Tom Jones was born in Akron, Ohio when it was still “The Rubber Capital of the World” and the acrid smell of sulphur in the air was a matter of civic pride. Like his grandfather and his father before him, he, too, was employed at Firestone Tire & Rubber as a young man. Instead of helping to build the company up, however, he instead helped to document its decline. This, as he and a dozen other employees (all children of Firestone management) worked nights and weekends keying in thousands upon thousands of dealer adjustment forms for the Firestone 500 Steel Belted Radial—a product so disastrous that its eventual recall still stands as the largest tire recall in U.S. history.

Following his graduation from Kent State University, he packed his Chevette, fled what was then rapidly becoming known as “the rustbelt” and (like his grandfather before him) headed to a boomtown—Houston. Following the collapse of the oil industry there three years later, he found employment within the advertising industry in San Antonio for twenty years as a nationally award-wining copywriter. Ten of these years were at his own firm, Flying Terrier Creative Company, which was named after a stray dog with a broken tail that he adopted off the street. That dog’s name was Waldo, which inspired his first book, Waldo Maccabees, In the Footsteps of Christ—a fictionalized narrative of the ministry of Christ as seen through the eyes of His dog.

Tom lives in New Braunfels, Texas, with his wife, Steffanie.