Hello sailors, book lovers, friends, and everyone else! Thanks for visiting my website. Here you will find links to all of my books, my podcast, podcast interviews of me, and a few other treats.
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Though my life has taken a few turns, some things have remained the same. I have always been in love with nature, and I have always been some sort of an artist. I grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, then went to college at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida, where I studied biology. I also became a surfer at FIT, and over thirty years later, I still surf. I then went to West Virginia University, where I got a Master's Degree in Biology. Here, I became an avid mountain biker and even got into racing. At this point in my life, I didn't know where to go next, and I ended up teaching 9th-grade biology and algebra at a boarding school in Connecticut. I didn't like it.
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After Connecticut, I was without direction, and I soon returned to Florida and got a job framing houses. Over the coming years, I was a bicycle mechanic, a realtor, an environmental consultant, and a landlord, but I ended back up in construction and eventually became a finish carpenter. During my 23 years in St Augustine, Florida, my main goal was to be a professional musician, and I played bass or guitar in many bands. All of the bands played original music, and I wrote much of it. But this all began changing when I decided to give up some bad habits.
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In 2015, I quit drinking, and my life began changing dramatically and rapidly, all for the better. I wrote my first book about my experience getting sober, and the methods I developed in order to do so. This book is "Alcoholics Not Anonymous."
While seeking out substitutes for alcohol, I rediscovered my love for adventure. I was canoeing in the Okefenokee swamp on a five-day solo canoeing and camping trip when I realized that I needed to become a sailor. When I returned home, I began devouring sailing nonfiction books. I used the money I saved from my first year of not drinking to buy a week-long sailing class with ASA.
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After the class, I was able to crew on a boat that was sailing from St Lucia to Puerto Rico, and I loved every minute of it. Soon after, I sailed from St Augustine, FL, to The Bahamas with friends, and this sealed it for me. I bought a boat later that year (2016).
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My first boat, Sobrius, was a 30-foot 1972 Dufour Arpege. I bought her in St Petersburg, FL, and sailed her alone to the Dry Tortugas, then Miami, and finally to St Augustine. The trip covered 1000 miles. I wrote about this experience, which will never be duplicated, in my second book: "Becoming a Sailor."
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In 2018, I sailed alone to The Bahamas and spent 2 months exploring the islands. My big goal was to reach the Ragged Islands, an archipelago of uninhabited islands, remote and starkly beautiful. I succeeded in reaching the Ragged Islands, and had many adventures, and a near-death experience or two. I wrote about this in my third book: "Journey to the Ragged Islands."
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Next, I wanted to write a book about the band I was in, specifically our first tour. I was in an original reggae band, I-Vibes, and our first tour was on a converted school bus that ran on vegetable oil. We spent two weeks driving throughout the southeast and Appalachia playing mostly bar gigs. I started writing the book and quickly decided that it would be more fun to write if it was fiction. This became my fourth book: "Dead Flowers on Wednesday."
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In the summer of 2019, I sold my house and my boat and bought a bigger boat, a 1972 Cartwright 40, Windflower. I bought her in Massachusetts, worked on her for a month, then sailed in late October to the Chesapeake Bay. I worked on her there for two months, then sailed to Beaufort, NC, and finally to The Bahamas, solo.
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I arrived at Eleuthera on New Years Day and spent four months in The Bahamas. I wrote about this experience in my book "Chasing the Nomadic Dream."
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I wrote my second novel, "The Gold Box," based on my dream of finding treasure and the question of what to do once you find it.
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I wrote another book about sobriety, this time based more on research and also from the perspective of having been sober for seven years. This is "The Joy of Living Clean and Sober."
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"On a Belt of Foaming Seas" was a collaboration with Tapio Lehtinen, Barry Pickthall, and Ari Pusa. The book documents Tapio's 2018 Golden Globe Race campaign, in which he sailed around the world solo and nonstop.
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One of my original dreams about sailing was to sail to Newfoundland, in effort to find somewhere where raw nature and uninhabited wilderness met the ocean. This is difficult to find anywhere in the world, since most coastlines are either inhabited or don't have anywhere to anchor. I made it there in 2023 and wrote about it in "Sailing to Newfoundland."
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My latest novel is a psychological thriller called "Until They Bury Me." You can read the first four chapters for free on this website by clicking on "Until They Bury Me" in the menu above.
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Windflower and I are now sailing around the Caribbean, exploring the islands, and living the dream: sailing, surfing, spearfishing, and writing about it.