I day-dreamed a lot about those faraway places. In those days there was still radio where you had to use your imagination (television was still a couple of years away) to travel with Terry and the Pirates to the mysterious East, or fight alongside Jack, Doc and Reggie as they solved the riddle of a vampire castle in I Love a Mystery, or ride with The Lone Ranger pursuing the bad guys through the canyons of the Southwest.

On Saturday afternoons a quarter would get you a front-row seat (if you got there early enough) to watch Gene Autry and Roy Rogers gallop across the silver screen. And, what you really came for, were those wonderful serials, always ending with a incredible cliffhanger, that featured heroes likeThe Phantom, and Zorro's Black Whip.

A few years later we moved into the house on 76th Street just off Greenwood Avenue. It was the summer before I started the 3rd grade at Greenwood Elementary School. It was a big move into a big house. The upstairs was partially unfinished. My room overlooked the back yard and, while they were still there, four cherry trees. It was a nice room and there was a "secret" panel in the wall and a "tunnel" that ran along the edge of the house and opened into a tiny room. It was my secret cave and a wondrous place to explore in my imagination. I remember our cat climbing in through the second floor bathroom window from roof every evening.

Every Tuesday and Friday I'd walk the mile from my house down to the drugstore on the corner of 85th and Greenwood. Those were the day the new pulp magazines arrived. There might be a new Galaxy, Startling Stories or Astounding Science Fiction. That's when I began to imagine that someday I might be a writer and create my own worlds. I started to write stories, I took creative writing classes, learned how to set type and publish in John Marshall Junior High School, and went on to become a reporter on the Ballard High School newspaper.

After a while, I discovered the thrill of reading. The Greenwood Public Library was a comfortable box of a building on Greenwood Avenue six blocks from our house. It has long since moved to a newer brick and glass structure a mile north, but the quiet charm of the old building remains in my memory. Sunny Saturday afternoons and rainy weekday evenings. This was a place where I discovered faraway times and distant worlds. My favorite reading was science fiction. One of the highlights of that time was discovering the books of Robert Heinlein, and in particular, his Farmer in the Sky.

But writing was a dream that was put on hold while I went into the Air Force, became a radar technician, and traveled to exotic places like Mississippi, North Dakota and Alaska. After my discharge, I returned to Seattle and worked for a while as a drapery installer and movie theatre manager, then went back to school at Seattle Central Community College and learned about computer programming. That was the day (not that long ago) of mainframes when filled half a room. It was fun, but I still wanted to write stories.

Then came the one fine day when I made a life-altering decision and moved south to La La Land (also known as Los Angeles) to make it in the movies as a screenwriiter. Slight detour while I got married, moved to Santa Monica, and continued to program computers for the University of Southern California, but finally I sold a TV script to a Sunday morning syndicated show and then some live-action Saturday morning series, Space Academy and Jason of Star Command. It was while writing for Filmation Studios that began to write animation. I developed and story edited the original Flash Gordon series, and wrote all the episodes for the first season with Sam Peeples (he wrote the pilot for the original Star Trek series).

Since then I went on to write more than 200 animation scripts, develop and story edit several series, including Centurions and Chuck Norris. My credits included such unforgettable epics as ExoSquad, X-Men, Captain Planet, Skysurfer Strike Force, Pocket Dragons, James Bond, Jr., Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Smurfs, and (my personal favorite), Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

A few years ago, I began to concentrate on books. I had written cartoons for a kids audience, so I decided to focus on books for that same middle-grade audience. My first young adult novel was The Pet, a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine adventure that I collaborated on with my friend, Mel Gilden. I went on to write three more (solo) novels in the series.

It was at about that time (1994) that a new phenomena was happening: the Internet. Some people thought it was a passing fad. But it gave me the idea for a book -- Internet For Kids -- which I co-wrote with my animation writing collaborator, Francis Moss. The book went on to sell a lot of copies, get published in almost a dozen foreign languages, and spin off How to Make Your Own Web Page! A Guide for Kids and How to Find Almost Anything on the Internet. I also developed and wrote (with my friend Mel Gilden) the award-winning Cybersurfers books. Then I went on to write several books in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine young adult series.