The first story I remember telling came before I could read or write. One of my many dinosaur books had a painting of a stegosaurus looking down its long, horsey nose at a rather forlorn-seeming anklyosaurus. I decided that the stegosaurus was a resident of the local zoo and was telling the anklyosaurus that there was no more room for him. The squat little dinosaur with the armored shell was doomed to wander the world looking for a home (it occurs to me now that he was carrying it on his back). I have published one book so far, the Ward of Heaven and the Wyrm in the Sea, which came from years of studying the old tales of the Norse and Saxons and Finns and Babylonians, and the poetry of the Hebrew Psalms and Prophets. The sea has both fascinated and haunted my imagination since reading Moby Dick, and the poetry of the early Germans resounds with its breakers' crashing and little waves' lapping. Their tales of heroes and dragons and common folk are full of what Tolkien called "a bare veracity," and I sought to weave these world-wide stories together against the warp of one boys' grieving after a terrible storm at sea. Poetry is my primary form, short stories my second, and I've not yet attempted anything longer than The Ward of Heaven. "Poets have no business to write novels," said Flannery O'Connor. Time will tell if I may brave that boundary. My other vocations are the Virginia National Guard, substitute teaching, and editing for the Young Voices Foundation, and my avocations are gardening (and preserving the produce), making music with friends, and going for rambles in the countryside of western Loudoun County with friends.