I was born in Houston, Texas and raised in Littleton, Colorado, back when both were still considered fly-over country. I struggled to fit in with the traditional education structure. My deep curiosity was fed through a self-curated curriculum of books, newspapers, magazines, libraries. And my intellectual mentor and very bookish Uncle Daryl. Whatever intelligence I have comes by and from curiosity I cultivated, not credentials.

At age twenty I started my first business, making designer neckties. I was an entrepreneurial dreamer, and I failed. But I also learned, and not from a class. I learned from trial and many errors. From being told “no, kid, we don’t buy local” three hundred times in retail stores. From figuring out how to source silk direct from Thailand on my dad’s office fax machine. And from sitting with my mother late into the night as she cut silk on a ping-pong table in our basement. It was all there.

I founded probably ten companies over the course of my pre-novelist career. Most in the technology, social media, and AI ecosystem. Four US patents list my name, but I was never the coder. I heard the problems, imagined the products, found the people who could build, and sold the result. My job, in every chapter, was to observe and tell the story. I saw what was happening from inside a rapidly growing industry, if not always from inside the room: facts, bias, and outright sensationalism drawing battle lines at the very moment devices made it possible to consume nearly every waking minute, from anywhere. I watched an entire industry of platforms and apps evolve from community and connection to profit and power. That shift alarmed me greatly back then. It alarms me even more now.

There was a cost, too. I spent too much of my sons' young early lives traveling, building, selling. Whole chunks of their upbringing I missed.

In June 2023, burned out from the pandemic and the mechanics of building, my family and I moved to Salzburg, Austria. What began as much-needed time off became the opening to reflect, and to write. Writing was always there. It just hadn't had an opening, or permission, or the self-grace to let it emerge.

You will frequently find me walking or riding my bicycle around the narrow streets of Salzburg. In all kinds of light and all kinds of weather, turning corners to explore parts of the city that don’t draw tourists. I take pictures constantly. Not to escape the moment, but to remain present in it. Roughly a quarter of anything I write is drafted by hand. In cafés, libraries, and on park benches. And usually with a Montegrappa fountain pen gliding over Paper Republic journals. No generative AI touches my manuscripts. Fiction worth reading requires a human being who has lived.

My operating principle is plain: observation is front line rebellion. Life in front of a screen is owned by someone else. Real life observed is the opposite of that.

My debut novel, The Salzburg Executioner, was published in December 2024. The German edition, Der Henker von Salzburg, will be published in October, 2026. My short story, Condensation, is under submission to literary journals. You can follow my story and my photography on Instagram. My Substack is called Looking. At and Away. It is about what we lose to the glance, and what we gain when we truly look.