Born in Newton, Iowa where Jack Kerouac was famously stopped for speeding in On The Road and where Jack London spent a few years writing essays, I grew up with a decided literary intent. Further, having the Alcott's as my familial antecedents didn't hurt my predilection for putting pen to the page either. My first published work was writing sleazy fiction for Easyriders, Biker and V-Twin magazines. I followed this with a decade of research for what would become my first book, "The Hand Behind the Mouse: an intimate biography of Ub Iwerks" co-written with Ub's granddaughter (and OSCAR-nominated director), Leslie Iwerks. Our book won the E.G. Lutz Award for best book about animation 2001. I followed that book by bouncing between writing cartoons for a Danish animation studio and working on a short non-fiction book called "Bungee Jumping & Cocoons" which looked at trends in the industrial marketplace. In November 2011 I published my first novel, "The Missionary and the Brute", chilling literary fiction set in the Tanzania I love from my travels there as Executive Director of Brick by Brick for Tanzania!, Inc. - a non-profit that builds preschools in Africa. This harrowing tale follows the path of missoinary Jadwin Ross as he is accused of murders that he does not remember committing - and perhaps discovering a greater evil within.