The Basics Illustrated:

Born: Albany, New York

Hometowns: Delmar, NY; Kinderhook, NY (next door to the home of 8th President of the U.S. Martin Van Buren—no, he wasn’t still alive); Ticonderoga, NY; and Johnstown, NY.

Graduated: Union College. About-faced my studies from Electrical Engineering to English and began writing poetry and short stories for the college literary magazine.

Married: The first girl accepted at Union College was beautiful, smart,  and adventurous. Somehow I convinced her to marry me (as I say,  she’s adventurous).

Travel: Early in our marriage and careers we quit our jobs and used all of our savings (less than $5,000) to travel around the world.

Career: My travelogue of our trip served as an entree to a 33-year advertising career in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, selling mostly good products to folks who mostly needed them.

Family and Home: We moved to Shelburne, Vermont when our two daughters were just entering high school—not great timing. I suggested they would soon be proud to call themselves Green Mountain Women. Today both live near us in Vermont with their husbands and our grandchildren.

Retirement: The summer of ’72 my college girlfriend and I toured Europe on bicycles. It was the best summer of my life. In 2009 I retired and fulfilled my career-long dream of biking across the U.S.—with my college girlfriend. Along the way we celebrated our 35th anniversary. We used the trip to raise $20,000 for the American Lung Association

Inspiration: The fiction bug has bitten me again, and I can pass much of the blame to Richard Russo. He is my age, we grew up in the same community, and he writes about small town America the way I remember it. Aside from his Pulitzer Prize-winning writing, he supports emerging authors with his Authors Guild Literary Series (see Aspen Times), and is paying back his old community by supporting a revitalization of the library (see New York Times).