I grew up in a family of five kids in Des Plaines, Illinois, and Racine, Wisconsin. I trace my deep-seated authorial ambitions to my dad’s sharp wit and my mom’s love of reading and her encouragement of all my creative endeavors. How I wish I could have put my debut novel in their hands. They would have been their version of totally stoked.

With a why-not-both mindset, I majored in philosophy and economics at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. A couple years after graduating, I joined the U.S. Department of State as a foreign service officer. I completed tours of duty in our embassies in Santo Domingo, Tokyo (twice), Moscow, and Skopje, as well as a short stint in Havana. Along the way I learned Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Macedonian. I took great pride in representing our country as a diplomat.
 
Spinning outlandish bedtime yarns for my two sons in their earliest years honed my storytelling. They will always be my ideal audience.

In addition to writing novels, I contribute to various humor publications. I also dabble in cartooning, sometimes to illustrate my articles. See below for more info and a few enticing examples. 

I live in the DC area. When not writing or drawing, I enjoy tennis, pick-up soccer, low-stakes poker, growing tomatoes, and partaking of the area’s cultural and natural bounty, by which of course I primarily mean local craft beers.