tl;dr

I grew up near Niagara Falls, Canada, where I learned to read, write, and curl
I spent almost 30 years as an aerospace engineer
I curled competitively in the United States and won the 2013 Mixed National Championship with my wife
I have worked as a curling statistician for NBC during the Winter Olympics since 2010
- The pic is of the Sports Emmy we won for coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics
I have run 26 marathons (PR 2:53:23) and completed five Ironman triathlons
I have traveled to all seven continents
I am my cat's favorite bed
- He is disgusted that this is not listed first
I decided to finally write a book during the pandemic

In the Beginning

I stubbornly refused to let my mother teach me to read as a child. I liked books; I just didn’t want to do the work when she was more than happy to entertain me. But when Mrs. C. began teaching us to read in Grade 1, and I realized I could now escape to all these different worlds on my own schedule, I enthusiastically mastered the skill.

Along with reading came a love/hate relationship with writing. I loved to share ideas and stories through the finished product, but I hated struggling to create the optimal structure of words and phrases. I always had a tiny belief that someday I would write a book; but first, I had to become a serious adult.

For three decades I focused on my technical aerospace career and put aside creative activities. Then the pandemic hit, and the travel and athletic activities that I had been enjoying during my free time went away. I read and played video games instead. Slowly, snippets of story ideas and characters revealed themselves to me.

I decided to write a book.

Write What You Know

The only problem was I didn’t know how. I spent hours researching the process, watching webinars, and joining writing groups. A year later, I began writing my epic, time-traveling, end-of-the-multi-verse saga that explored all the best science fiction themes, with a bit of humor thrown in. Surprising to me (though perhaps not to anyone else), the story became bogged down after only 40,000 words.

I stepped back and recalled the oft-given piece of advice to “write what you know.” Perhaps I should try to write a more down-to-earth story about a subject with which I had more experience than inhabiting the bodies of other people in different timelines. How about the sport of curling?

Growing up in Canada, curling was part of my childhood. When I moved to the United States for university and subsequent employment, I believed I would never curl again. However, through a series of bizarre coincidences, I eventually found myself on a cold March night in a tiny curling club in Plainfield, New Jersey, trying on a friend’s pair of curling shoes. My second act in curling began.

My wife took up the sport a few years later. Together, we amassed an assortment of silver and bronze medals at national championships, finally breaking through to win the 2013 US Mixed National Championship with our two teammates. It was during these years that I first had thoughts for “A Curling Story.” I had even written a few chapters. What if I returned to that subject?

Book 1 of The Curlers was born.