I prefer writing to working on the Alaskan pipeline, a job I was offered in my previous life as a welder. "Course, $40,000 a year in the 70's was a lot more than I made as a writer.
The Prettier Sister is my first novel. I’ve always enjoyed writing short stories, and I have had more than 24 of them published. One of them has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I think in terms of short, preferring four innings of baseball, half of a concert, nine holes of golf, and half-dollars to quarters.
Viewing family dynamics is a past-time of mine, having been told that dysfunctional includes any number of two or more individuals. The Prettier Sister focuses on two sisters, their quirky family, and the inevitability of their lives. As with all familial situations, there is humor, pathos, and a mixed bag of frustrating goodies. I had taken the seeds of events, reviewed them and renewed them into a fictional account of feelings. How did I do that? By asking myself two words: What if? With the What If question, I was able to alter original seeds of experiences and feelings into a more dynamic plot and a better book. Oftentime, there's a universal tendency to maximize the importance of our lives. If we took a magnified look, we may see the reflection of ordinariness, perhaps dullness to everyone but ourselves. So, the What If principle is a good tool.
