As I often say, I’m a novelist who supports his family by working as an attorney. To provide more detail about my checkered life:

I’m a boomer Army brat who moved around a lot as a child, but ended up in the DC area in 1964 after my father retired and moved here to find work with the Federal government. Most of my life has been spent here. I was in the Army myself briefly, only as enlisted scum (98G Russian linguist) in the early ‘80’s when I did most of my traveling. During the bitter years of struggle that constituted most of my youth I held various jobs: lifeguard, mover, construction worker, skip tracer, soldier, phone solicitor, door to door salesman, and drugstore clerk in charge of the ice cream stand (this is still a partial list). My experience as a mover extends to one week working at the end of summer of ‘75.

The lifeguard/swimming instructor job took place over three summers at Ft. Belvoir, VA. I also worked briefly as a lifeguard at an indoor pool at the Navy Annex opposite from the Navy Yard in Anacostia, Washington, DC. The pool was very large, built in WWII to teach freshly drafted sailors how to swim. By the late ‘70’s, the hastily constructed roof had started to fall, a chunk of concrete had almost killed a retired officer, and a flak net was strung up under the roof to catch debris. The pool was freezing and used by Navy Seals who swam laps for hours with hundred-pound scuba tanks on their backs. Among other fun experiences I had in this place, I got thrown in the pool by a bunch of Marines and met the worst exhibitionist I have ever seen (Roxanne the “Fox”).

I worked as a door-to-door salesman during my period spent hopelessly flailing with no idea what to do with myself after graduating from the University of Virginia in ’78 with a BA in history. One product was a lifetime supply of color photo enlargement certificates (a dog, I quit that after about a month); the other was carpet cleaning. I lasted about three months doing this. My sharpest memory of this period was going into a living room to measure the carpet for an estimate. Over the mantelpiece was a full length, life size portrait of a young woman stretched out stark naked over a couch, a miniature white poodle strategically positioned over her crotch. My God, I thought, absolutely stunned, that’s the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen. Why would anyone have that in their living room? I later figured out from a poster on the stairwell that she’d been a stripper back in the ‘50’s and the portrait showed her in her glory days.

The carpenter’s helper was a job that my uncle scored for me in San Antonio while I was waiting to enter the Army. I was a complete fish out of water among Texas good old boys, basically a foreigner to their minds. Most of my time was spent with this old, grizzled carpenter named Jack Johnson. He spoke in a deep raspy voice, bore more than a passing resemblance to Popeye, and was perfectly miserable. He railed at me constantly, with good reason since I absolutely stank at carpentry. Among his other traits, he had a habit of constantly saying “Do you follow me? Do you follow me?” This was ironic, since among other qualities, he was hopelessly inarticulate.

My Army Russian translator experience was in the last stages of the Cold War. I learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. I was also stationed in Nuremburg, Germany and Ft. Polk, LA. I traveled a fair amount while in the service, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt (I climbed the smallest of the three Great Pyramids; the view was unbelievable), and a good chunk of rural Bavaria. My time at the Presidio and two months spent in Berlin before the Wall fell were some of the happiest days of my life.

I’ve had the writing bug since I was seven years old, scribbling stories that I read to my parents’ long suffering friends, but only got serious when I was thirty-five, after reading the first volume of Anthony Burgess’s biography, Little Wilson And Big God. That’s when I decided to try and be a professional novelist like Burgess. I’ve written nine full length novels and several novellas along with over a hundred short stories. Four of my novels were published by small presses, but are now all out of print. I’ve had more luck with short stories with almost ninety being published online and in print. I’ve won two prizes for my writing, the 2010 Independent Publisher Silver SF/F Prize and 2nd Runner Up for the 2022 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Award for military fiction.

As far as style goes, I tended originally toward rather ornate prose, particularly with respect to descriptions of place. Over the years, however, I’ve tried to keep it terse. This helps draw the reader in and keep the action moving throughout the story, whatever its length. I mean a hardboiled style with an exterior focus, revealing  characters by what they do and say, not by interior reflections. Hardboiled is appropriate for pulp fiction, the hoary, antique predecessor for the genres I write in: crime/mystery; fantasy; horror; science fiction; and western. Dashiell Hammett is my primary influence in this respect; he conveyed meaning by a character’s shudder alone. Yet I must also give credit to Hemingway and Robert E. Howard (he had an uncanny gift for keeping a plot kicking). 

Sword and sorcery has become popular again lately. I’ve had some recent success with my own personal big lug, Melkart of Tyre, the battling Bronze Age badass. This all fits with my personal crusade to not only help promote sword and sorcery, but to bring back sword and sandal along the lines of the early ‘60’s Italian flicks I watched so avidly as a child. To any Hollywood big shot who should read this, Jason Momoa would make a terrific Melkart. I’ve also been working on a secondary world series of novels, a blend of Graeco-Roman Antiquity with Mesoamerican mythology, set in Aztlantis, the Endless Continent. 

Writers I admire: Jane Austen, Susanna Clarke, Kingsley Amis, Anthony Burgess, William Faulkner, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, Vladimir Nabokov, Cormac McCarthy, B. Traven, Joseph Conrad, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Dashiell Hammett, Jose LaTour. This is a very partial list.

Music I like: Cal Tjader, Mongo Santamaria, Frank Sinatra, Cachao, Motorhead, Rolling Stones, Pissed Jeans, Sun Ra Arkestra, Southern Culture On The Skids, Dion and the Belmonts, the Crystals, the Ronettes, Mingus Big Band, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Can, Amon Duül, Annabouboula, Blue Cheer, Blue Oyster Cult, the Midnight Creeps, the Cramps, Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees. This is also partial.

Favorite movies: two. The Wild Bunch (my bad side) and The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, Terry Gilliam’s version (my nice side).

Texas trivia about my family: My great-grandfather, Mr. Lee, had a feed store in the Governor’s Palace in San Antonio at the turn of the 20th Century. Devoutly religious, he originally wanted to become a rabbi, but instead emigrated to the US from Lithunia in the 1880’s and started out as a peddler with a covered wagon. My grandfather, Matthew Benzaquin, was a well known man about town and colorful character in San Antonio for many decades. He ran Hipp’s Bubble Room, a popular restaurant. His father, my great-grandfather, Dr. Luis Benzaquin, was originally from Morocco, but emigrated, first to the UK then to the US where he practiced medicine in Chicago. My uncle, Emmit Tuggle, was a well reputed San Antonio architect. The Alamo Courtyard is his best known project.  My Aunt Mae, Emmit’s wife, had the dubious honor of being shoved not once, but twice by Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Irish trivia about my family: The Mellons are originally from County Tyrone and once played a key role in the installation of the Earl of Tyrone, the O’Neill. As far as I can tell, O’Mellain is the closest English version of the archaic surname and can be translated as the grandson of the charmer, or the beguiler, or the Devil himself (Gaelic words being notorious for meaning one thing, its opposite, and a dozen other things into the bargain). For about nine hundred years or so, the O’Mellain Clan were the hereditary keepers of the Bell of St. Patrick’s Will, a bronze relic taken from the tomb of the poor dear saint by the order of King Collum Cillie in the 6th Century. The clan produced several important clerical figures, including Solomon O’Mellain, named general patron of the learned in Erin in 1356. None of that amounted to a hill of beans when the Famine came and the lot of us had to emigrate to Ameriky in Black ’47.