Biography

Mr. Moriarity, my English teacher my sophomore year of  high school, was the moderator of my school’s paper, so he recruited me to write for the paper. I liked writing, so I stayed on and became the editor my senior year. I also wrote short stories and poetry in high school.

In college, I was too busy cranking out term papers to give much thought to creative writing. Although, I told myself one day that I would write a novel.

I graduated from the School of Law at Duke University in 1974. For the next three decades or so, my writing was mostly the boring–but necessary–writing that lawyers do, briefs, pleadings, wills, contracts, etc.

In the late nineteen eighties, I began to write a column for the monthly newsletter of the Texas Association of Life Underwriters, as it was called then. Writing that monthly column, which was called The Legal Angle, both revived my interest in writing for fun and put me in the frame of mind to seek out and remember interesting things that happened as grist for my next column. Writing a monthly column, I learned to respect columnists who are contractually obligated to produce columns more frequently than once a month.  It is a difficult job, particularly if the subject of your column is topical, since the writer cannot successfully stockpile a few columns in case writer’s block occurs.

My publisher, the legendary Ken Tooley, gave me a free rein and lots of advice whenever I needed it. I really enjoyed writing the column, because I tried to translate whatever interesting things were happening in the law into a format that could be understood by a lay person. It was a great experience which I truly enjoyed. I quit writing The Legal Angle after I was elected to the bench, which was a difficult thing to do, because writing the column helped me make many friends across Texas.

I have been a probate judge here in Houston, Texas since the beginning of 1999.

My wife, Trish, and I have been married since late 1972. We have a daughter who is a CPA in Dallas. We live with two Tonkinese cats.

Trish golfs, which gives me the peace and quiet needed to write.