About Guy

Hemingway said that the best early training for writing was an unhappy childhood. Thoreau said, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!”

I love those guys! I followed Hemingway’s advice unwillingly but intentionally tried to follow Thoreau’s.
My high school experience had a lot of hopping freight trains, hitchhiking around the Southeast, sleeping on beaches, drinking, and smoking pot, but I still managed to get back home to Ohio in time for school.

Growing up, the only safe place in the world I had was the woods or open, empty places at night. Nature never lied to me or hurt me, and it was beautiful. I had a home in the woods. The wind whispered in the trees. The trees danced in the wind. The sky hung over everything, bringing light, rain, and snow. All good.

Sometimes, I’d watch a leaf fall from a tree and think how awesome it was to witness something that nobody else in the whole world had seen! Where is it going? Is it sad? Is it happy? Does the tree miss it? Where will the river take it? Somehow each leaf mattered to me as a kid. Each leaf had a story. Each tree. The world was alive. Like those leaves, I needed somebody to see me. To matter.

I grew up.

I was a stringer for the Dayton Daily News, and I’ve won some awards for some of my writing. I lived in the Atlanta area for a while, and some friends and I visited a lot of homeless camps. We’d bring food and prayer and the message that the God of the universe loves them whether they are doing drugs or not. I cared for people that sometimes didn’t survive the week until my next visit. After Atlanta, I lived and volunteered in a rough but also beautiful spot in Dayton, Ohio, for a decade.

Addicts, the homeless, the hookers, the guys always in and out of jail. These were our neighbors and friends. I’ve laughed and cried with these friends and watched some disappear. I’ve watched some have a victory and get out. I count them all friends, and sometimes late at night I wonder where they are.

My first book, Shepherd’s Wolf, is set in this place. You might find pieces of my story in that story. The hard, ugly things right up against the beautiful things. A place where the hard is happening all around, but the good, beautiful, and Holy still break through.

These are the kinds of credentials I have for writing.

The river has taken me to some places I never should have been able to go. In other words, I have been blessed in ways that make absolutely no sense and have no possible explanation except for Jesus.

I write for men. I hope that the stories I write will touch a place in your heart that has been bruised and battered like mine. That your heart will recognize the story and experience something like healing. That you can say, “Yes! I have felt that!” That you can see a little of your story on the page and know that somebody sees you. You matter.