Hello
Welcome to my new home on the web. I will be using this space to talk about some of my favorite topics, like coffee, books, photography, pocket knives, movies, and a host of others.
You will also be introduced to my foray into literary fiction, where I am writing a series of short stories to compile into a collection entitled The Streets of Greenfield. My goal is to have the collection published in book form by the Spring of 2024.
My Story
Early on, I took an interest in writing, but due to life getting in the way, I didn't pursue it in earnest until I was fifty - five years old. At first, I regretted that, and maybe I still do a little bit, but what I have to say in my mid-fifties is more interesting than what I had to say in my twenties or thirties.
I was born on October 2, 1965, in the small southern Ohio town of Greenfield. Greenfield sits in the extreme northwest corner of the Appalachian region between Columbus and the Ohio River. By the time I was born, my family had lived and died there for generations. Most of them continue to do so today. In 1984 I graduated from Edward Lee McClain High School and joined the Marine Corps just a few months later. The Marines took me all over the world and introduced me to things that I had ever only read about before. Four years later, I returned to Greenfield with a family and set about trying to support them as best I could. It was during my formative years in Greenfield and in the Marine Corps that I started to dabble a little bit in poetry and writing prose.
On March 13, 1989, I took a job with an auto parts factory in Blanchester, OH, that supplied parts to Honda. Four days later, on March 17, I was on a plane to Japan for training. That started me on a twenty-year career as a Quality Engineer in the automotive industry. During these twenty years, I found myself traveling all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Japan sitting in meetings and making decisions that were usually reserved for people educated well beyond my two semesters of community college. I did well in my career, always managing to advance either by promotion or by discovering new opportunities elsewhere. Still, I woke up one morning in 2009 and decided I needed a change.
In 2000, I moved from Greenfield, OH, to Danville, KY. Nine years later, in 2009, I left the automotive industry and opened a portrait studio that I called "GX2 Photography." I didn't know much about photography, but I learned quickly, and within a couple of years, I had the area's top Senior Portrait studio, photographing seventy to eighty seniors a year. It was during this period that I started to think about writing a little more, but I never really got it going.
The thought of owning a coffee shop had always appealed to me, so in 2018 I bought a food truck and sold donuts and coffee from it so I could learn a little about the food service industry, having never worked a day in it at any point in my life. In 2019, Big Jack's Donuts & Coffee was voted Food Truck of The Year in Boyle County, KY. It was then that I decided to close my portrait studio and open a cafe.
In 2020, I sold my food truck and opened Big Jack's Cafe in Lawrenceburg. KY. We opened just as Covid hit, and it was tough, to say the least. Two years later, we are thriving due to serving a great product and treating our guests like family.
Shortly after opening Big Jack's Cafe, something hit me, and I started to pursue writing in a serious way. I decided to concentrate on short stories, as I felt doing so would not take me away from the cafe while I was working to get it off the ground. I've been asked what genre I write in, and I'm never quite sure how to answer. I can write in many different styles, but I'm currently working on a collection of stories that are usually classified as "Noir." Noir is a style of writing that presents protagonists as anti-hero types at odds with themselves as much as with anything else.
The collection of stories I mentioned above is set in Greenfield, OH, between 1960 and 2023. I chose Greenfield as the location because it allows me to draw upon my own recollection of the people, places, and events that I remember from my youth and young adulthood. While each story is a work of fiction, it would be a lie to say that most of them weren't inspired by my time in Greenfield. My goal is to publish my collection, entitled The Streets of Greenfield, no later than Spring 2024. I sincerely hope you will visit here often and help keep me going toward my goal.
***I am currently living in Danville, KY, with my wife, Michelle, and our mean cat, Boo Radley. When I'm not writing, I'm making coffee at Big Jack's Cafe, taking a road trip along the back roads of America, or riding recumbent trikes with my Michelle.***