✉ Message the Author

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Dan A. Cardoza has a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology, and a two-year Master of Arts degree in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling. He currently resides in Northern California, his home nestled somewhere near the Sierra’s.

His day job for many years has included working with adults to solve the various challenges in their lives. His literary footprint includes over 300 publications, both in print and online. Dan’s been published in over twelve countries, at one time or another, and his work has been featured in Canada, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Scotland, Ireland, the U.K., and of course many states in the U.S.A. Dan’s poetry can even be found in the National Library of the U.K. He is forever grateful.

Dan’s primary literary interests include the following: free verse poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Much of his work is in print and a sampling can be found in the Ethernet, online.

Dan’s most recent fiction has been published in the 45^th Parallel, Allegory, honorable mention, Aphelion, BlazeVOX, Black Petals, Across the Margins, Bull, Cleaver, Close to the Bone, Coffin Bell, the Chilling Tales for Dark Nights podcast, Consequence, Dark City Books/Magazine, Door=Jar, Dream Noir, Entropy, Flash Bang Mystery, Gravel, Literary Heist, Mystery Tribune, O:JA&L/Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, New Flash Fiction Review, Overstock, Spelk, Tall Tales TV Podcast, The Yard, Crime Blog Variant, Visitant, Your Impossible Voice, The 5-2. Dan has also been nominated by Coffin Bell for the Best of the Net Anthology, 2021, and best micro-fiction by Tiny Molecules.

Dan is comfortable exploring some of the new topographies and territories of literature, where at times, getting lost is just part of the creative process.

He credits Mrs. Davis, a community college English instructor, for lighting the fire of his literary imagination. Thinking he was in big trouble, after one of his classes, Mrs. Davis requested that he stay until the room emptied. Then he sat for the following critique, “Dan, your short story needs more editing than I have time for, lot’s of mistakes, atrocious spelling, and awkward phrasing is not uncommon. But if you ever quit writing, I will hunt you down and it won’t be pretty.”

Growing up, Dan lived a charmed life, at the base of the revered Mt. Shasta, a cherished monolith, and an active volcano. Mt. Shasta is one of the ornate diamonds in the ethereal necklace of the Cascade Mountain Range. The mountain is considered a deity by Native American’s.

At the base of Mt. Shasta, the Sacramento River is born. From here, cloud water pulses in the form of a spring in Mt. Shasta City Park. Here, it begins its long cascade down the lesser mountains, before uncoiling at the north end of the Sacramento Valley, altering the landscape and the good people along the way. Through the fertile and sun-bleached land, it eventually flows into the mighty Pacific, a wondrous place, where clouds are conjured into ocean.

Much of what Dan writes about has been influenced by the natural wonders in the region, and the wondrous and things he has learned from the people who inhabit the shadow of mountains.