The following is based on a true story.

I’m a New York City native. At age 16, having just graduated high school, I lied my way into the Merchant Marine and shipped out as an ordinary seaman on a tramp freighter bound for North Africa. I then embarked on a series of forays into several colleges, finally dropping out of NYU a few credits shy of a degree in English to join a gigging blues-rock group as lead guitarist—well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I made a living as a musician in Manhattan bar bands and the ski lodges of Vermont before heading west to Hollywood with the notion of a career as a songwriter. I met a guy named Richard Orshoff, the producer of Jackson Browne’s debut album among other credits as engineer and producer. Richard liked my songs and we worked together for a few years recording demos and shopping them with established artists. Lean times, and I supported my fading dream by freelancing as a copywriter and creative director. 
 
Eventually I met and married my wife Barbara (a wonderful artist, visit her site
here) and legally adopted her two young children. Time to find a real job in a big city. A filmmaker for whom I’d written a corporate video script knew the president of Royal Cruise Line in San Francisco, the legendary Richard Revnes, who just happened to be searching for a new head of advertising and marketing, and made the intro. Amazingly, Rev and I hit it off at our first meeting and he hired me on the spot. Thus began an unforgettable nine years as VP Marketing and Creative Director at RCL, which led to an award-winning career as a senior executive in the travel industry, and finally the founding of my one-man consulting company, Dubin Marketing Inc.

In 2005, literally out of nowhere, I experienced a sudden, shocking, overwhelming, and unwelcome (at the time) conversion from my Jewish heritage to the Catholic faith, which reordered my life and priorities. (You can read the story
here.) My first novel, The Coin of the Realm, dramatizes my youthful voyage to North Africa in the Merchant Marine, yet wraps it around an adventure involving the modern slave trade and the spiritual awakening of the main character.

Not surprisingly, given its focus on the travel industry, Dubin Marketing's business shut off like a spigot in 2020 with the onset of the pandemic lockdowns. Without work for the first time in my adult life, I spent the next couple of years immersed in the writing and editing of my second novel,
The Watches of the Night.

With the manuscript finished, in mid 2022 I began to wonder: "What next?" I wanted to work, to contribute, to be of service. I wasn't necessarily thinking of a full-time job, nor did I expect to find one that matched my skill set in Prescott, Arizona, where my wife and I have made our home since 2001. Yet somehow that's what happened, and in early 2023 I became the Director of Marketing at Dignity Health, our two-hospital and physician network right here in town—a new beginning in a new field. Life's a funny old dog, isn't it?

Meanwhile, I've started working on my third novel.