Way Too Much Information About Randall Hicks (Or... More than you really wanted to know but we're going to tell you anyway) A funny thing happened on the way to the bookstore... Randy, like everybody, took quite a circuituous route to this moment he presently occupies in the universe. He's 50, but his friends tell him he looks only 49 and a half. What's pitiful is he believes them. He has two children and a wife, but you don't care about them - they're his problem. Actually, Randy's family is the most important thing in his life, and he's active in their activities (whether they like it or not). Randy spends his "dad" time as a soccer coach (he doesn't have a clue what he's doing, but the kids are too young to realize that), 4-H leader and classroom volunteer. His daughter's most embarrassing moment was when her ballet studio asked parents to be background performers in their presentation of Swan Lake. Randy had to wear tights for the performance and the world is still recovering from the experience. He wore three socks for the show - you can guess where he felt he needed the extra one. Randy has been a practicing adoption attorney, with an office in Riverside, California, for almost twenty years. He helps families adopt both domestically, and from Eastern Europe. He limits his practice to adoption as he really cares about children, and because he's not smart enough to practice in more than one tiny area of law. He is active in the appellate courts, litigating as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, and his victories have created new laws protecting adoptive parents' rights across the country. He has been an advisor to the California legislature regarding adoption legislation and is a member of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys. He has completed more than 800 adoptions.  He's the author of several non-fiction adoption books. ADOPTING IN AMERICA: How To Adopt Within One Year is a "how to" book describing how to plan a loving, ethical and affordable adoption, and has been featured on every TV network, in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Sun-Times, received complimentary reviews from such entities as Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and is even recommended by the U.S. Department of State (regarding international adoption). His newest "how to" adoption book, ADOPTION: The Ultimate Guide to Adopting Quickly and Safely, will be released by Penguin/Putnam in October, 2007. He was also the host of the 1991 PBS educational TV series, Adoption Forum. If you were to ask Randy his favorite part about getting to appear on national TV talk shows and mingle with the celebrity crowd, he would not hesitate to tell you: free cookies in the Green Room. He has also authored a children's book, Adoption Stories for Young Children is a picture book for kids up to age seven, showing adoption is a very loving and common way of entering a family. Let's pause here, shall we, so you can go to Amazon.com and buy one of these books. Buy Adopting in America                 Buy Adoption Stories for Young Children Only kidding. Save your money for that life-changing experience - getting your own copy of The Baby Game or Baby Crimes. Randy had a boring youth, noticable only by the myriad excuses girls gave him when declining to go out with him in high school. In fact, it is likely the creativity of these excuses which inspired Randy to start writing a novel. He was a good kid in college and worked hard, earning his Bachelor's Degree, and was halfway through his Master's Degree, by the time he was 19. Those who believed he was a prodigy and destined for great things were promptly proved wrong when he abruptly chucked graduate school and decided to become an actor. Some believe this was one way to force himself to overcome his shyness with girls, while others contend it was part of a long-standing stalking campaign centered around his true love of that era, Farrah Fawcett. Neither of those hopes were realized, however, as he remained both shy and Farrahless, but he did work as an actor for five years (under the screen name Randy Colin Shepard), getting to work with actors like James Coburn, Eva Marie Saint, Jeff Bridges and Hal Holbrook. Most of his roles were as unremarkable as his acting skills, small parts in TV movies and soaps like General Hospital, forgotten the moment he exited stage left. He did have one plum role, however, playing the lead role in an NBC pilot, Escape. Randy played the real life role of Billy Hayes, an American youth imprisoned in Turkey for being caught with drugs, then engineering a daring prison escape, originally told in the feature film, Midnight Express. The difference was Randy's version was for TV, not a feature film, meaning he got paid a heck of a lot less money, and he was unable to cultivate any groupies during filming, no matter how hard he tried. Just to prove he had no career sense as an actor, and in recognizing his lack of acting ability, Randy promptly gave up acting after his only significant role, and moved to Nice, France. There, he worked as an English teacher, and aimlessly wandered the topless beaches, pretending to take pictures of sea gulls. Twenty-five years later, he is still convinced he speaks French, and looks for any opportunity to practice it. Usually this is with French college girls, until they remark he looks like their father. In his "off" time Randy's favorite activities are tennis and ping pong, as well as carpentry. These three hobbies all have in the common the fact that he gets to hit things - repeatedly and very hard - which is a good way to deal with writer's block. Since Randy's days are filled with lawyering and family activities, his usual writing time is from 8 p.m. to midnight. He has been known to play hooky from his official writing time, however, to occasionally sneak away for thirty minutes to watch a classic old episode of The Andy Griffith Show, or something important and topical like The Search for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models. Randy grew up in Orange County, California, and now lives in Fallbrook, tucked away in a rural corner of San Diego County known as the Avocado Capitol of the World. He likes to pretend he's a farmer and rancher (presiding over an avocado, lime and lemon grove, and raising sheep, chickens and miniature horses). Every Summer his kids compete for blue ribbons for their animals at the San Diego County Fair, just like The Baby Game's protagonist, Toby Dillon, did in his childhood. One of Randy's lifetime goals was to write a novel - specifically, a mystery. He's an avid reader, and has many favorite writers: Gregory McDonald, Laurence Shames, Robert Crais (especially the Elvis Cole series), T. Jefferson Parker, David Rosenfelt, Robert Eversz, Bill Fitzhugh, Sue Grafton, Barbara Seranella, Robert B. Parker, S.V. Date, Ken Bruen, Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch series), Harlan Coben (particularly the Myron Bolitar series), Steve Martini, John D. McDonald, James Swain, Tim Dorsey, Lawrence Block, Brian Wiprud, John Sanford, Lee Child and Carl Hiaasen, to name just a few. Randy reads two to three novels a week and recommends people look beyond the writers on the top of the bestseller lists to find great writers. Writing The Baby Game has been a dream come true for him, and he is now dedicating more and more time to his writing. His second novel, Baby Crimes, again featuring adoption attorney Toby Dillon, is due out in trade paperback on August 1, 2007. The Baby Game is set to become a major motion picture, set to begin filming in Spring, 2008, and featuring Owen Wilson as Toby Dillon, with Randy receiving an undisclosed seven figure sum for the film rights. Well, actually there's no movie - yet. If you really want to see something Randy has created for film, however, he's got home movies of Swan Lake he'd like to show you. Buy a copy of The Baby Game  (What? You still haven't bought it?) Return to home page