I like to start my stories off with a bang, giving my readers a strong reason to continue reading in the very first paragraph. My work is also on the lean side. I don't spend a lot of time with vivid description or irrelevant details. I like to keep those pages turning. I suppose I've lived a fairly average life except : I've seen both a ghost and a UFO and didn't believe in either of them before. I was lost in a cave. I was charged at by two biker-gang types leveling shotguns at me. I was involved in a car chase when someone tried to run me off the road. I saved someone's life. I was questioned in a murder investigation (not as a suspect—as a witness) I stood face-to-face with a poisonous snake. I stomped through the woods with a police officer in search of a mysterious light that kept moving farther away. I was a jurist on two murder trials and served as the foreman on one of them. Someday I might base a story on one of those!