I was born and raised in San Francisco California, but have traveled far and wide. The last place I lived in the United States was Iowa, where I did my MFA in creative writing, with a concentration in fiction, at the Iowa Writers'' Workshop. My thesis was a collection of short stories with settings as varied as the city of St Petersburg in Russia, a bullring in Mexico, a Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. I have lived in several foreign countries including Russia, Colombia, the Philippines and Vietnam and have visited over 30 more. I speak three languages: English, Russian, and Spanish. Now, I am happy to call Beijing Normal University in Zhuhai home while I teach and work on a novel. The story is about two Americans caught on opposite sides of a web of corruption and intrigue in the wild west of Asia: Cambodia.