 ANNOUNCEMENT (5/15/11): Charlie No Face was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Book Awards for 2011 GET A COPY AT: Click on "Charlie No Face" above and check out the READER REVIEWS! Welcome to my website! In the pages of this site you will find information about my writing, including synopses and excerpts as well as how to order my books. I will also profile other writing that I have done. My blog will provide an opportunity to talk about the minuite to minute process of writing as well as other subjects of interest. Now a little about myself. I recently retired after having been the director of a public school based free family counseling center. Prior to that I was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center for almost twenty years. During my tenure there I taught in a Family Medicine Residency Program, practiced Medical Family Therapy and was the Director of a Family Therapy Training Program. In addition to this I am an ordained Presbyterian minister, having graduated from seminary (Boston University) in 1975. I served a church full-time from 1975-1981 before entering the mental health field permanently. I still keep my hand in ministerial work on a part-time basis. My educational background includes two master's degrees and a PhD. Common to all the work I've done is a commitment to the needs of others which means being actively involved in their life stories. I am also married and we have two adult daughters and an adorable granddaughter.
 |  About my writing..... I started writing seriously when I entered seminary at Boston University in 1972. There I was published for the first time---a series of poems in an alumni journal, work lost long ago. In the parish, though, I became a disciplined writer, having to produce a sermon each week, a literary and theological task. The challenge was to write at the intersection of human experience and divine response. During this period I wrote many short stories, song lyrics, poems and two nonfiction manuscripts. One manuscript (Dancing on the Edge) was accepted for publication only to have the offer withdrawn. On the strength of this success, I stopped writing for several years! I left the ministry and entered the field of psychotherapy, working in community mental health where I published a few papers on my experience as a clinician, including one on a patient suicide. In 1986 I started working at the University of Rochester Medical Center where a focus on academics accelerated my development as a writer. In the next 20 years, I co-authored two professional books and wrote 55 papers and book chapters. The rigor of mentored writing and excellent editing taught me a great deal about the craft. During my academic career I remained interested in fiction, but did little more than collect ideas and make notes. In 1990, I did extensive work on a story idea and then stored it all away in a folder. I returned to them years later. They became the basis for my second novel, Pumpkin Hill (2007).
My first novel, Darkness is as Light (2005), was based on a personal vignette told by a former patient. I couldn't get the story out of my mind and reworked it in several creative nonfiction workshops and finally transformed it into the backbone of a novel about a middle aged man sorting out the truth about his mother's death. I wrote Darkness in exactly one year. My third novel, Charlie No Face, was released by Savant Books and Publications in January 2011 (see www.savantbooksandpublications.com). I enjoyed this writing project more than any other, perhaps because it gave me the opportunity to speak with the voice of Jackie, the 11 year old protangonist. And it is set on my hometown. While I worked on proofing and market strategies for Charlie No Face, I started writing my fourth novel, Chimney Bluffs (the picture on this page is of Chimney Bluffs). I complted this novel in May 2011 and am now starting down the long road to publications. I am very excited about this new story. If you'd like to read Chapter 1 of Chimney Bluffs, click on the title above. I am now writing character notes and dpoing research for my next novel, yet to be titled. Common to all of my work is an abiding interest in the common struggles that make us human---loss, fear, hope, uncertainty, connection, separation, meaning, seeking, questioning, love, guilt, wonder, joy and storytelling. I think we are all storytellers. That is how we make sense of our lives and the world around us. When I write, I feel that more than anything else, I am trying to make sense of life, trying to explore its meaning. And, of course, I am trying to tell a good story in the process.
Contact me at: dseaburn@gmail.com Books can be purchased through:
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