I invented animals and birds - I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.

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He attended local public schools in the Bronx hated the experience and was bored in class. Before becoming a writer he worked odd jobs including driving a cab moving furniture busboy potter woodworker and door-to-door salesman. Phoenix AZ: Oryx Press.

He lives in Seattle Washington with his wife Carolynn.