WELCOME TO THE SITE
Greetings!
I’ve had the good fortune to see and experience much of the world, both growing up an “Army brat”, relocating every two or three years with my family as my dad’s assignments changed, and in my career as a marketing communications consultant, producing films, videos and print material for clients in a wide variety of industries, which required extensive travel throughout the world. My experiences in life shape my understanding of it, in particular how people relate to and interact with each other, and inform my writing in myriad ways.
Southern California, where I lived for many years, is the setting of my debut novel, Valley of Saint Anne, and my second novel, Himba Pond Dance. The landscape, landmarks, atmosphere, politics and culture of the place inform both stories but the themes they deal with are universal, among them coming-of-age, sexual development and identity and love and loss.
My third novel, A Girl with a Bad Reputation, is set in the mid to late 1960s in Newburgh, New York, where I spent my high school years, and New York City, where both of my parents were born and raised and where I’ve spent considerable time through the years. Unlike my first two novels, which weave different characters’ stories together, A Girl with a Bad Reputation is the story of a single character, Colleen Hanrahan, and is told entirely from her point of view. Just as Southern California informs my first two novels, so the 1960s inform A Girl with a Bad Reputation.
My novels are character-driven stories about people of all ages, dealing with life and relationships. They feature characters of all ages but especially young characters, arriving at puberty and moving toward young adulthood. I enjoy writing about young people because they’re at that age when they want to understand why things happen, often unexpectedly, to themselves and others and question everything. The process of establishing one’s sexual identity is a favorite subject of mine and is explored in each of these novels.
Being an “Army brat” means making and leaving friends on a regular basis and I learned early on how to make new friends quickly. I’m a student of human nature and my exposure to different societies and cultures nurtured in me a genuine interest in people and the similarities and dissimilarities between and among them. I enjoy meeting people and have met hundreds of them around the world and their stories and my own experiences in life inform my novels. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them.
Dave
A story of love, loss
and forgiveness…
Deirdre Beyer, 12, is inspired to keep a diary when she reads Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. Dee Dee writes faithfully to Anne, as Anne did to her imaginary friend Kitty, and her diary entries reveal an inquisitive and insightful young mind as she shares the happenings in her life: Changes in her body and her growing curiosity about sex; her first encounter with a boy; her father’s tragic death; her mother’s loneliness; her desire to have a Quinceañera; and the confidence and courage she gains learning to surf. Valley of Saint Anne explores the boundaries of social mores and Dee Dee’s character is central to the story and its moral compass. Her coming-of-age story is one of many stories about people of all ages in this novel set in contemporary Southern California.
Growing up is never easy
and never ends…
Trey Hollinswood, 15, and his thirteen-year-old sister Kim are dealing with a lot: Their parents separate; the bank forecloses on their home; they stay with their mom in a homeless shelter and then in the home of a customer, Walt, she meets at work. The atmosphere at Walt’s is tense and life for Trey and Kim is made more difficult because they’re forced to share a bedroom. Like all young people, they have issues; Trey his burgeoning sex drive and Kim the fact that she has no interest in acting or looking girlish and is sometimes mistaken for a boy. They struggle to grow up and, in the process, learn about love and the importance of friendship; Trey with Julie, Walt’s seventeen-year-old daughter, and Emily, a cotillion partner; and Kim with Cyd, a girl she meets in her soccer league. Their coming-of-age stories are two of many stories about people of all ages dealing with life and relationships in this novel set in Southern California during the Great Recession.
ONE GIRL’S JOURNEY THROUGH
THE 1960s…
Fourteen-year-old Colleen Hanrahan knows what boys want and is willing to give it to them — on her own terms.
An intelligent and proud young woman, Colleen tries to remain above her bad reputation and tells herself it doesn’t matter what other people think about her promiscuous behavior, as long as her father — a successful, bullying criminal defense attorney and controlling, bad-tempered alcoholic — doesn’t hear about it. She can count on her mother — a family law attorney with whom she shares a secret — to come to her defense, if needed.
Set in the mid to late 1960s, Colleen’s story unfolds against the backdrop of one of the most pivotal and turbulent times in American history. The events of the decade have a profound affect on her, as do the significant people she meets on her journey to young-adulthood.