SHORT VERSION

I am an ordinary sort of a guy with with a rather extra-ordinary history --not an exceptional nor even admirable history, but I have seen some stuff and it informs my writing. To get through the old resume as quickly as possible: carpenter, stock broker, teacher, woodworker and finally retired / writer.
 

Rather than nattering on about the wheres and whens of my life, permit me to tell you about the other writers I consider old friends and who might have rubbed off on me. First is C. S Forester and his HORNBLOWER novels about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. This indirectly lead to my second and third books, (dictionaries actually) VICEROYS, VICARS, AND VERGERS: BRITISH ENGLISH FOR READERS and a toned-down version for students. 
 

Then we have all of Mark Twain, but in particular ROUGHING IT which described the boon and bust of the Comstock Silver Panic. Thru some more confusing steps, and no little personal pain due to the Denver petroleum bust in the early 80’s, we get to my first book WILLISTON: MANCAMP about the boom and bust of the North Dakota fracking boom. It may -or may not- become a 3 or 4 part series.

Finally the simple need to feed myself, lead the my 4^th book THE ENGINEER’S COOKBOOK.

LONG BIO

From a very young age, I was a big fan of Mark Twain / Samuel Clemons and read pretty much everything Twain wrote. I grew up in Colorado and saw first-hand the effect on the economy and felt some pain myself when OPEC collapsed and the price of oil tanked. So I re-read ROUGHING IT, Mark Twain’s personal record of the 1860’s Comstock silver boom and subsequent bust. I became a student of all manner of bubble economies and their panic booms and inevitable busts. History is full of them.  THere are some great movies on the subject too.  One of the best is THE BIG SHORT.
 

Then the petroleum fracking boom came first to Texas and next in North Dakota, so I packed my computer & some clothes and drove my wee Mazda pickup north to Williston to live in a man-camp and see a boom first hand. (I also tried to teach math to middle-schooners. Huge mistake!) A year later, the price of oil tanked (again) and I got to see the bust, but not before gathering enough first-hand experience to start my WILLISTON Series of novels.
 

But to return to Colorado and my youth, Colorado is a state poorly equipped with oceans. So I read all of C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower novels by the time I finished middle school; at least when I wasn’t reading Mark Twain. (I was a bookish lad.) From there it was a fairly straight line from maritime history, to the industrial revolution & its Victorian ‘high-technology,’ and finally, the history of economics and finance. England was the center of it all and this led to my second book VICEROYS, VICARS, AND VERGERS: BRITISH ENGLISH FOR READERS, and a toned-down version for the younger set, VICEROYS AND VICARS: BRITISH ENGLISH FOR STUDENTS.
 

I’m a life-long bachelor and had to feed myself and so I developed a large set of of recipes that emphasize taste, nutrition, and exceptional efficiency. This lead to my longest book THE ENGINEER’S COOKBOOK. This is 600+ pages of how to get some great and nutritious food on the table quickly with a minimum of fuss.
 

In order to support my reading and writing, I taught various things to various people, mostly adult people; including a stint teaching GED subjects to people in jail. (As an employee, NOT an inmate.) Along the way, I got very good at explaining complicated things to people. For example, factoring polynomials in the morning and the English Civil War in the afternoon.