Born in 1958, I am a lifelong Pittsburgher where I currently reside with my wife, Wendy, my son Ben, daughter, Amy, and Charlie, our beagle. From an early age, I developed a strong love of reading, especially good science fiction (Clarke, Bradbury, Asimov) and military, legal, political or spy novels (Clancy, Flynn, Forsythe, Grisham, Martin Cruz Smith). I also have an affinity for anything scientific, especially the space program. When not writing, reading or driving my kids to ballet classes or swimming practice, I enjoy sports, movies and more reading.

I attended Westminster College, a small liberal arts college an hour north of Pittsburgh, majoring in Math and Computer Science, graduating in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science degree. I added an MBA degree to my resume in 1988 from the University of Pittsburgh.

My professional career has traced the incredible rise of technology over the last twenty-five years. The first few years, 1980 to 1984, were spent in the typical Management Information Systems departments - now more commonly called "IT" for "information technology". I wrote and maintained mainframe applications for tasks such as tracking installment loans at Pittsburgh National Bank. Later, I moved on to Mellon Bank, where I was able to work with cutting edge technology on the trading floor of the Capital Markets Department. We were free of interference - mostly - of the central “glass house” for several years. I worked on very challenging projects such as modeling pre-payment behavior of mortgage-backed securities. The last couple of years there (1990-1992) were particularly enjoyable because I was able to use Steve Jobs’ “insanely great” NeXT computer, the coolest development environment for software ever made (in my humble opinion).

Unfortunately, central MIS saw my use of NeXT as proprietary (true) and subversive (absolutely). They had it in for me for a long time because my independent success made them look irrelevant (also true).

I left to join NeXT as a Systems Engineer, a sales rep’s technical partner. The job of the SE is to explain and evangelize about all the wonderful technology in a product. Playing this role at NeXT was nirvana for me. I got to continue programming but didn’t have to live with the consequences. It took some adjustment to play in the dynamic environment of sales but before long, I discovered a competitive streak I didn’t know I had.

NeXT was eventually sold to Apple Computer and I left to be the first SE at a software startup, Active Software. The timing was perfect. I was responsible for building a pre-sales technical team from the ground up, we had a great product, doing great things and the company grew quickly in size and revenue, culminating in a very successful initial public offering in 1999. Active merged with webMethods in 2000 and I left that Fall, rather burned out.

After takeing a few months off - and beginning to write Selling Air - I was lured back to a startup for several months in 2001. I soon realized, however, that my heart wasn't in software sales anymore and turned to devote my full attention to novel writing. Selling Air is the first fruit of that focus.