He graduated from South Hadley High School in South Hadley Falls, Massachusetts. He attended Pennsylvania State University, then enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in the fall of 1965, serving in Vietnam. After his discharge as a corporal in San Francisco, he entered West Texas State University in Canyon. After earning a bachelor of arts degree, he took a master's in journalism at The University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he concentrated on fiction writing. His masters thesis became his first published novel, Paradigm Red.
