The world of the theater has had a magical allure for me, ever since that afternoon as an eighteen-year-old wandering around mid-town with several hours of my hands before my bus’s departure, I purchased a matinee ticket to see, ‘Man of La Mancha.’ Although I’ve spent almost all of my life as a writer creating novels and short fiction, I have always loved seeing live theater and reading the works of O’Neill, Miller, Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Chekhov, Shaw and Shakespeare, among others....

Cecilia’s New Sweater tells the heartwarming story of Beau, a young sheep who initially fears being sheared until he meets Cecilia, a brave girl visiting the farm with other children from the hospital. Cecilia, battling leukemia, gently befriends Beau, who notices her lack of hair and worn sweater. Learning from the farm dog Jenna that Cecilia’s illness makes her cold, Beau feels deep empathy for her struggle. Determined to help, he courageously volunteers to be sheared so his fleece can b...

In the early pre-dawn on a day in May of 1963 as sunlight glimmered in the offing of Lake Michigan, Chicago awakened to the promise of a fine spring day. Jimmy Flores and Paddy O’Halloran, friends and scholarship track athletes, saw the first glimmers of a world beyond their college graduation, scheduled for later that morning on the Loyola campus several miles behind their rapid footsteps along the Lake Shore Trail. In the next ten years, a period beginning with Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor unlea...

The word, ‘salience,’ originally comes from the Latin, ‘salio,’ meaning to leap, or spring. Gradually, over the centuries, it has taken on its present meaning of, ‘particularly noticeable or prominent.’ Billy Garth, the hero of my novel that bears this title, experiences colors and sounds taking unusual prominence in his mind and distorting his senses during the last year of high school. Only after a long struggle does he understand that they are symptoms of his illness, schizophrenia. Bil...

My novel begins one snowy evening in cold snowy Buffalo on a typical American street where a light from the topmost room of an otherwise ordinary home shines into the wintry night with a rare golden glimmer and the miracle of invincible youth. From the garret room in this house young Elan Duclair shares with the silent falling snowflakes a voice destined to carry him from his untutored singing in a church choir and a high school rock band onto the grandest of the world’s opera stages in on...

Running is a part of our consciousness and subconsciousness all through life. We run as children chasing kites and ice-cream trucks, and run away from irate parents. We run as teenagers in our sports. We run as adults to stay in shape, and as elderly people, we run after toddlers that suddenly escape our protection. We run in nightmares. We run in happy dreams for the exuberance of pure freedom. We run to catch subways, buses and planes. We run to meet our lovers. Our clocks run fast, or s...

‘A Bus Ride Through the Night’ is an adventurous journey from boyhood to early manhood through the experience of Tom MacIntyre, high school actor and discus thrower, stockroom worker, suit salesman, Off-Broadway and Broadway actor. A tall rangy, sensitive and outgoing young man, Tom finds a home for his dreams in New York City, only a bus ride from his mother’s home in suburbia, yet a far greater distance in time and maturity filled with the self-discovery of his own weaknesses as well as ...

The stories for, ‘In and Out of Town,’ were collected over several decades from my experiences in city, suburb and country; the city being New York City, the suburb and country those areas around it. The art of the short story attempts to capture in a few pages moments in people’s lives that encapsulate lifetimes; to peer closely into moments of struggle and turmoil that often determine character and fate. The short story is where most young writers begin. My favorites were Joyce, Lawrence...

My American Tales are four novellas, longer than short stories, shorter than novels. I tried to capture in them experiences centering on four different stages of life; childhood, teen years, early adulthood and middle-age. Each story has its own ordeal, or trauma. A young boy just shy of puberty is stricken with quadriplegia from falling off a swing set. A teenage basketball player copes with severe acne and adolescent insecurity. A young married man struggles against a mother-in-law bent ...

‘A Bridge to Eternity’ and ‘Centuries Old and New’ both have as their starting point a work place in the modern American business world. The first is set in the posh headquarters of a large corporation, the second in a small Eastside restaurant. My heroes, Jonah Bellamy, the middle-aged assistant CEO, and Christoff Angelis, a teenager pedaling deliveries to midtown high rises with the dream of having his own restaurant, are equally honorable men. But whereas Jonah’s decency and well-meanin...

I’ve written stories, novellas, novels and plays for decades. Only recently, have I tried my hand at poetry. As an on and off reader of that art, I always turned to the greatest lyric poets, Shakespeare, Keats and Yeats for inspiration, and found myself perplexed by modern poets of free verse, not able to grasp their music, or deeper meaning, except from a rare few. My one hundred poems here are an attempt to express my experience and impressions from life and to do so musically. Although ...

The main protagonists of my three plays are united by a determination to risk security and comfort in their search for greater self-expression. Harold Faver, inspired to write poetry again after giving it up decades before in college, vacates a restful grandfatherly retirement in his snug New Hampshire condo for a small apartment in New York City where his has no friends, relatives, or contacts. Audrey Blancherd leaves behind a secure teaching position and a devoted romantic partner to fol...