Composing words has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. It was the only exercise that completely puts me mentally at ease. At age 11, I would curl up in bed, in the bedroom upstairs and shut out the world for as long as it took, to put my thoughts on paper. Often the sound of Mama's voice would come crashing through the door "Chicken what yuh doin' up deh?" In addition, I would get strange looks from my siblings...but I quickly became immune to those gestures as my love for writing topped everything. I would write about things I experienced, things that inspired me,...

I was raised in a Catholic family in a mostly Lithuanian-American section of Scranton, Pennsylvania. By Catholic standards my life has not been a holy one, and I have not held true to the standards of the Catholic Church. Let us just say that my father and a number of others would say that I have just not measured up. My father particularly has said as much.

Yet I do believe that God has found me. I do not know why this has happened. Certainly there are many more faithful, obedient, worthy, and intelligent people. Yet I have had, to my mind, an incredible number of "coincidences" in...