Chris Semal was born in New York City and has lived there all his life. He is aware that other places exist and likes to visit them from time to time, but the city is a hard mistress to resist. A musician, singer and songwriter, Semal has played pretty much every rock club and bar in Manhattan at one time or another since the early 80s in various bands. He’s seen the underside of the music industry – the good, bad and ugly – also through his solo work, under the lewscannon heading. Semal went to the University of Miami to study Music Engineering, heading back north to do the only obvious thing possible, becoming a municipal bond broker and eventually working as a consultant building financial models. In the early part of the millennium, between both consulting and band gigs, he wanted to expand on the 80 or so words he used in writing song lyrics to the 80,000 he would need for a novel. And so Semal’s debut thriller set in New York City, Trial Of Tears (eBook & paperback Cannon Publications 2012), was born, along with a passion for developing plots and characters.