Stephen C. Spencer

I’m always more than a little diffident when it comes to either talking or writing about myself. As Winston Churchill is alleged to have said about Clement Attlee, I’m a modest man with much to be modest about. (That rhetorical device is called a paraprosdokian, should you want to either impress or alienate your friends one of these fine days. But you don’t have to be impressed with me: I had to look it up. Until just now, I’d always thought it meant a fear of the number thirteen.) I’ve been writing for as long as I can recall. The way I remember it, my first story (this would have been in the fourth or fifth grade) was about a bumbling explorer who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, losing two of his three ships, half the crew’s food and water supply, and his color television set en route before sailing triumphantly into Ohio’s state capital on 12 October 1492 and christening it Columbus. (He had wanted to use his Spanish name, Colón, but the marketing people shot him down.) These same elements—sophisticated humor and a well-intentioned hero who never gives up—are present (I hope!) in my Paul Mallory thrillers of today. You could say that I haven’t come very far in all that time, and I wouldn’t argue with you. But I also wouldn’t care. I’m enjoying the trip far too much to rush through it. Be seeing you!