About Todd

Full disclosure — I'm not an author. I've never published anything, but I'm not a bad storyteller and I've got a story to tell. Kind of reminds me of the nightmare sequence at the beginning of Aliens where the parasite bursts through Sigourney Weaver's chest. (Oh sorry, “Spoiler alert!”)

I hope it doesn't put readers off, but I'm writing about my grandmother, and I've been wanting — no, needing — to tell her story for about 40 years. She grew up in such a distant time, early 20th century, and the stories she told me I found fascinating. I'm hoping others will find them so as well. Luckily she lived to 102 and long enough that I developed an interest in her life.

In terms of my story, I grew up in Southern California and got most of my education in drama, including a master's degree, and it served me surprisingly well through a completely unrelated career — technology. In the mid-1980s when trying to break into show biz in New York City, it was common to wait tables at night, but the tech boom was just beginning, and I had no patience for waiting tables — too many people would end up with soup on their heads. I got into word processing and shortly discovered I liked it a lot more than acting, and for the next forty years I was building IT teams at law firms.

The acting gave me a facility with language, a great feeling for storytelling (surprisingly important in communicating technical concepts to non-technical people), and the ability to make a jackass out of myself in front of thousands of people at a time (also surprisingly useful in corporate America).

Living on the East Coast put me in proximity to my grandmother. I spent time in Washington, D.C., where she was in a home for Navy retirees — she was an admiral's daughter and a commodore's wife, so not actually in the Navy, but had a full dose of navy blue blood. I spent time going through scrapbooks and hearing stories and learning who she was, and I sensed it was as important to her as it was to me. Having lived my childhood so far away from her, it was an unexpected gift to get to know her.

I was never in the Navy, but I always wanted to build a boat. I built an 18-foot kayak with my father in high school, and we had a great deal of fun with it, but nothing bigger. Today, with so much interest in online boat building channels and so many people subscribing, I thought there might be similar interest in the process of building a book from scratch. You won't see the chopping and milling of trees nor casting of iron fittings, but you might find interesting how you take an actual person's life and turn it into a compelling read — for people who are not a direct descendant.

I know I will get a huge amount of pleasure in letting you in on my journey and I'm hoping there are a few of you out there who might find my learning process interesting — there are times when it will not be pretty. There also may be some of you who will listen due to an interest in American history or naval history. Or possibly you may just be interested in the history of a young girl, and a nation, that came of age at the same time.

In brief, although I've done a great deal of technical writing, as well as presentations, building training programs, and endeavoring to convince attorneys to do things they really don't want to do, I've never actually written a book. My great hope is that a book is where this story will end.

Please join me.