The Journey Behind the Story
I did not set out to be a writer. I set out to live a life I could stand behind.
I grew up in North Fort Myers, Florida, and graduated from North Fort Myers High School in 1989. In the 1990s I worked for a mining company in Punta Gorda. In 1999 I joined the Florida Army National Guard. After September 11, I was activated for Force Protection in St. Augustine. That path took me to Iraq with the 651st Military Police Company, to Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, and later to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, where I helped train troops heading out on their own missions.
I married Thi Nguyen on January 4, 2009. After leaving the Florida National Guard, I joined the Mississippi National Guard and the Columbia Police Department. Two months into police work, I deployed to Iraq again as a staff sergeant and convoy commander at Camp Q-West. I completed 28 missions there.
When I came home, I put my focus on family. After a long wait with immigration paperwork, Thi arrived from Vietnam in July 2011. Our daughter, Rubie, was born in October 2012. Over the years I ran a taxi company in town. In 2017, Thi and I opened a nail salon, which we still operate. On Election Day 2020, I retired from the Mississippi National Guard as a sergeant first class after 21 and a half years of service.
The writing came out of that life. I started writing down the funny talks between me and Rubie so we would not forget them. Those pages became Daddy Daughter Conversation. Later, after buying land near Yellville, Arkansas, and sitting with old porch stories from that country, I wrote Tales From the Porch That Keeps the Flame Alive. Along the way I wrote poems and songs, and I still serve as a tour guide at the John Ford Home in Sandy Hook, Mississippi.
That is the journey. Soldier. Husband. Father. Then the stories had to be written down.
I write the way I talk — plain, direct, and from the heart.
