I'm a former schoolteacher (St. Albans School) who segued into journalism (Washingtonian magazine as senior writer, the Orlando Sentinel and King Features Syndicate, and back to the Washingtonian as senior editor) and from there into books. Although I didn't realize it as I working on them, my last three books explored a common theme: people and events lost in their own mythologies — Andrew Johnson (THE AVENGER TAKES HIS PLACE), John Chapman (JOHNNY APPLESEED), and the 1970 Kent State shootings (67 SHOTS). My newest book, SPLASH!, began as a labor of love. I was a competitive swimmer through college and a coach for a few years afterwards, and I've kept at it ever since, in just about every venue I could dive into with a reasonable chance of survival. As I worked on SPLASH!, it also became a parallel journey of discovery at multiple levels about the 10,000 years of swimming that link ancient pictographs in the Egyptian desert with the modern Olympic speed machines of today. I've never had more fun writing or felt a book at so deep a level.
