I’ve always wondered what it would be like to write my biography backwards, so here we go.

Right now I live in Seattle with my wife, Staci, and our son, Jack, who was born in April. When I’m not writing fiction, I’m writing grant proposals for a nonprofit organization near Seattle. And when I’m not writing grant proposals, I’m on a walk, visiting friends and family in New York, watching basketball, playing soccer, or reading biographies of U.S. Presidents.

From 1998 until late 2006, I lived in New York, where I worked in book publishing. I moved to New York after graduating from the University of Washington, where I majored in history. It was a great place to go to college even if it was only a few blocks from the neighborhood I’d lived in since my family moved to the northwest from South Dakota in 1982.

I was eight years old in 1982. That’s going way back, but South Dakota wasn’t the first place I lived. Or the second. Or even the third. By the time we arrived in South Dakota, I’d already lived in New Jersey, Germany, and New York City. And that’s where I was born: New Rochelle, NY, in January 1974.