Look and Listen

Biography

I was born in Swindon England. In 1954 my mother married an American serviceman and they moved to Texas. A year later I was also on my way to America – alone. There I was, a nine-year-old kid with a tag around my neck like a parcel: Please deliver to Dallas. That trip was one great adventure. When I arrived in Texas I discovered I had a baby sister. Later, after we moved to Fort Worth, I learned that my step-father was a small-time hood. A few years after my mother divorced him, the police notified us that his body had been found in Louisiana. I am formally educated as a commercial artist, and worked for a number of ad agencies in the Metroplex before we moved to Southern California in 1980. My wife, Ellaine - the one responsible for breathing life into our protagonist - was a well respected journalist in Dallas. She was the first female to conduct an interview from inside the Dallas Cowboy locker room - before they threw her out. Four years later we started our own agency, and we also sold our first book; a make-your-own-adventure story for the juvenile market. That same year we moved to the Bay Area. We live with three cats and five birds in Northern California, where we dredge up the past to create new adventures.

Inspiration

My mother and I lived with my grandmother and my two uncles in one of those narrow row houses built for railroad workers in the 1870s – two bedrooms, gas lighting and outdoor plumbing. I spent most of my time roaming the town, train-spotting, collecting cigarette labels, and rummaging through war surplus in the rubbish dump. I’d march into the house wearing a gas mask or a helmet and my mother would promptly march me off to bed. I was always up to mischief. I started writing and illustrating my own adventures as a way to stay out of trouble. Many of the characters in The Genesis Legacy are borrowed from my early childhood. The genesis for the story (no pun intended) came from three subjects I was researching for three entirely different novels: What happened to all of the art treasures looted by the Nazis in France; the development of ethnic weapons for ethnic cleansing; and the conspiracy theories regarding HIV. It sort of took on a life of its own after that. My wife frequently accused me of channeling Robert Ludlum as she read and edited the pages. The book is the first in a series of new cross-genre thrillers. Genesis blends the traditional detective mystery with the spy thriller, and even though it takes place in 1953, the plot has a frightening connection to today’s headlines.