About the Author

I grew up in rural Louisiana in a time when there were three channels on our black-and-white television. We played baseball in our back pasture, out beyond Dad’s massive vegetable garden filled with tomato plants staked to stand eight feet high and corn stalks, even higher. We ran all through the woods; we fished, rode our bikes, and generally stayed outside until dark. One of my favorite memories is of one summer day spent in the branches of  a tall oak tree in the front yard. I left my copy of Alice in Wonderland when I came down for lunch. While we were eating, a Louisiana gully washer came through and thoroughly swelled the book, and I learned not to leave anything valuable outside anywhere in that sweltering place—not even fifty feet up a tree.

My parents and most of my people came from the farm country of northwestern Ohio and went to the South for work and for milder winters. We regularly embarked on thousand-mile drives back north to see our kin—long before handheld electronics—and the only entertainment was the scenery going by. I attribute these days of imagination with the beginning of my life as a writer.

In eleventh grade, I went to a boarding school, the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, in the quaint town of Natchitoches, Louisiana. I loved the experience, but I was no longer one of the smart kids in school. The education in that venerable institution—of which I was blessed to be a member of the first graduating class—was top-notch. Subsequently I attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where I studied philosophy, reading, and girls.

I have lived in Seattle, Washington, for thirty-three years. In my day job, I am an arborist and have my own small company. I have one grown son, Benjamin, who attends college in California; a cat named Roxy; and a doodle named Rexy. All my stories are completely made up; I’ve never played football or poker, nor have I lived in Chicago or worked in a paper mill.