I was born in 1982 to the family of a fundamentalist cult leader, the preeminent disciple of a man called Peter Ruckman.

I start with this because it is instructive, but also because it is, fundamentally, the formative datapoint of my existence. That my father died when I was five, and he was thirty, is of course instructive as well. That I was diagnosed with the same disease—Hodgkin’s lymphoma—that took his life is, as best I can tell, a grim coincidence.

By 1999 I’d fled Bible college back to San Antonio. By 2001 I had a little family, and by 2007 I was divorced.

It took those 25 years to begin my life. I’m not unsentimental, of course, about my childhood or my young manhood. But it was, for all intents and purposes, an escape from a particularly spidery web. My life since 2007, I am glad to say, has been one of definable harmony, beauty, and meaning.

For the last sixteen years—and counting—I’ve spent my time writing songs, touring the country, writing novels, raising kids, loving my wife, beating stage 4 cancer, watching soccer, and bellying-up to my favorite bars in South Texas.

Harmony, beauty, meaning. Those are hard things to come by. It took me 25 years of winding around some very dusty roads to find them, hazy, chimerical, on the distant horizon. But there they were, and eventually I reached them: harmony of spirit and intent, beauty in the frank rhythms of an individual life, meaning in small tasks, small pleasures, small fellowships.

I can’t think of what else it could all be “about.”

The circumstance of my birth and lineage are only the “formative datapoint” of my existence because of the ease with which I can divide my forty-one years by it. It is, of course, formative in ways I still do not understand. Why I’m this way, or why I’m that way. But it’s also the token with which I measure my good fortune. The reverse is this, the obverse the other. I’m both, but I keep the coin heads-up these days.

O.K., what else? The rhythm of my life: I work a dayjob, I play in a band with some of my best friends. I spend my evenings writing novels, writing songs, making dinner with my wife, helping my kids with their lives, reading, sitting on the porch, walking the dog.

My wife is an engineer. She’s the most pleasant, probably the most intelligent, and definitely the sexiest engineer I’ve ever known (or heard about).

I have three children. My eldest daughter is about 5’2 and (I’m guessing) 110 pounds. And she will absolutely kick your ass. She knows how, and she’s not afraid to.

My son is maybe 6’1 and (I’m guessing) 110 pounds. He’s the most sensitive, the funniest, the most interesting personality I’ve ever known. He’s going to do wonderful things.

The youngest just started high school. She does things like act in short films and read Albert Camus’s The Stranger without ever having been prompted to do so.

Our dog Rhoda is, by our family’s best accounting, both “bad and fat.” If you know, you know.

Thanks for your interest.

Best,

JRM

P.S. - I guess I should mention I don’t have any social media to speak of. As to why that is, I guess “eh” is my best explanation. But maybe one day I’ll start a blog on this site, if that ever seems like something that makes sense to do.

Otherwise, I’ll keep writing songs and books and hopefully we can stay in touch that way. In a manner of speaking.