I was born and raised on Long Island and had the standard-issue middle-class childhood of the Sixties and Seventies, shaped by the Cold War, the Space Race, the British Invasion, Vietnam, disco, and The Preppie Handbook. In seventh grade, after reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl and The Red Pony and bolstered by the enthusiasm of a priceless teacher named Frances MacArthur, I decided I would be a writer. Misinformed that a degree in English was the logical route to this goal, I attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where I earned a B.A., with a concentration in American literature. With vision of being the next Yeats, I also spent part of my junior year in Ireland, studying Irish literature and history at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin, which remains one of the highlights of my life.

 After college, I headed back to New York and found a lowly (and low paying) job in publishing. Though I loved the book trade, I couldn't afford to live in New York City. To paraphrase the U2 song, I still hadn't found what I was looking for, so, in my mid-twenties, I moved to Los Angeles, where I had a number of friends from my time in Ireland. A series of soul-destroying temporary jobs led to a position in the short-lived Talent Development department at Paramount Studios. Once "on the lot," I eventually made the move to the more, eh, "glamorous" production side, ultimately working in the production offices of a number of box office failures for Paramount, Universal, and Fox, as well as a few marginally more successful television films for CBS and NBC. In between movie gigs I tried my hand at film scripts, none of which ever sold. Unlike my character, Billy Winnetka, I was never a working screenwriter, but I have drawn upon all the zaniness I witnessed during my years in the film business when writing about his adventures in Hollywood.

When I married in 1993, I decided to turn my back on the uncertainty of the film business and return to the only slightly less uncertain world of books. As a writer and publicist, I have provided marketing and editorial support for many major New York publishing houses for books on a vast array of subjects. My freelance reviews and feature articles have appeared in many periodicals, including Irish America, Bikini, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Los Angeles Reader, and Mystery Readers Journal. In 2002, I was asked to write the monthly "Well Read" column for BookPage, in which I review literary fiction and serious nonfiction titles.

 My first book, A Taste of Murder: Diabolically Delicious Recipes from Contemporary Mystery Writers, was born out of a casual phone conversation I had with my co-writer Jo Grossman. Jo and I had worked together in the film business, but she left Los Angeles after the 1994 Northridge earthquake and relocated to the Berkshires in Massachusetts where she opened an eatery/bookstore called the Mystery Café. Attempting to assuage her entrepreneurial jitters, I boldly assured her that she would be so successful that soon she'd be writing The Mystery Café Cookbook. Six months later she called me and said, "Remember that idea you had about a cookbook?" To be honest, I didn't, but once we started talking about what a mystery cookbook would entail, the project took on a life of its own. No one was more surprised than we were that mystery fans embraced the book with such enthusiasm. Published by Dell in 1999, A Taste of Murder went on to be a finalist for both the Agatha and Macavity Awards for best non-fiction book in the mystery field. Its follow-up volume, A Second Helping of Murder (Poisoned Pen Press,) was also a finalist for the Agatha and Macavity Awards and received a Glyph Award - Honorable Mention from the Arizona Publishers Association.

 I had written fiction since junior high school, but it was not until 2003 that my first published story, "Judge and Jury," appeared in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine. My debut novel, , set in Hollywood and featuring amiable screenwriter-cum-amateur sleuth Bill Winnetka, made its long awaited (by me, at least) appearance in 2005 from Quiet Storm Publishing. I am at work on the next Billy Winnetka mystery, as well as a novel for young adults, for which I received a work-in-progress grant from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. I am a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

 In addition to my literary endeavors, my great love is music. Though I had sung in choruses and musical productions in high school and college, I had allowed that aspect of my life to fall by the wayside. In 2001, I returned to my amateur musical pursuits, joining a chorus and taking piano lessons for the first time in twenty-five years. I recently earned an A.A. in Music from MoorparkCollege in Moorpark, California. I am a member of the Los Robles Master Chorale and the Ventura County Gilbert & Sullivan Repertoire Company.  When I'm not reading, writing or singing, I usually can  found listening to opera, watching baseball or tennis, or at a concert, opera, or play.

 My wife, Marcy, and I have one daughter and live with one obstreperous cat in the ex-urban sprawl between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California.