J. Clay Evans (born Joshua Clay Evans) received his Master's of Professional Accountancy from West Virginia University in 2004. For three years, he worked as an audit associate for PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP. He has been a licensed CPA (certified public accountant) since 2007. A native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he now lives with his wife and three stepchildren in Orlando, Florida. Always an avid reader, J. Clay began writing short stories in college, using the tips shared by Kurt Vonnegut within his own works. After college, J. Clay used reading as a form of escape from his rigorous accounting day job (which later became the basis for his first novel) and there he discovered the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Roberto Bolano and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, along with such contemporaries as Chuck Palahniuk, Elmore Leonard and Greg Iles. He credits this wide-range of author styles with the formulation of his own unique style of prose.