Jade Lake

Jade Lake is an illustrated fantasy adventure written in rhymed verse. It is the third book in the series 'The Adventures of Puff' and portrays a cat's epic journey through the Avatar Mountains of Hunan Province, China.

It begins with Puff becoming separated from his family and where challenging landscapes, formidable adversaries, and unusual friends converge culminating in the novella's exciting climax.

It's a story of honor, courage, the value of loyalty in friendship, and the relentless desire to fulfill a dream.

The author began writing poetry at an early age developing an insatiable desire for the English Romantic Poets and Transcendentalists. He attended countless classes in literature and writing as an undergraduate to better hone his skills and direction. Over the years he developed a unique style of weaving mixed meters in rhymed verse associated with various types of animals in his stories. The meters and rhythms were inspired musically with his talent for playing nearly all types of string instruments, particularly the cello, mandolin, bouzouki, and taropatch.

Touched with a natural sense of rhythm and meter for both writing and music, he became more interested in the music side with the desire to teach and pursued a Music Education degree at Westminster Choir College in Princeton New Jersey, then afterward continuing at Elizabethtown College in Music Therapy.

Eventually, after traveling around the world studying indigenous modal variations in various countries, he found himself in Middleburg Florida where he owned a successful Montessori school for many years. It's at this point he realized firsthand the power of rhymed verse and the effect it has on children and began writing 'The Rainbow Forest.'