The author, a California native, graduated from Carmel High School in 1964. He immediately left the United States and spent the next two-and-a-half years (July 1964 – December 1966) living as an expatriate in Europe. During that time, he traveled extensively on both sides of the Iron Curtain. He has returned to East Europe several times, most notably in 1989 to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall. He now lives with his two cats in Eugene, Oregon, where he is hard at work on a collection of short stories and his second novel.