I graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1970 with a BS in aeronautical engineering, and got my MS in aero from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.  I spent most of my life, both in the Navy and as a contractor, working in tactical and strategic communications systems. My wife Karen is a retired English teacher and my fearsome and relentless editor., with four books of her own to her credit. She has an MA in education from Towson University.

My first book, The Eagle and the Dragon, is historical fiction set in about 100AD.  So what the hell, you might ask, would an engineer with that background be doing reading history, much less writing historical fiction?  Well, to answer that, history has long been a hobby, if not a passion.  This passion began with a book I picked up in the early seventies, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire.   This book dealt with Rome as it would a modern superpower, and the way it described the organization, training, employment and deployment of their legions made sense in present-day military terms, though of course there are vast differences in technology.  This led me to want to learn more about how the Romans viewed themselves, as expressed by their contemporary historians like Tacitus. 

I think that engineers take a slightly different view of history than historians.  I tend to look at history as the story of a society’s response to the stresses placed upon it, rather than just a sequence of events, or the various leaders that emerged.  In the case of Rome, I think the grid-locked and dysfunctional late Roman Republic gave rise to Julius Caesar and the ensuing autocratic Principate.  Had there not been a Julius Caesar, some other strong leader would have emerged to take charge.

Publications and Other Presentations

I published my first novella, Come, Follow Me, a Story of Pilate and Jesus, and my first full-length novel, The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China, in 2017. Take Charge and Move Out, the Founding Fathers of TACAMO just came out in March 2022. The rest of my writing has been technical in nature.  I did a high volume of technical writing for the government, which I can't share with you.  But below is a sample of my published personal technical works.  I will be happy to share them with you in detail

“Error Correction in Data Transmission,” Communications Quarterly,”  November 1990.

“A New Geometrical Interpretation of the Lorentz Transform and the Special Theory of Relativity,” presented at the Fall 1999 session of the Chesapeake Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (CS-AAPT)

“Geometric Lorentz Solutions for Bodies Undergoing Constant Acceleration Using Brehme Diagrams,” presented at the Spring 2000 session of the Chesapeake Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (CS-AAPT)

“Roman Maritime Trade in the Indian Ocean,” presented to the National Maritime historical Society, Peekskill, New York, February 2022