I began writing seriously in the mid-1990s, when I was feeding cattle with my brothers, Charles and Chris, on our family's ranch, which our great-great-grandfather Isaac J. Sparks received from the Mexican government in 1843. While forking out a bale of hay, my brother Chris suggested that we write a screenplay about Sparks and his friend Allen B. Light, the first black resident of Santa Barbara, California. The result of Chris's suggestion was the historical drama "Sparks and Light," my first screenplay.

Since then, I've written many other screenplays. I've also written stories and essays, and I've made a lot of mistakes. Every once in a while, someone has been kind enough to correct me. Those corrections have inspired me to study the English language and some of its masters, like the grammarians H. W. Fowler, Sir Ernest Gowers, Wilson Follett, Theodore M. Bernstein, and Bergen Evans, and the writers Bob Dylan, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, E. B. White, Ernest Hemingway, Elmore Leonard, and Larry McMurtry.

In August of last year, Two Gun Publishing published YOUR TYPICAL OUTLAW AND OTHER STORIES OF THE OLD WEST, a collection of some of my Western stories. In July of this year, Two Gun Publishing published THE GOOD LAWMAN AND OTHER WESTERN STORIES, a second collection.

I'm very happy to be part of Medium.com, and I look forward to reading the work of its contributors and to submitting work of my own.