irvingsghost.com

Most of this is true...

I was born in Ogdensburg, New York, and grew up on the rocky shores of the St. Lawrence River. By junior high, I found myself unnaturally curious about the oldest landmarks in town, like the public library, the Frederic Remington Art Museum, and the derelict buildings of the St. Lawrence State Hospital. I also enjoyed, with a knot of weird friends and a Swisher Sweets cigar, the occasional stroll in both of the city’s sprawling cemeteries. Oddly, I gained a fascination with history from haunting these places, and later became nearly obsessed with North Country lore, especially with whatever strange, local tale I could glean from microfiche or the brown pages of newspapers and books. I eventually broadened my interests to include the peculiarities of one of the most picturesque regions in the country, the Hudson Valley, where at his grave, I stumbled on Washington Irving’s ghost summoning me to continue New York’s finest yarn, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (FYI: I didn't actually see his ghost; I'm just hung up on another metaphor.)

Whether these fancies sprouted from having been birthed beneath the cold, black omen of a thunderstorm, or because my woebegone great-grandmother read tea leaves, is debatable. Nonetheless, the compulsion to expose, explore, and tell the human story through a warped lens, became a hallmark of my writing, one that helped me to create dynamic and unique characters, even out of those I stole from a few old potboilers of American Literature. They had no more use for them, anyway, and as Mark Twain wrote in his autobiography:

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

Well, now, there’s a perfect defense for assuming somebody else’s character, right?

At any rate, after graduating from Ogdensburg Free Academy, I packed up everything I owned and journeyed southbound 20 miles on Route 68 to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where I pursued creative writing, which is similar to getting an art degree but often even less promising. Young and practical, though, I had the foresight to earn a degree in English education with a minor in biology, and fortunately found a real job teaching high school English in Malone, New York, the fall after I graduated from college.

I honed my craft at home, as it were, where storytelling was easier done outside the noise of classroom bells and parts of speech. Five years later, I had a master's degree in education, and the beginnings of a State retirement account. The rise of Walmart and Wegmans coincided nicely with my modest income, so I lived in relative comfort while I waited for Random House or Simon & Schuster to come calling.

As of today, I'm living a dream with my beautiful and supportive girlfriend in Northern New York. I'm still teaching and I'm still writing, despite everything Fall Out Boy has been hip to remind us. I hope, like me, you've found life worth living, and with little regret. Our shared history, after all, has everything to do with who we are. It's only how much life we choose to live fully and completely that makes us average or exceptional.

I'm always striving to be exceptional, on average.

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