My first love was astronomy, which led to cosmology, which led to physics generally, with forays into geology and meteorology. I never got that far in college and ended up a software developer, which has been a great career and paid the bills most of the time.

But alongside that, I was a writer. The first story I remember writing spilled out when I was six or seven. I wrote oddles of SF short stories through junior high, high school, and early adulthood. My first week in college, I met a wonderful young woman who was much better at writing than I (and who was also into history and the biological sciences). She spent the next 45 years mentoring, editing, and cheering me on. Sadly, she passed away two and a half years ago, but I now have 8 novels and 3 short story collections on the market.

I'm still an amateur astronomer. I'm also a (not very good) bonsai artist. We can do all sorts of things, if we have the interest and put in the effort. Although he went rather overboard, Robert Heinlein famously said: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”