Pete grew up in St. Louis, MO, and was a good kid for the most part. Like other kids, he ran around the neighborhood with pals, cruised through town on a big wheel, and occasionally got into trouble. He never got a time-out though. They didn’t have time-outs when he was a kid in the 1970s. Instead, when he misbehaved, he was swatted upon the legs with a switch and was told the old line “this hurts me more than it hurts you.”
Pete was always a writer. He got his start by scribbling down short stories and silly poems. By age 15 he was published; by age 17 he was an award-winning editor for his high school newspaper; by age 19 he was freelance writing for magazines and had a career as a Sports Writer which lasted throughout his college years and shortly thereafter.
The decade of 1992 through 2002was an adventurous time for our swashbuckling writer. For three years he worked in the travel business and frequented exotic locales like Hong Kong, Barcelona, New York, Rome, Edinburgh, Scotland, Copenhagen, Denmark, Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna, Tokyo, Las Vegas, and even Morristown, NJ. He’s been lost in the middle of Austria, been attacked by a yak, slept soundly in a haunted castle, boarded and set sail on the wrong cruise ship, almost got a tattoo from Cher’s tattooist, and once carried $40,000 in cash with him to a party (nothing illegal). He heard the phrase da bomb from a Japanese girl in Rome before it hit the U.S., thus being an early adopter and sneezer of the phrase back home.
In 1995, Pete moved to Atlanta to help plan the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. After that, he bounced around a bit, living in Chicago for a time, then St. Louis, working in an array of jobs as an event planner, producer, and publicist. Then in 2001, he moved out west to San Francisco, arriving just after the dotcom bubble burst, barely missing probable fame and fortune. He remembers thinking: “It was like arriving to a party just after the cops broke it up.” Nevertheless, he found San Francisco fascinating, invigorating, and incredibly expensive. After all his meanderings of the decade, he finally felt like he was home. It was there that he found peace, happiness, creative expression, and best of all, he met the most beautiful girl in all of San Francisco, won her over, and was lucky enough to marry her. In 2004, Pete launched his writing business, completely shattering the old myth of the “starving writer.”
Today, Pete is a creative force as a writer and strategist. Each of his projects are sprinkled with his unique humor, creativity, and love of storytelling. As a “storyteller for new media,” Pete supports partners in the production realm as an idea developer and scriptwriter. He also works with marketing departments of businesses and agencies of all sizes on a variety of creative projects. He has written hundreds of short stories, countless short scripts, and is working on a screenplay in 2011 (a comedy with zombies, of course!). He’s a member of Oregon Media Production Association and studies at the Basement Writing Workshop, both in Portland, OR.
On the personal side, Pete has a wide array or interests. He’s addicted to the creative process, always busy implementing ideas that bubble to the surface. Like most writers, Pete is a voyeur of the human condition. He has psychic abilities that he doesn’t tap into for fear of the power he would possess. Pete is fond of dogs and they are fond of him as well. His favorite color is green and his favorite snack food is popcorn. His favorite number is 88 because he likes the idea that if he loses one 8 there’s another one there to replace it. He’s tried to grow his hair out long on numerous occasions, but he can never make it past that awkward “helmet head” stage. He’s a jazz guy, a history buff, a book fiend, an art lover, a baseball fan, an appreciator of anything old and rustic, likes epic movies, wonders about the cosmos, loves his wife, adores his kids, and really, really enjoys being himself. Like the tower of Pisa, he tends to lean a little bit off-kilter. And if he feels as if someone has him figured out, he changes. He prefers peculiar over ordinary, old-fashioned over modern, mystery over understanding.
He’s been called a “good egg” many times in his life, and makes it a point to remain sunny side up as much as possible.
Pete lives in Oregon with his lovely wife and two young sons.