Long before Microsoft and Amazon moved into Seattle, it was a Boeing town and my dad built airplanes for thirty years. It was a wonderful place to grow up! My Dad and I could go salmon fishing right out in the bay while we watched the Space Needle going up. Later I learned to scuba dive in that same bay, and it opened up a whole new world. It was just an hour's drive to the mountain ski resorts and hundreds of places for our Boy Scout troop to go camping. It's also, of course, where I made my first movie at age ten, and started serious writing with I was twelve, and why the first full-length book I wrote (though not the first one published) takes place in a tiny town on a bay, and is called Submarine Spy.

I've been telling stories almost all my life, starting at age ten. At first it was just for school and family, but it wasn't long before I had the itch to reach a wider audience. There were adventures inside of me, and I wanted others to be able to go on those adventures too. So as I grew, short stories, plays, and movies gave way to full-length books, screenplays, stage plays, radio and TV shows, magazine articles, and stage musicals.

Submarine Spy was the first real book I wrote, in my early twenties. But it wasn't the first one published. After the success of my Jotham's Journey series I decided to drag Sub Spy back out. I re-edited it and put it up for sale. For years, reader response was really good, and I got many requests to make it a series. So a couple years ago I started writing the next two books in what might become a larger set: Tracking Bigfoot and Sky Pirates. Those two books are out now, and as my other projects allow, I may be adding to that series.

Jotham's Journey was my first book published by a mainstream publishing house, and that whole series has done really well. But I also like to write smaller adventure books, and especially books for Christian pre-teens. That's not a huge market, and is a big and expensive gamble for mainstream publishers. When online publishing was invented, it provided me with a way to make those books available for no risk to me and inexpensively for readers. It was a win-win!

My college students just asked me that question yesterday in Screenwriting class, and I'll give you the same answer: I love reading books to find out what happens in the story, and I love writing them for the same reason. I know some authors completely outline their books before starting to write. But I can't do that. Like many other authors, I love creating some characters, putting them in a situation, and then seeing what they'll do. My family had to get used to me screaming at my characters while writing upstairs. "Jotham! Why did you do that!" I might yell, because I was writing along and all of a sudden the character did something totally unexpected. "How am I going to get you out of that???" For me, that's the real joy -- writing to find out what happens next.

I write not just to entertain, but to share some thoughts and ideas about living this life. The greatest joy for me is when readers write back. Often they just say a simple "Thank you for writing this," but just as often they'll tell us stories about how my writing has impacted their lives, and helped in a moment of crisis: homes that burned to the ground, drifting families that are drawn back together, and the worst nightmare of any parent. Over the years there have been thousands of letters, emails, phone calls, reviews, and even accostings in the grocery store:) It gives me the fuel to keep going, lets me feel that maybe I've done some good in some tiny little way, and I guess ultimately allows me to connect, and feel the pain and joy, of some wonderful and marvelous people.

Pretty much every moment I'm not teaching or preparing to teach we're with our grandchildren. We used to travel around the country and the world a lot, I used to scuba dive and fly, I love to read and watch movies, but now it's the grandkids. Every time we have some free time coming up, my wife and I ponder many things we could do with that freedom. But every time it comes down to, "Or, we could go see the grandkids." That always wins:)