History

          When I was a college instructor, every quarter at least one or two students would come up to me with their eyes full of fear saying that he or she had never read an entire book and didn’t have a clue as to how to write the required term paper on a book from my approved reading list, which included Steven King, Dean Koontz, etc. (and there’s a link for my favorite books on my home page).  My students could choose any books from my list of favorite authors or another book with advanced approval. However, the whole idea terrified them, and they feared not being able to finish an entire book!

          The first time I heard this many years ago, I was shocked.  How could someone graduate from high school and never have read a book?  Then, I thought about how difficult it is/was sometimes for my boys to find books that interest them—so I set out to write a book that would interest kids at the middle school level.  That seemed to be where the buck stopped.  Most of my students said that once they hit middle school, they lost interest in reading and read as little as they could away with and often took tests on books they hadn’t read and just barely passed from listening in class.  Most often their reason for not reading assigned books was due to boredom. 

          So, I sat down to write a book that middle school kids would find interesting, and now I have fans that are anywhere from 12 to 80.  The character of Decker Zane is a compilation of two or three people.  One, my son, Chris, whose I.Q. exceeded mine when he was five years old—is where the “boy genius” aspect of Zane’s personality was derived.  Secondly, I had a student who was psychic and “unofficially” helped his uncle, a cop, solve crimes, but his personality is completely different than Zane, and this kid, if you can imagine, suffered from Obsessive-Compulsive disorder!  So, he was a teenaged version of Adrian Monk from the TV show Monk who unlike Monk is psychic!  However, my student did not want his “abilities” to be public knowledge, so Zane’s personality is a cross between my son, Chris (who is somewhat of a hacker), and a friend of mine, Brad Storts, whom I worked with at WorldCom. Brad  was a very talented lead tech in Desktop Support, and Brad loved rap music, had pierced ears, wore tons of jewelry—and was a white guy who grew up in the hood and went to an all black high school.  So—that's the history of Decker Zane in a nutshell.