About the Author

My wife says I’m doing this all wrong.  The stuff about the book, she thinks, should be in the Welcome page.  The About the Author stuff should have stuff about me, the author.  I suppose that’s organizationally correct, but I don’t find myself that interesting.  The book, Jury Rig, on the other hand, I think is very interesting.  So that’s what goes here.  I’ll try to weave biographical info into the narrative about the book.

In the summers of 2002 and 2003, my wife, Lisa, and I were drinking a lot on our porch.  She is a trial consultant who travels the country giving attorneys advice and helping them pick juries and whatnot.  (I don’t think I’m the only husband who doesn’t really know what his wife does at work).  When she came home from a trial or a mock trial, we would sit out on our porch, drink, and she would tell these really funny stories.

At the time, we were reading a lot of Evanovich and Hiaasen.  After she would tell a particularly funny story, we would say, “We should write a book.”  That eventually turned into, “That should go in the book.”  That, eventually, turned into Jury Rig, although I believe only one thing from any of those drunken nights made it into the book.

Well, I have to say that I did an absolutely horrible job of weaving any biographical information about myself into that narrative.  I’m married and a bit of a drunk.  That’s about all you can tell about me from the narrative.  Because I could be legally obligated to put some information about the author in a section called About the Author, here’s some info.  I graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor’s degree in Art History.

A bachelor’s degree in Art History is, essentially, a prerequisite degree.  Its purpose is to qualify the recipient for more education.  So, I went to law school.  I’ve been a public defender doing appeals for over ten years.

Jury Rig is my first book.