I'm a retired history teacher living in Minnesota. I was born in Maine in 1949, studied at Johns Hopkins and Purdue (got my PhD in 1977; my fields are military history, European diplomatic history, and modern Germany), and taught at a prep school in Minnesota (Shattuck-Saint Mary's) from 1978 to 2016. I began writing the Mercenaries books in 2001. I got a fine agent for Storm Approaching, but even fine agents do not always sell books, so after a long wait on one major publisher—the first reader approved it, the second did not—I decided to publish the book myself. There are three more volumes in the series: Gold and Glory, Resolution, and The Free Lands. I have also published And Gladly Teach, a satirical novel about a boarding school, and Hodgepodge, a small book of humorous essays on many topics.