You can probably tell all you need to know about me from this picture of my desk.

There's my trusty old Mac laptop which I used to write Qwikpick.

In the lower left corner is a manuscript, printed out and scribbled on. Nearby is a letter from my editor telling me about the last minute changes she wants me to make to Qwikpick. There's also a Dickens novel, a Statler Brothers album, a dismembered toy, etc... Most of it has no good reason for being on my desk.

Being a reporter can be a great job. In addition to reporting on the famous poop fountain I have also written quite a few other sewage-related stories. Better yet, I've interviewed all sorts of great people including:

  • - a backyard wrestler (Grenade)
  • - a real professional wrestler (Jimmy "The Boogie Woogie Man" Valiant)
  • - an astronaut
  • - a U.S. Congressman who got in BIG trouble
  • - a karaoke champ
  • - the guy who wrote "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"

Here's part of one of my columns that might interest you. Someone asked me to find out what flavor the DumDums Lollipop MYSTERY FLAVOR really is:
 Turns out there's NO WAY OF KNOWING until you taste it and even then you'll only be guessing.
When they're done making lollipops of one flavor, say pineapple, they switch to the next flavor, say, root beer. But there's still pineapple in the tank, so what you get is a root beer/pineapple mix. But another mystery flavor could be a cotton candy/grape or cherry/butterscotch. It all depends on which flavor follows another flavor. (If there's some system to it, they didn't tell me.) So the next time you get a mystery flavor Dum-Dum, try to figure out what the two flavors were.

I've written a lot of books, but so far "The Qwikpick Adventure Society" is the only one to get published. It's not easy to get a book published and then it's still not easy to get a second one published.

It took about two years from the time I started sending letters to publishers to the day when I received an offer from DIAL to publish Qwikpick. That was two long years, but then a very happy day!

After that, I still had to make A LOT of changes to the book. Even the title of the book got changed. Thankfully, none of the changes actually changed the story itself or the characters. Mostly my editor just wanted to know more about Lyle, Marilla and Dave and hear what they had to say to each other.

If you need to know some facts about me for a school report, here are a few:

--I grew up in Virginia's turkey country and now I live in the Appalachian mountains.
--As best as I can remember the first time I tried to write a book was in the 8th grade. It was about two kids who were on a plane that was hijacked to Cuba. Never finished it.
--For a long time I wanted to be a comic book writer/artist, but I guess that wasn't meant to be.
--I am a semi-professional juggler, which basically means that I'm not all that great but I can put on a pretty good show at a birthday party. My favorite type of juggling is called "diabolo," which you can look up on Wikipedia if you're interested.
--The "T" stands for Tom, which is what my friends call me. If you've actually bothered to read this far, you can call me Tom, too.
--A lot of my ideas come from mixing my memories of how school actually was with what I wish it had been like. Other ideas come from newspaper stories I've written or inspiration from other books I've read.

If you need other info for your report or if you just have something to say, use the CONTACT SAM link at left.