Publishers: see short bios here
I don’t know where it comes from but I know it when I hear it, when it starts whispering in my ear.
I grew up on Normal Avenue in Normal, Illinois. Which was always good for a punch line.
In high school I wrote a humor column for my school paper, The Clarionette, and spent many an hour in the J-lab, learning how to write a news story, and finding my way around a dark room, underachieving in my other classes. Then in college, what little there was of it, I spent all my time in the offices of The Daily Vidette, writing features and op-ed and humorous columns. I won a Governor’s award for Alcohol Awareness Week for a story that started, “I don’t drink. In fact, I don’t drink so much some of my friends have begun to worry about me.”
I dropped out of Illinois State and moved to Chicago one summer with $300 in my pocket to an apartment I sublet sight-unseen at Lincoln and Diversey. I learned to set type and design business forms to make a living. I began to do readings in bookstores and open mikes, reading very short, true stories about my friends. Later I began to write and perform in original plays with my friend Tom Zanarini at our performance venue, The Clybourn Salon. One of our pieces was written up in The Drama Review.
After a brief and unsuccessful attempt living in New York City, I found myself in Los Angeles. I had heard that Los Angeles was a cruel place, but for some reason it liked me just fine. I was able to make a very nice life for myself as a graphic designer and production manager, and started my business, Escott Associates. Some friends of mine started Amok Press, and I helped them get the book publishing division going. I took a few creative writing classes at UCLA Extension and found that I had more and more stories to tell.
One day I met a California boy who loved plants and dogs and the out of doors and we’ve been together ever since. Now in Yucca Valley, California, we live and work in our high desert plant nursery, growing and selling cacti and succulents and exotic plants on our website, cacti.com.
I’m a longtime member of Stephanie Waxman‘s Wednesday Writing group. And I participated in the Idyllwild Writers Workshop and UCLA Extension course in memoir writing with Samantha Dunn. I was featured in Los Angeles’ 7th Annual Emerging Voices Group Show. In 2016, my story “Survival Skills” was featured as part of the LA Lit Crawl. My story “Tightrope” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize some years ago.
My work has been published in Alembic, Close to the Bone, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Switchback, Bluestem, Paterson Literary Review, The MacGuffin, Sand Hill Review, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Umbrella Factory Magazine, The Writer’s Workshop Review, Evening Street Review, Brief Wilderness, The Opiate, and other journals.
I keep thinking I have told all my stories, but more keep happening.