About Me
Personal History
I had considered being a priest, and spent nine years in the seminary and monastery. (See my book Young Man of the Cloth)
Education
When I returned to the world at large after the monastery, I decided to explore psychology. I switched from philosophy in the monastery to psychology and received my undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. I stayed in Buffalo to receive a master's degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. I then moved to the University of Illinois for my Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. Along the way, I had supervised experience at Gowanda Psychiatric Center and Chenute Air Force Base Counseling Center.
My Psychology Practice
After graduating, I moved to Philadelphia, where I worked for two years at Temple University Counseling Center. I also spent two years at De La Salle In Towne, an experimental day treatment center for delinquent boys.
Then I came back home to work at Genesee County Mental Health in Batavia. Being in a rural area, I learned to work with a great variety of people of all ages.
After eleven years, I decided to return to the big city, Rochester, and took a job at DePaul Mental Health. I learned about family therapy, ending up as a supervisor of the children's treatment program.
By 1990, I felt ready to be more on my own and became an independent contractor at a practice in the Buffalo area. Eventually I moved entirely into private practice and have returned to work in Batavia.
I have recently retired from my psychology practice and now write full time.
My Writing
I began by writing short stories in the 1980's for my own amusement.
In 1990, when I began private practice, I started writing a quarterly newsletter for my referral sources. Eventually I converted this to a biweekly newspaper column which I still write for The Daily News in Batavia. These columns formed the basis for my first book, Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life.
In light of my history of my seminary and monastery experience, I became interested in the priest-sexual abuse crisis and thought back to my cloistered years. From this came my memoir, Young Man of the Cloth.
When I realized that no one had told the story from the priests' point of view, I originally intended to develop a book of interviews with abusive priests. I finally decided to write what I had learned about abusive priests as a novel which resulted in The Pastor's Inferno.
I am currently working on a novel about a couple coming to terms with their marital difficulties with the working title, Marital Property.
Read a Whohub extensive profile of my approach to writing.