Neil's hails from Queens & Manhattan in New York City. At 25, he swapped his music system for a brother's back-up car, left NYC and drove 11,000 miles across the USA. He stopped for a weekend visit with a boyhood friend in Northern California's redwood coast. A long weekend: 42 years later, Neil's still in Humboldt County. He lives with his artist wife and their tripawd rescued pit bull in Eureka. At age 31, Neil quit alcohol and other drugs. He enjoys living sober and being part of the worldwide recovery community.
Neil's early jobs included: delivering newspapers; unloading freight trucks; epoxy impregnating in a factory; supervising a mailroom & stockroom; umpiring adult baseball & softball games; accounting. He later worked a combined 41 years as: a counselor for groups, families & individuals with substance abuse problems; an instructor in addiction studies, psychology and social work at two colleges; a sports writer for daily and weekly newspapers. Neil earned two M.A. degrees--in Teaching Writing and in Counseling Psychology--from Humboldt State University, and a B.A. in English from St. Bonaventure University in western New York.
This website contains some of Neil's fiction, stories & poems, plus glimpses of his outdoor photography. He took all the photos, except for Stilson Snow's shots at the Booklegger in Eureka & Judi Tarpey's shots in Sligo Town, Ireland and at The Morris Graves Museum of Art.