ABOUT ME
Sometimes people will say about a child that he or she is Old Soul. I have come to understand that I was one of those Old Souls.
At an early age, I knew things that some adults didn’t. I engaged adults in conversation as equals not superiors. Of course, that didn’t always work to my benefit.
My one unfortunate aspect of childhood was being bored in school, not out of being smarter, just never saw the need. That opinion I regret. Ironically, in my late thirties, this thing called computers, was looming closer and closer. I found myself fascinated with the ultimate power of writing code, making things happen. The thirst for understanding made me regret classes in both algebra and geometry. Something I honestly refused to try and comprehend in High School, suddenly so crucial in developing software.
Something, however, must have taken root; little did I know that a genuine spark of knowledge and an appetite to understand history, buried deep would surface later in life. Not just the stuff we learned in school, but a real desire to know the offbeat facts behind the scenes. Traveling on family vacations would sometimes find me delving into the local history, the tidbits of local lore that makeup almost every community.
I was late to the party in many things in life, reading the written word was something I struggled with until one day, somewhere in the third grade as I recall, I received a book, a gift. The writings of Franklin W. Dixon, author of the Hardy Boys Mystery novels, was the spark to let me into this new and exciting world. Other world's opened to me, ones I craved. Over time, of course, this became an insatiable appetite for the descriptive words of different worlds, everything from Clancy to Follett to Rowling. One day after finishing a book, I said to myself, “I could do that.”
The idea of writing a book, a whole book is an incredibly daunting thing. Somewhere along that remote hamster wheel-spinning brain came a kernel of an idea. The idea of teens haphazardly traveling in time was a series that made instant sense to me. The books spun out of my head.
My goal in doing this series is simple. Convey a story about teens, history, and science that would both inform and entertain, encouraging young readers.
In the Pilgrim Series, I found that vehicle.