Ken grew up in Orange County, California, one of ten children in a rambunctious and adventurous family. Like many of the young boys and girls in his neighborhood, he enjoyed playing sports and advancing the ideals of mayhem. After attending Arizona State University, Ken began a tech career in sales and marketing, spending most of those years at a Fortune 50 firm. In his young thirties, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis that profoundly affected his life. Twelve years later, he grew wheelchair-bound after an MS-related accident.
Needing to reinvent himself, Ken struggled to discover a passion that might provide unfulfilled purpose and direction. Years earlier, he penned articles for the Hewes Highlander Junior High School paper in Tustin, California. Later, he drafted poems to entertain his high school buddies; one creative missive got him suspended from Foothill High. An English professor at ASU, Ms. Chambers, scribed a note suggesting Ken had “potential” as a writer, a polite way to say he wasn’t receiving an A, but it was a message he never forgot. After graduating with a business degree, Ken read just one fiction book over the next twenty-five years, stupidly convinced that only non-fiction (which he still relishes!) was worthy of precious idle time.
After his accident, Ken immersed himself in the craft of writing, and he had one hell of a lot to learn. Though it took him two years to write two pages, he one day forced himself to tell a story using speech-to-text software; those words became the first paragraphs of his memoir and a psychological thriller. His wife often lectured him on staying up too late, a habit affecting his already diminished energy due to his disease. But when people discover exciting new passions, they ask themselves how and why they lived their prior lives without them. Thus it was with Ken’s burgeoning writing career. Author Malcolm Gladwell wrote a bestseller arguing that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of a new field. Ken is unsure if 10,000 or 7000 or 5000 is the correct number, but he agrees it is in the thousands. He considers himself fortunate because he relishes every step of his authoring journey.
The Emerald Cross, a second thriller pitting an ex-Green Beret hero and his female Army Black Hawk mercenary against a Mexican drug lord and cartel, debuted in 2024. Eagle Bay, a dark psychological thriller set on the Oregon Coast, is chock-full of mystery and duplicity. Ken is currently writing Book 2 of the McCloud series (Eagle Bay is Book 1). Stand Up, a memoir of disease, family, faith & hope, was Ken’s first book. Ken has just finished his manuscript about a generational tale of friendship, devotion, tragedy, redemption, and undying love. It is titled Doheny Drive: Three Boys and The Girl. Stay tuned!
After thirty years in Oregon, Ken and his artist wife live in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.
