Dan earned a living by doing minor league journalism, technical writing and finally computer programming. But he had been called Dan by his very young parents after a character in a science fiction novel and that bit of predestination stuck.

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At seven he decided to be an artist and settled on painting. Two or three weeks into that he realized he didn’t draw very well and he switched to literature.

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In middle school he encountered his first serious library and discovered H. G. Wells.

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A few years later a pair of chortling school pals found a copy of Skin and Bones on the shelves of a local thrift store and stuck it in his locker – a comment on his physique.

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Dan read the Thorne Smith novel and found the second of his science fiction heroes.

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An interesting and challenging pair to emulate, H. G. Wells and Thorne Smith. War of the Worlds meets Topper.

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And then in high school Dan’s still young parents were having drinks with friends before going out to dinner. He was in the kitchen, mulling over a typewriter. A woman in her middle thirties, looking for the bathroom, stumbled across him and asked what he was doing. He explained.

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“I started out to be a writer,” she said. After a pause she added, “Never quit.”

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The regret and poignancy in her voice was such that he never did.