~ Tex

Growing up in poverty-stricken Appalachia, there was little else to do but read. It became my childhood escape to other worlds and helped me find my path through the world beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. Being a voracious reader, I developed a love for writing that took a back seat to the Army and then to medicine, but that love for literature has never died and now it desires to revive.

I did my undergrad work at NC State, receiving a BA in English with a major in LWE (Literature, Writing, & Editing). I worked as a sports writer for The Technician and for The News and Observer, primarily covering Wolfpack women's basketball and soccer, and men's basketball. I also spent time working on my technical writing while working for SAS Institute and Bell Northern Research. Some of the documents that I wrote and editied for both companies are actually still in use today, as I last left them.

I write out of love and for the joy of it, but I have published books of poetry, as well as having had articles in magazines, newspapers, and journals.

While finishing my BA at NCSU, and before I began repeatedly deploying into conflict and combat zones around the world with the Army, I ran a public affairs detachment. I handled print, radio, and TV media.

After that, it was all business and no time for reading or writing. Okay, maybe a little writing, LOL, but we weren't allowed to have anything personal on us where I tended to be, so sadly, most things were left in my head to lost forever. Sigh.

I love books and my library of books is varied as my collection of music. I'm not sure I have only three fav authors and I'm not sure I could single out any one book by any of them... but I'll ponder that.

Whatever I do decide is my fav will be about enjoyment reading... not enlightening reading. I'm at that age where I just want to enjoy what I read when I get home from work.

Few people in this world are confident enough in the value of happiness to walk away from things that make them unhappy if those things make them money and provide lots of "toys." One thing I learned in Iraq was that happiness, health and family are things that have to come first. They do in other countries around the world, but not so much here in the U.S.

I walked away from a lot of things that were lucrative because I wasn't happy or healthy... and because I was tired of missing out on the two things that got me through childhood, undergrad and post-grad, and war... reading and writing. I do what I enjoy now... without regard to position, social status, education, etc. I never worry about what other people think because they're typically uninformed, wrong... and unhappy.

As history proves, life does not require a formal education to succeed nor does a formal education guarantee success.

For those who write, yet worry about the particulars of grammar, I say, forget the particulars and dangling participles, and simply write with the greatest of passion from your heart... and do it TODAY... or whenever you can... whenever you FEEL it.

I was blessed to have great published writers come in and teach the writing courses that I took for my undergrad degree and for fun while I worked on my doctorate - if I have one regret, it is that I failed them by not taking their advice to pursue my writing and to open up and let it out when I write.

Though it's never too late, I think life is like a savings account... the more you put in during the early years, the greater your return in the latter years.

It is a joy and pleasure to be at The Cafe... but moreover, it is an honor every day to read the works of my friends here.

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