I was born in Mt. Vernon, New York but grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City. I lived with my parents, my older sister, and an assortment of pets. At one point we had a dog, a cat, a rabbit, two parakeets, a hamster, and a few goldfish. (Taffy, Tiger, Bucky, Chipper, Tweety, Harold, and Unnamed, in case you were wondering.) Crazy times.
I left Westfield for Brown University where I double majored in music and literature. After college, I became an opera singer. Loved the music. The career – not so much. So I turned to my other passion – books – and went to work in publishing for a few years. At this point I realized I was really good at singing and reading, but I had no practical skills whatsoever. Business school seemed like a good way to change that, so I got an MBA from Columbia University.
It was the mid-1990s , so I started a web site with three friends, which we sold a couple of years later to a big media conglomerate. But working for the big company wasn’t nearly as much fun as building the little company, and my children were babies, so I left. (Click here to see pictures of Joe and Maya. They’re in grade school now and look a lot different.)
Did I always want to be a professional writer? No. But I have always been a passionate reader. And I’ve always had a need to create, whether it was the first story I wrote when I was in third grade (THE MAGIC KEYHOLE, lost forever somewhere in my parents’ basement), the roles I interpreted during my singing days, the songs I composed, or the stories I wrote for fun . My path to this profession has been serpentine. But, then, so are some of the best journeys, in life and in books.