D W McAliley

"Find your road through life and walk it, no matter what. The people who love you will be there with you every step of the way." ~My father, Joseph P. McAliley Sr. 1953-2008

I was born in Patuxent River, Maryland but our family didn't stay there long. My dad was in the Navy at the time and we bounced around quite a bit. We moved to California when I was three years old. I remember the drive from North Carolina and my maternal grandparents' house to California pretty vividly, in spite of my age. I think that's largely because I broke my leg in Louisiana (jungle gym....accident....) but the doctors didn't figure out it was broken until they looked at it in Dallas. I know every bump, pothole, and sharp turn from New Orleans to Dallas intimately thanks to that rough, and very painful, ride in the back seat of a Pontiac station wagon.

We left California when I was 5 and headed back to North Carolina. My parents moved into my maternal grandparents' (Nanny and Granddaddy as I call them) house with me and my older brother. We lived there for about six years, and I still think of that small brick farmhouse as home. We worked hard, as farm children have throughout the ages, but we had an incredibly good life. One of these days I will get around to editing and publishing my volume of golden childhood memories from that life that seems so long ago (A Dirt Road Home).

My parents started reading to me at a very early age, and they have told me that by the time I was about 2-3 I could read simple Dr. Seuss type books on my own. I don't know about that, but I do remember watching my father pour over books hour by hour growing up and I guess that's where I picked it up. When I was in the 3rd grade, I read my first "real" book, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. It only took me about four months to read, which I gauged to be remarkably fast at the time for how thick and heavy my copy was. Reading that book I was captivated by the characters, dazzled by the vivid scenery and images of life aboard a pirate ship, and I remember being distinctly jealous of the adventures that Jim Hawkins lived through from day to day.

That book awoke in me a deep and abiding love for the written word. I knew then, at 9 years old, that I wanted to be an author one day. I wanted to spin tales that captured the imagination and set someone's pulse racing. I wanted to build characters like Long John Silver, Jim Hawkins, Smollett, etc. I wanted to write stories that make people forget about their world and their worries....even if only for a moment.

I read everything I could get my hands on after that. I would read during class, during lunch, during recess, at home, at church. I read anywhere I could and any time I could. I honestly think that those years and years of voracious, insatiable reading (I still go through 10-15 books a year) have served as a kind of apprenticeship to my career as an author.

I graduated high school 7th in a class of around 280 and was pretty happy with that. I was a bit of a slacker my senior year (who isn't, right?) and missed the deadline for a full scholarship to ECU by about 2 weeks. I only know that because the Dean of Undergrad Admissions actually called my guidance counselor demanding to know why I hadn't applied for the scholarship since I clearly would have been a runaway winner (4.12 GPA, 1390 SAT, 4 sport varsity, etc etc ). My only defense was and still is that I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Procrastination is apparently something that you just don't grow out of.

In the end, I earned a degree in Laser Optics and Photonics, got most of a degree in electrical engineering, and nearly all of a degree in Creative Writing with an almost double major in Philosophy. I thoroughly enjoyed college, and saw no need to leave. Of course now that I am trudging beneath the weight of my student loans, that outlook seems remarkably short-sighted..... fun, though.

I now live in Charlotte, NC with my amazing and beautiful wife. I have two sons and a daughter, and they are the most astounding, most intimidating gifts that life has yet to bless me with. I serve as an Elder in my church, teach Sunday School for an adult class, and every now and then I find time to squeeze in a few minutes with my eyes closed and call it sleep.

I have finally realized the dream that Treasure Island planted in my head and my heart so many years ago... I am an author.

And now, to see where these winds will take me...