My professional writing career began during my undergraduate years at Tulane University, where I earned my bachelor of English degree. Tribe Magazine, a now-defunct pop-culture magazine based in New Orleans, asked me to do a few snappy product and record reviews and eventually began to assign me to write feature music and technology articles. I conducted interviews with several internationally known recording artists, including Luscious Jackson, James Hall, and Emergency Broadcast Network. At the same time, Tribe published a monthly technology feature of mine entitled "Phreakers." The Tulane Literary Magazine published a short story of mine, which led to my receiving the John Kennedy Toole Writing Scholarship. After I graduated magna cum laude from Tulane, I entered the Louisiana State University creative writing program, where I studied under internationally known novelist, poet, and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu. Just after I earned my master of fine arts, Berkeley-based Creative Arts Book Company bought my first novel and published it in the spring of 2002. Also, just after graduation, I began to write for, edit, and lay out a Baton Rouge-based Gulf of Mexico offshore oil industry magazine called Go Gulf. I found it a challenge and a growth experience to go from writing for a liberal pop culture magazine to a publication closely allied with the oil industry and its politics, and I actually found myself oddly at home in both worlds. Chekov said, "wait until you are cold as ice, and then write." I always try to suspend judgment while I am still learning, and writing, of course, is always a learning process for me. Click the links in the upper left of the page to view my writing samples.