Ben Olson was born and raised in north Idaho, in a small mountain town of hillbillies, realtors and hippies. He wrote "Wanderlost" in 37 days, when he was 25 years old. He has worked as a dishwasher, busboy, bar tender, department store clerk, gas station clerk, golf pro, photographer, journalist, reclaimed lumber specialist, handyman, house painter, researcher, production assistant, producer, location scout, boat captain, propane filler, and finally, author. After dropping out of Colorado State University after his third semester, Olson fled to Los Angeles to search for fame and fortune. He found neither. For three years he lived in disrepute, working as a low-level production assistant on television commercials and eventually documentary films. He recently worked as a research assistant on the Academy Award winning "An Inconvenient Truth." In 2004, Olson was hired to produce a fine art photography book by photographer Mark Story. The book is called "Living in Three Centuries," and is a book of portraits of the oldest people living in the world. For more than a year, Olson wandered around America searching for "super centenarians" (people over 110 years old). During this scouting period, Olson took constant notes on the American People, as well as his evolving self, and began formulating the idea to write a novel. Ben Olson is mostly a bum. He is also an inveterate traveler, a sailor of Caribbean Seas, a tsunami relief volunteer in Thailand (where he was nearly killed in a motorcycle / water buffalo accident), a hitchhiker in the dying West, a backpacker and escape artists, and an advocate of roman candle shooting at drunks in downtown Seattle. He writes occasionally for several small newspapers and magazines that nobody reads. He has been rejected by some of the best publications around. He has no money, no agent, no publicist and no hope. Currently, Olson is homeless and couch-crashing around America, trying to find a place to finish his next novel.