My life has been peppered with amazing events and blasted by traumatic ones. I've been a teacher, a farmer, a fisherman, a writer/editor, a nurse's assistant, and a B and B owner. I've sold women's shoes and men's wallets. I've hawked newspapers in traffic, soda-jerked malts, and when I was thirteen, I had my first forty-hour/week job - boxing cough syrup on an assembly line for a buck an hour, while the Mexican women down the line made twenty cents less than I. The beginnings of political consciousness.I've lived as both a communist and a capitalist. I've hitchhiked across Europe several times, been a paratrooper, raced sled dogs on the frozen tundra, and won a prestigious national prize. I've written and produced award winning video documentaries for Public Television. I have not run for public office - my unelectability the main problem. I have two MAs: one in Russian Literature and one in Special Education/Gifted and Talented. It's that second one that took me to bush Alaska and to a life of intense romance and insane adventure. I married there and my wife and I raised our daughter and son in that boreal backwater. We now live in Anchorage, where I split my time between gardening, writing, and teaching Tai Chi. I've written two crime thrillers: Traffic North: Crime on the Alaska - Russia Border, and Alaska Transit. Both books feature an intrepid but flawed Anchorage policewoman dealing with murder, mayhem, and the Mafia. I've also published a collection of short stories: Nothing Sacred showcases eighteen of my partly serious, mostly absurdly humorous stories.