I am the author of many books and articles. I am a retired college professor. I have been married for over 29 years and am the father of four children (ages 17 and 22--this is a puzzle; figure it out). Bobby, our Norfolk Terrier, is ten years old now. We live near Tucson, Arizona.

Like Julian Drew, I was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, where I went to Steenrod Elementary School. I have also lived in Arizona (I graduated from McClintock High School in Tempe), Kansas, Michigan, and New York.

I have a Bachelor's degree in language arts from the University of Kansas and taught high school English and French for three years. After earning both a master's degree and a doctorate in reading education at the University of Michigan, I began teaching college students.

For twenty-seven years, I taught reading and study skills to underprepared college students; I retired to write fulltime in early 2003.  My favorite things to do are spending time with my family, reading, writing, and traveling.

I became a writer in the fifth grade. Sometime during the winter of that year, I was playing with a group of friends in the woods behind out houses when we came across some strange tracks in the snow. They didn't look as if any familiar animals had made them (they were big tracks) but they didn't look human either. They looked like some kind of monster tracks--and I knew just what kind: space aliens had made them after their spaceship had crash-landed in our woods. Well, we never found out what they were that day (and the snow had melted by the next day) but we had a great mystery for one day at least.

That night when I went home I took out a notebook and began to write a chapter book. After all, I had read every Hardy Boy book, and I knew that those tracks would make a great story. I wrote a title at the top of the page (The Strange Tracks Mystery), and then I wrote one page and stopped. I had the idea but not the ability to follow through at that point. But that's how I began my life as a writer. I wish I still had that first page, but I lost it.

A year later, I tried again, this time with a short story. I loved science fiction movies, and so I created a story called The Green Eyed Monsters. This time I finished it. I went on to write for school newspapers and yearbooks. By the time I got to college, I had decided to become a teacher to pay the bills. At first I taught high school English, but after I received my master's degree, I switched to teaching college students. For twenty-seven years I taught them how to develop their reading, vocabulary, and study skills--and I can think of no more rewarding work, except perhaps writing for children.

I write both nonfiction and fiction.  I have chosen to write about nonfiction subjects that interested me as a child: ghosts, UFOs, treasure, ESP, and mummies. I've also written about subjects that I discovered as an adult: bog bodies and castles and caves.

I chose to write about ghosts first, because I was petrified of them when I was little. Before I was born, my grandfather had died of a heart attack while sitting on my grandmother's green damask sofa with the caned back. I remember the first time I heard this fact: I was seated on that very sofa when my grandmother mentioned that I was sitting in the exact spot where my great grandfather had died. That experience convinced me to make a nightly ghost check: under the bed, in the closet, behind the door. I had to shut the closet door tight and make sure that no clothes were hanging over my desk chair (they might turn into a ghost at night).

Today I find life full of interesting surprises and strange experiences (not always caused by my four children!).

For example, a number of years ago, I was awakened around 4 a.m. when I heard (I was certain) the cabinet in the hall bathroom slamming shut. Next I heard noises that sounded like the Big Bird footstool (also in the bathroom) being dragged across the floor. I thought it was one of my children (it wasn't unusual to hear them in the middle of the night), so I kept listening.

But I didn't hear any more noises and that worried me: maybe someone was sick. So I went to check to make sure that my kids were okay. To my surprise, they were all sound asleep in bed. But what had made those noises? I knew there wasn't a burglar, because the alarm hadn't gone off. Then I thought: Maybe it was a ghost (after all, I wrote a few books about the subject).

So I walked through the house to check everything--and found nothing unusual. I went back to bed and fell asleep. In the morning I discovered that raccoons had gotten into the garbage cans next to the house. But at 4 a.m., when I had been awakened from a sound sleep, my ears thought that the noises were coming from the bathroom. This just shows that it's hard to tell what the truth is--even for adults! (If you've read The Very Real Ghost Book of Christina Rose, compare the story I just told to one that Professor Barrymore tells about the toilet-flushing ghost!)

I also had an interesting experience involving Christina Rose. The novel is set in a fictional California town called North Klondike. In the book, Christina and her family move to a haunted pink Victorian house in North Klondike. After I finished the book in February 1994, I went to California and visited some small towns in the vicinity of "North Klondike"--mostly because I had never been to that part of California before. In one really small town very near where I had set the imaginary N. Klondike, I discovered a restaurant named the Klondike Cafe. I also discovered that this particular town had a Victorian house said to be haunted--of course, the house was painted pink! How could I have imagined these coincidences? I don't know. Maybe a little ESP was involved (and if it wasn't, it's still fun to think so!).

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