelong Cardinals fan. I earned a Bachelor’s degree from Quincy College (now Quincy University) in  Illinois, majoring in Psychology. It was there that I met Mary Fran to whom I have been married for forty-seven years. After QC, I studied Psychophysiology at Washington University in St. Louis before going to Thailand as a Peace Corps Volunteer. We returned to the U.S. and settled in Honolulu where I studied Cognitive Psychology at the University of Hawaii, earning a Ph.D, in 1983. We bought a home in Kailua, on the windward side of Oahu where we reared our two boys and I worked at Kamehameha Schools in their educational research unit, KEEP. In 1987, we left Hawaii for Texas where I had a job at Texas A&M University. I retired from A&M in February, 2017.

I an the author of Pilikia Is My Business, a private eye novel published in 2001 and republished in 2010. Pilikia was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America for Best 1st P.I. Novel. Game Face, a collection of short stories featuring P.I. Val Lyon, was published in 2011. The Rules, the first story in the Ava Rome series, was published as an ebook and audiobook in 2013 followed by The Splintered Paddle, a novel in 2014.

I am a past president of the Brazos Writers in College Station/Bryan, an active member of The Private Eye Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and the International Thriller Writers.