My mom claims I started writing with my first box of Crayolas, with the dining room wall as my tabula rasa. I come by my passion naturally with a grandmother who was a published novelist and Methodist minister grandfather who wrote powerhouse sermons. The women in my family were memorists before it was trendy and a writer cousin, James Agee, won the Pulitzer. I hail from Fountain City, TN, and carry all the picaresque baggage from a '50s Southern childhood.

I spent the '70s and '80s in Greenwich Village. Although I never wrote the Great American Novel (as planned) I sold a bunch of Southern historical romances and adventure sagas before heading to New Orleans to water my Southern roots. My fascination with that city led to more books, my newest being "Creole Son." It's about French painter Edgar Degas and his sojourn to 1872 Louisiana that forever changed his style.

My ongoing wanderlust eventually landed me in California Wine Country which is surely some of God's most beautiful handiwork. When I'm not working on my new book I'm hiking the hilly vineyards and seaside cliffs and wondering how this Tennessee boy got so far from home.