I grew up in Oregon. When I was at school in Ashland, in our free-living days, people said, “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses.” I collaborated with poets, physicists, and mad Promethean professors to publish broadsides, pamphlets, and monographs—starting with mimeograph machines and moving to new quick-copy services. Forced to flee Ashland as an economic refugee, I settled in Seattle. With only enough patience to endure two terms of a PhD lit program, I worked for a poverty program, a solar energy nonprofit, a city utility, and a host of temp-agency placements. While post-punk and emo rocked in the background, I realized I didn’t want a job and so built my own small writing/editing business. After a while, I realized I was a terrible self-employer (long hours, unreasonable standards of perfection). The rise of the personal computer launched a new economy in Seattle. Finally: a new world that appreciated my genius at spelling, making lists, and putting things in alphabetical order—and trying pre-release software to see how it works and what makes it break. In this new world, I wrote technical content for wizards, privateers, kings, and madmen, specializing in beta content for tiny specialized audiences. My greatest claim to publishing fame during the grunge decade: the Windows 95 Resource Kit, which helped evangelize the standardized TCP/IP networking required for easy Internet access (bye, Novell!). The next year after that book rose to #6 on the Computer Best Seller in Publishers Weekly, my mother made me stand by the remainder table in Barnes and Noble so she could take my picture. Next: how high-impact technical writing makes it possible to stream alt-country music over the Internet on a PC. I was lead writer for PC 99 Design Guide (bye-bye serial port, hello USB; bye-bye tin-can sound, hello HD audio). Once, sitting in a break room of a small software startup, one of the wizards I worked with prompted this question: “How do you know when you’re affluent?” As we argued the premise, he offered his own perfect answer: “When you can buy new hardbound books on impulse.” While working long hours, my library grew. To calm down at night while working with wizards and madmen, I reclaimed sanity reading Kage Baker, Michael Dibdin, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, and Andrea Camilleri. Lately, my favorites are Martha Wells, KJ Charles, and T Kingfisher. I still lunch with the wizards and madmen, but now write (mostly fiction) full time in Seattle, in the heart of Capitol Hill, which is just a small town that a lot of people live in, surround by all the other "towns" that make up Seattle. The "Restoration Rules" caper series explores what a group of cousins do for justice during the rise of Western Capitalism, when the king has a monopoly of the slave trade. The “Rain City Comedy of Manners” series explores complicated lives in contemporary Seattle. The key question: When bad things happen to quirky people, can they survive the wretched comedy of romance under grey skies? I also write the historical adventure series “Accidental Heretics” (as E.A. Stewart)—tales of conspiracy and revenge in southern France at the dawn of the Inquisition. These books seem to remind readers (especially guys) why they liked reading The Three Musketeers in the seventh grade.