Bio
The author on the morning of June 24, 1969, three weeks after turning 12.
The snapshot shows me on my first day in Cliffside Park, Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, after being discharged from the Cadet Hospital at West Point after orthopedic surgery on my left leg.
While the name “Cliffsider” wouldn’t exist until the CLIFFSIDE CHRONICLES were conceived in 2022, it’s the only photo of me taken the very day I became one. And I’ll start this biographical sketch there, since that’s where the CHRONICLES – if only in spirit – really, truly began.
During the 10 days I was in the hospital after finishing 6th Grade at Valley Central Middle School in nearby Montgomery in early June, my parents moved us out of our Walden rental, so not only was I was I the new kid in the neighborhood and the new kid in town, but the house and my room were new too. And in a few months, I’d start 7th Grade at Cornwall Central, my fifth new school in as many years. That probably sounds like a lot of new for a tweener to process, but by then I was pretty used to it.
A few hours after this photo was snapped, my Mom wheeled me around the block to Grand View Avenue with its magnificent view of the Hudson River, including Bannerman’s Island with its decrepit castle, the center of the spooky events depicted in Book 1 of the CHRONICLES, THE ISLAND. In that moment, I wondered about the history of the place, and naturally imagined it was, at the very least, haunted, and, at worst, the lair of a boogeyman or some other monster.
All during that Fall and early Winter, especially after my cast came off in October, I vowed to make up for the summer I’d lost. Don’t get me wrong. I liked spending time alone in my room building models, watching TV, reading, and listening to music, but the urge to explore every nook and cranny of my new hometown was building up inside.
The island was off limits to the public at the time, which made it all the more mysterious and intriguing, but no one our age had the ability or guts to actually try to get to it. However, we were more than content to ride our bikes everywhere else in those first three summers, and rode to every other part of town in the hours between sunup and the streetlights coming on.
Fifty-three years would pass before the idea to write THE ISLAND manifested, when I took a walk around the block as a senior citizen with a cane, and found myself once again standing at the same spot I did before, gazing at the island and remembering the day I first laid eyes on it. I asked a single question, probably not too different than the one I silently asked myself in June 1969: “What if a monster actually lived there?”
And over the following week or so, what I’d initially envisioned as a single volume soon became six (with a seventh, a prequel, emerging during the planning process), all set in a semi-fictionalized version of Cornwall and Cornwall-on-Hudson (named Cornwall Landing in the books), a place I am proud to call my hometown.
Born in France, and having lived in places as diverse as Germany and South Dakota, among others, Cornwall’s the answer I give when asked “Where are you from?” The reason is simple: I “came of age” and went to junior high and high school here. It’s where the longest-lasting friendships I have were made. It’s where my parents finally put down some roots after my Dad retired from the Air Force, ending almost 20 years of living the nomadic life of a military family. It’s where both them are buried.
Almost all of the neighborhood kids I met my first afternoon in “The Park” – literally a few hours after this photo was taken – are represented among the cadre of heroic “Cliffsiders” that must confront a series of malevolent supernatural forces unleashed on their town. Only their names have been changed.
The CHRONICLES are as much a love letter to our kid selves that roamed that now lost world as they are to the times and the place in which we grew up together. We were as together as kids could get in the days before the appearance of weapons of mass distraction like video games, cellphones, and social media. Especially in those endless summers comprised of what now feels like all too brief, shining moments. They flash like lightning in the mind’s eye these days, but in the times in which the CHRONICLES are set, they felt like they would last forever.
A “proper” biographical sketch will appear in this space at some point, but, until then, here are some of my favorite photos. More will be added as well.
The once and future scare-meister, age 3 months, at the first “Crackerbox Palace,” Deols, France, 1957. One of a dozen or so cookie-cutter 20-foot by 20-foot boxes originally built to house the Spanish laborers involved in the construction of the nearby U.S. Air Force station in the early 1950s, the location, kater-korner to the town’s cemetery, is now the site of an abandoned supermarket.
Propped up for a photo op, 8 months old, Deols, France, 1958.
“Go ahead. Pick up the gun.” The author channeling
Jack Palance from SHANE, Hampton, Virginia, 1960.
The author in the aftermath of Hurricane Donna, Hampton, Virginia, September 1960. My T-shirt reads “LANGLEY AFB, VIRGINIA.” In those days, people waited to bring in a roll of film to be developed, hence the December stamp on the photo.
The author delivers an upper cut to his father’s jaw, age 4,
Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, Virginia, June 1961.
Mrs. Peterson’s 2nd Grade class, Ramstein Elementary School,
Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, 1964.
This one merits a bit more info. I’m at extreme left in the top row. My best friend Kenny is just right of center in the second row down from the top (in the red sweater with black turtleneck). My nemesis, Alan (gold sweater, big ears), is the last kid on the right in the second row from the bottom. At the time, we were racing to see who could read all of the ADVENTURES OF TOM SWIFT, JR. books. We were also competing for the hand of “The Minx,” the girl in the yellow shirt 3rd from the right in the same row. Her name was Donna, but like the other two, we either didn’t know each other’s last names, or I’ve forgotten them. While my Kindergarten photo has a key to everyone pictured that our teacher provided, Mrs. P. (just visible in the upper right-hand corner) unfortunately didn’t do the same for this photo. Many of these same kids were in my 1st Grade class, but that picture has been lost, which is upsetting because my best gal pal in Ramstein, Cindy, was in that one. She left over the Summer between 1st and 2nd Grade. Losing friends was part and parcel of the military brat life, and I was inconsolable for months. Every time we played COMBAT! on the playground, she always patched me up after I “got hit.” I wish I knew her last name. She’s just “Ramstein Cindy.”
The author about to violate the “Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head”
rule, Walton, NY, age 3, August 1958.
The author with his Mom at Fort Monroe, Hampton, Virginia, July 1960.
The author on his third Christmas, Hampton, Virginia, age 3, December 25, 1960. Before ugly Xmas sweaters were a thing.
In front of the second “Crackerbox Palace,” 20 Cornell Drive, Hampton, Virginia, age 3 going on 4, 1961. Perfecting a look that confidently asserts:
“I’m quite something with the ladies, dontcha know?”
Checking out some baseball cards hoping for an Elston Howard but probably getting stuck with three Elmer Valos. On the Cornell Drive stoop;
same details as above. I was a Yankee fan at the time,
but have since been successfully deprogrammed.
My parents in the English Garden, Bad Mergentheim, Germany, 1951.