Dave Shields

Writing is my passion. I love watching my characters take on lives all their own and behave in ways I never anticipated. Even more surprising to me, though, is when they borrow events from my life and make them their own. I've survived my own career as a mortgage banker, slid face first across asphalt as the result of high speed bicycle crashes, cried as delivery complications from the birth of the first of our three daughters endangered my wife's life, sliced my knee beyond the bone thanks to an unscheduled meeting with a rock, and crossed the finish line first at the conclusion of a grueling race. Little did I know as I experienced such things that I was simultaneously researching my fiction.

In June of 2005 I won the Ben Franklin Award for the Best New Voice in Fiction. For me, it is sort of an achievement award for an eleven year journey. That's how long ago I made the decision to write a novel. What a hard, yet rewarding, road it's been. I never dreamed all those years back how much the effort would change me.

Dave Shields
http://www.DaveShields.com