Look and Listen

Biography

Born 1955 in Beloit, Wisconsin. It was a great place to grow up. Lots of open fields, trees to climb, and no fences! My father was transferred to Chicago when I was 10, so I really "grew up" in the suburbs. I went to New Trier East High School, but didn't appreciate it at the time. In between my college years, which were spent bouncing from one university to the next, I managed to get in some trouble, travel to unusual places around the world, and learned a lot of useless facts. Guess that's why I became a writer. People liked hearing my stories of adventure, so I started adding some fiction, changing names and locations (sometimes) and wrote novels. In truth, I've always loved to write, it's my passion.

Inspiration

I come from a family of writers. My father was a journalist, my mother wrote tons of published articles for magazines and my sister is a published mystery author. I write the genres I love to read, which are historical fiction, historical fantasy and action & adventure. The list of writers that still inspire me are Alistair MacLean, Douglas Reeman, Hammond Innes, Jack Higgins and Robert E. Howard. I'm also inspired by people, places, and events. I have met thousands of interesting people and they often end up as characters. I've been to some great places around the world, so Iceland, Thailand, and North Africa end up as locales in my books. I've always been a hisotry buff, so I throw perfectly normal people into critical moments in time and let them figure it out.