I was Raised in the South by a pack of wolves - good wolves with a pack leader and lifetime mate that protected the young and taught the three male pups how to survive in a chaotic world without losing the gift of kindness and love for fellow wolves. My love for writing started with a gift from my father.  Entering high school he gave me a Norman Mailer war story titled The Naked and the Dead. For the first time I realized the writer could own the true world and the fictional world in the same story. From that time on writing came easy for me. In high school I wrote a weekly humor column for our newspaper. In college at Chapel Hill my freshman short story about a talking horse who gave advice to world leaders (my version of Mr. Ed)  got me an invite to the Thomas Wolfe Creative Writing program. Two years in this program taught me the value of reading other people’s works and developing a critical eye. If you can criticize someone else’s writing you have a good start on improving your own efforts. Upon graduation from University I was invited to join the US Army where I spent three years and served as a Lieutenant in the Field Artillery on the DMZ in Korea during the Vietnam War. After release from service I proceeded to Graduate School for my MBA and  fell headlong into the computer trap. My years in the computer industry span the lengthy period from the day Jobs introduced the Lisa computer until Zuckerberg announced his IPO for Facebook. Along the way I was honored as co-creator of the “fuzzy search algorithms” used in most search engines. My DRM (Digital Rights Management) company was the first to release Julian Lennon’s No. 1 Hit “Day after Day” for Internet only distribution. Six of my patents are currently in relicense to Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Valve, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Zynga, Audible, Intuit, Symantec and MacroVision. My "541" patent is industry famous as the iTunes Patent that was licensed by Steve Jobs for iTunes. During my career years I never stopped creative writing. An early cold-war espionage thriller garnered a call from an Editor at a Harcourt imprint in New York. This was my introduction to book editors. At that time the Editor ran the show. After two lengthy consultations it was clear that the only way I would be published was to basically re-write the entire 325 pages. You see, the Editor  loved my writing but hated my story. I decided the only way that I could write and keep my story as my story was if I could afford to be independent. During the following years I continued to write for my own pleasure while I built an enviable career in the computer software industry.My favorite unpublished work is titled Stealing Blake which I spent the better part of twenty-four years composing and rewriting. It gave me the chance to create a historical fiction about one of my favorite creatives - William Blake. Maybe I will revisit that one after I finish Alice’s story. At last we have today. It started with a love letter. I wanted to tell Alice how much her devotion to me had  meant through the years. She was my rock - my confidant and she never found me wanting. We took a trip. We took cats. There were a lot of surprises. I decided our trip called for a love letter. After fifteen pages I realized I couldn’t stop without telling it all to Alice. Now two years later Alice can read the first installment in Dining and Driving with Cats - Alice Unplugged.