Gene, It would be flattering to be included in the Author Showcase! Feel free to include anything you think appropriate, except maybe The Foot's last summary paragraphs which would be too much of a spoiler, I think.

Yes, i have thought often about making a pilgrimage to Kenya to the Serengeti but I always get cold feet and think better of it. Yes it would be wonderful to see them in the wild but, at the same time, it would be an emotional confrontation thinking of the way they are slaughtered throughout the continent and how their numbers are steadily decreasing as human population pressures grow. So, yes, maybe someday. Hopefully.

That encounter with the pachyderm so long ago has made me hypersensitive to the way I imagine an animal is feeling and I have always seen them as beings and not just animals. That also is one of the main reasons I have been a vegetarian for many decades.

As for writing, I have kept a daily journal for the past twenty two years, more to pretend I'm writing than actually being creative. My family would have made rich material for William Faulkner, so I had lots to motivate me. Plus, I have always been a photographer and documented my family life along the way, and, as ideas occurred to me, included thumbnails of the stories I planned to write "when I had the time", so somewhere over 6,500 pages journals served some purpose. I had as much fun creating the Journal covers as I did writing the text.

I have written three books, all on Amazon. Leaving Saigon, Sterling:For the Republic, and Hunter's Junes (a little over 1,700 pages, total).

I have been a licensed Amateur Radio operator for over 50 years, Served in the US Air Force, have a couple of college degrees, and count dogs among my best friends; all making me perfectly normal.