In addition to editing everything from psychological thrillers to reference manuals, I am co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and a former contributing editor at Writer's Digest. Many of my magazine pieces on the art of writing have been anthologized in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing and in The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic.
I landed in the hills of western Massachusetts via that motivator of so many lives and plots-romance. I lived in the New York area when I was working with Renni Browne, my co-author, but when we gave a writing workshop at an Episcopal monastery on the Hudson River, I met my future wife. She had made her escape from the big city to Ashfield many years before, where she made her living in journalism and free-lance writing. At the time we met, she was living in an antique house trailer on 26 acres and building a house she'd designed herself-- in addition to writing the fantasy novel that brought her to the workshop. We had our first long talk in the monastery's crypt (a nicer place than it sounds). After the workshop, we became pen pals and were married the following year.
I settled quite happily into the joys of rural living, including the bears, beavers, deer and turkeys that wander around in the yard, woods, and pond. We make our own maple syrup, grow many of our own fruits and vegetables, and manage the forest to provide wood for heat. I also am the organist at a local church, which gives me the chance to explore the connections between writing and baroque music. (The independent musical voices of a fugue act in much the same way as the characters in a novel -- intertwining to produce an artistic whole.) Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I can keep editing without ever having to move away from the wood stove.