I grew up in storyland.  Long before high school, I listened to stories told from South Louisiana’s front porches, screened-in back patios, kitchen counters, barber shops, playgrounds, ball parks, duck blinds, fishing boats and all forms of camps – marsh houseboats, cypress lake A-frames, woodsy deer lease trailers and ramshackle Grand Isle frame homes on pilings.

When I wasn’t absorbing stories with my ears, I read them.  My maternal grandmother, Mary Welsh LeBlanc, set the hook early when she read to me The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  While my tastes have varied, I have been reading ever since.  Some memorable tales include biographies for young readers and Hardy Boys mysteries checked out from the Lafourche Parish Public Library, Mad magazines purchased from racks at places like the K&B and TG&Y, a weekly inhaling of Sports Illustrated, a tattered copy of Where the Red Fern Grows, college days of King Lear, The Moviegoer and A Sun Also Rises, discovering fellow Louisianians Ernest Gaines, James Lee Burke and Tim Gautreaux and the latter-day pleasures of A Colony of Unrequited Dreams and Blood Meridian.

During my senior year in high school, I realized I liked telling stories, too, and I could possibly write them for others to read.  The writing has been a journey.  I detail some of that sojourn in the Author’s Dreamline I wrote in 2001 after the release of One Dream: The NFL.  Publicists have chronicled other periods, which can be found at the bottom of the pages for Cajun Mariners and The Miracle of St. Genevieve.

The plot, of course, continues to thicken.

I once thought that by this writing (April 15, 2010) I would be a full-time writer.  I am not.  But I am appreciative of what I have, my loving wife Susie and our two most precious gifts, our children Grace and Celeste.  I am also grateful for my law practice, our bookstore, my community, my extended family and friends.  I am thankful that I can do on a daily basis what I learned to love as a child –  listen to, read, tell and write stories.  At age 40, I can say with sincerity that God is good.