A lifelong reader, I majored in English and Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin - mainly because I enjoyed reading, and writing came easily to me. Following a career as a newspaper reporter/editor and public relations, I spent a few years sailing around the East Coast and Caribbean with my British wife on our sailboat Sea Spell.

After returning to the real world in 2007, we launched a bi-monthly regional magazine about boating in North and South Carolina.

In the past couple of years, I've discovered the joys of high end collectible books by the Easton Press and Franklin Library. I've begun to buy and sell these gold embossed, leather-bound beauties on ebay as a hobby. (Of course I read some of them before selling them, and my favorites remain on my shelf in a semi-permanent collection.)