About the Author

Ozzie grew up in a Missouri Ozark town of 400 people. From an early age he found an escape in books, sports, and religion. By age twelve he was reading 100 books a year. He excelled at multiple sports in high school. At nineteen he became a Methodist clergyman. He left the clergy a few years later and taught high school English until snared by the Viet Nam era draft.

In the early 1970s Ozzie heeded the generational call of drugs, sex, and rock & roll. Legal problems ensued, but so did writing. 

His first publications were short stories in literary magazines. His first writing income came from selling erotic letters to a men’s magazine. He wrote under the female pen name, Erin Love. 

After laboring on four unfinished novels, Ozzie moved to Los Angeles in 1995 and became a staff writer on a TV series. He went on to write screenplays, TV movies, and TV episodes for HBO, Showtime, NBC, CBS, and Fox. He wrote and produced the TV movie Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. 

Ozzie is co-author of Why Planes Crash, the memoir of an aviation disaster investigator. His thriller novel, Claws, was published in 2012. A literary novel, White Boy Blues, was published in 2015. After a long break from writing, Ozzie is currently working on two books and a screenplay. 

Ozzie lives in coastal Maine but spends as much time as possible in the Tarn region of southern France as well as visiting new countries each year. 

Ozzie has been a Shambhala Buddhist meditation practitioner for years. He still reads constantly and widely, from ‘high trash’ to history.  He enjoys cooking, gardening, and exercising. He speaks acceptable Spanish and bad French. 

Ozzie has a B.S.E. from Southeast Missouri State University, an M.A. from American University, and an M.F.A. from Naropa University.

He is a member of Writer’s Guild of America.