I was born in Marysville, in the Sacramento Valley, to a large and faith-filled Catholic family. I was named for my priest uncle, and as a little boy wanted to be a priest. I outgrew that ambition and by the time I was headed for my freshman year at the University of California at Berkeley was planning on a career in law. But while at Cal, I found that my greatest passion was writing, and upon my graduation, I pursued a career as a writer. I took a job on the campus at Cal to support myself while writing novels and working with agents in New York, and it is a good thing that I had that job because success