Author Bio
I was born in Maine, the son of a career Air Force pilot. Growing up, I lived on bases in New Hampshire, Indiana, Nebraska, California, Louisiana, Michigan, and back to California. I can vividly remember falling asleep each night to the thundrous roar of B-52 engines on the nearby flight line. Education was the usual elementary school, junior high, and high school stuff, followed by nine solid years of bacchannal that I like to refer to as "college. The bulk of my learning during that time took place out of the classroom. I waited tables and tended bar in Newport Beach by night, then spent my days surfing, listening to a lot of loud music and reading pretty much every book I could get my hands on. I'm not sure whether it was Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson or Bruce Springsteen whose voice did the trick, but at some point I knew I wasn't destined for the corporate world.
Having said that, the first thing I did after finally graduating (my Mother had all but given up on that ever happening, and at one point seriously suggested I run off and join the circus—which, when you think about it, would be a cool way to pass a couple years) was get married and get a nine-to-five job in procurement for a Fortune 100 engineering company. This poor career choice led to a deep and abiding depression. Realizing it was cheaper (and quicker) than therapy, I paid a career counselor several hundred dollars to tell me something that I should have already known: the way to get happy was to become a writer. It wasn't as simple as just up and quitting the corporate gig, of course, but I soon began writing magazine stories on the side to indulge the writing jones. I wrote in the mornings, before work. Then I began writing at work, too (I was, perhaps, the worst employee ever in this history of corporate America). Then one day I got a call, asking if I would be interested in flying to Madagascar for three weeks to cover an adventure race. This would involve quitting my corporate job. Even though I wasn't making enough money as a writer to pay all the bills, my wife and I agreed this was a leap of faith we needed to take. I got on that plane.
Without intending to, I became an adventure writer through the Madagascar trip, and spent the next five years traveling the world to cover and compete in races like Eco-Challenge and Raid Gauloises. I sailed from Genoa to Mallorca aboard a tall ship (Columbus was born in Genoa), flew around the world in an Air France Concorde at twice the speed of sound (setting an around-the-world speed record in the process), and lived six weeks on Survivor island for the filming of that show's first incarnation. As exciting as all that was, my kids were getting older and needed me around more, so I decided to forgo the adventure world to indulge my passion for history. I envisioned a more tranquil authorly lifestyle. This led me to nearly get killed by a New Zealand logging truck while writing about Captain Cook (Farther Than Any Man), get arrested and nearly killed in Africa while writing about Stanley and Livingstone (Into Africa), and stumble quite accidentally into unauthorized, after-hours tour of the Alhambra in Granada. So much for the tranquil lifestyle.
I became something of a research fiend in the process, especially at the British Library. I rarely saw the inside of the library when I was in college. Nowadays you can't get me out of them.
The education part of all that is minimal, on the surface but it gives you an overview of the things I learned that aren't so tangible: perseverance, passion, introspection, faith. Those attributes, as much as any amount of research, go into each of my books. I've lived in Orange County, California since 1981.
FAVORITE AUTHORS:
Ernest Hemingway, Jan Morris, Bill Bryson, Anne Lamott, William F. Buckley. Hunter S. Thompson, Sebastian Faulks, and Irwin Shaw, James Salter is America's finest living writer, and I long to string together words as succinctly and beautifully as he. I have read and reread Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, and Michael Herr's Dispatches.
CURRENTLY READING
I tend to keep books scattered about my house and in my car. So right now it's The Long Way Home by Jim Harrison, The Blue Nile by Alan Moorehead, and Anne Lamott's Plan B.