Biography

October 1st, 1464, a date which numerologically often suggests a desire to eat large rocks and small children named Edgar, a man was born in a hamlet on the coast of England.  When he was a boy, he loved to dance with a lemming he’d named Alice, but was heart-broken when Alice fell in with a bad crowd and wound up jumping off the Cliffs of Dover with 100 others of her ilk.

Devastated, the boy fled to a monastery run by immigrant lemurs where he spent his life squatting in trees and longing for a ringed-tail.

This is not his story.

Five hundred years later, one country to the west and three beds over, another boy was born at a very young age.  He aspired to be important, to do great things and one day be president of the universe.  His untimely death at the age of 31 was a result of a farmer attempting to shear him while he successfully impersonated a llama.  Well, almost successfully.

This is not his story.

This is the story of a boy born close to the zoo in Flushing, Queens (not to be confused with the old English adage “Flush the Queen,” usually shouted in pubs and football matches) on this very day of October 1.  If only he had been satisfied with impersonating a llama or having unnatural relations with a lemming, this story would be a very different one indeed.  But no, young Gary was not to be placated by alpacas or rodents.

Never once giving a thought to callitrichids until much later, Gary turned to the Thunderbirds, UFO, Captain Scarlett, Star Trek and Space 1999 as inspiration for his creativity.  In Gary’s own words: Wow.

Several years later, Gary would have to make a decision that would shape his life for years to come.  His loving parents wanted him to follow in the footsteps of no one in particular and find a good job as a stalk of corn.  Gary, on the other hand wanted to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a cartoon character.  

We interrupt this completely fictitious silliness for a breath of fresh air, namely the truth.  Gary's parents never wanted him to become a stalk of corn nor did Gary ever want to be a cartoon character.  Except once in 1987 but with medication he soon got passed it and hasn't looked back since.

Now, without further, in Gary's own words is the truth.  Or something bearing a striking resemblance to the truth.

Back in ’81 I wrote a “media tie-in” story featuring characters from Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and my own starship.  It is now painful to read but that was the defining moment when I realized I wanted to write.  Since then I’ve written science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories as well as a smattering of straight fiction pieces.

In 2002 on a cold, wet bike ride (while training for my first 100 mile bike ride) I decided to take a fiction novel I’d been working on and change it into something more supernatural.  That became Forever Will You Suffer.

I soon joined the Garden State Horror Writers where I moved from seat warmer, to Parliamentarian where I took the role of suggestion box.  Abruptly, I became vice president, but continued in my disruptive role as the suggestion box.  Finally, in order to stop me from that role, they made me president.  Which is where I am now, guiding the fresh, malleable minds of young, aspiring writers.

My first publication was a short story in the Garden State Horror Writers anthology, Dark Notes From New Jersey.  Then Forever Will You Suffer was published in 2006 and here we are.

When I’m not spilling my imagination out, I can be found playing guitar, reading comic books, reading novels (I have a To Be Read Room), watching movies that may be horror, science fiction, fantasy, comedy or drama or some amalgam of several genres.

Currently, I’m under contract with Medallion for my next book, Institutional Memory, a novel of Corporate American terror that's due out in October 2008.

I live in the beautiful state of New Jersey with my wife, Nancy, and my two cats, Socrates and Jax.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a life lived, a book read, a blueberry scone eaten.  Please feel free to meander around the site and check out the contact page if you want to make first contact.  Or second if we’ve met.

Thank you and good night.