About the Author

Two years after I left the U.S. Navy and returned to college, my dad suffered a brain hemorrhage. He died about eight months later. During that time, my mom nearly killed herself caring for him.

Discovery is a product of those months, the years that preceded them and the period after Dad’s death. The story as I tell it is fiction, but much of what happens to the characters is true. Fiction is wishful thinking about what could be, but it can’t get around the bad that has been and will be. Discovery, because it tells the story of human beings, can’t separate the two.

I hope readers enjoy getting to know Helen Bryan in all her irascible, stubborn, ambitious, frustrated, frustrating and complicated womanhood. Like many of the characters in Discovery, Helen is a real person, but the story is biography written to honor what might have been and to keep the possible alive.

During my career, I’ve authored three children’s books. I’ve written a number of screenplays, three of which have been produced, including Raising Jeffrey Dahmer, the story of the serial killer’s father; Hope (ghostwritten), a film about the struggle of an injured young man to get stem-cell treatment; and Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas, the story of the self-proclaimed most prolific serial killer ever known. I’ve also been an educator and, now, a novelist. Discovery is my first published novel. Two more, Catching Out and Cuckoo are nearing completion.

I live in Kansas City, Missouri, with my wife Fran, a psychologist, whom I thank deeply for coming up with the idea for this story. We’re both avid birders.

To purchase your copy of Discovery, contact BTS Publications at betterthanstarbucks.org, or call (561) 719-8672.