Today my wife Ann and I live high on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay. Prior to beginning my writing career, I was a marketing consultant, senior corporate executive, university adjunct faculty, corporate board member, community volunteer, and an officer in the U.S. Army. Then at a time when most people are retiring, I began this new vocation as a novelist. Here's how it happened. My father Ben was born in the Ukraine amidst the worst of the Russian Tsar's bloody 1905 anti-Jewish riots - pogroms. Shortly after, my grandfather Max escaped with his family to America. A hundred years later, I returned to the Ukraine. I paid my respects at a tombstone honoring the victims of the 1905 pogroms and stood in the square where the Nazis in 1941 rounded up thousands of Jews and marched them off to be executed. Had my grandparents not left Russia when they did, I might well have died in a square just like that one. My yearning to connect with these grandparents I never knew arose in those moments. Writing novels seemed to be the only means for me to satisfy that passion. This led to my first book, Goliath's Head, then to A Fine September Morning, Lara's Shadow and finally to Odyssey of Chaos. The later one was inspired by my Greek cousins on my mother’s side. They survived the Nazi occupation of Athens hiding in a shepherd’s cellar and fighting in the Greek resistance. Some other cousins didn’t make it, lost in the Holocaust. I was more than a little surprised by the excellent reception to each of my novels. The wide audience of readers were a mix of both Jews and non-Jews keenly interested in the chronicles of Twentieth Century Jews, from persecution to tragedy to triumph. Most were from the United States, but a significant number came from many other parts of the world too. Lately I have turned to writing short stories for publication in literary journals. These stories are non-sectarian, dealing with human nature and how we respond to critical moments that shape who we are. One of my longer short stories, a personal favorite, is Frannie Potter which first appeared in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and is now broadly available. It’s about a young American woman who, in 1937, goes off to fight in the Spanish Civil War to save the Republic and keep her friend Marty alive. Writing brings me enormous satisfaction. Big rewards come when I give a presentation and see how people react, or I receive a piece of fan mail or get a good review on Amazon. Every reader brings a little bit of their own unique person to the reading and interpretation of a story. They see the books I write through their own eyes and experiences, not mine. Their appreciation keeps me plugging away, trying to get better at it. Thank you.