I am eternally grateful to my parents—I was born and raised in Florida. I still live here. It doesn’t get any better than that. Plus, as an only child with a birthday halfway between Christmases, I hit the jackpot every six months.

You’re probably wondering if my parents named me after John Wayne, the actor. Actually, they weren’t fans of the Duke. They had settled on the name “Wayne,” but that was it. As my mom and dad were checking out of the hospital, a nurse was filling out the birth papers and asked them what my full name was. She told them everyone has to have at least two given names (she was mistaken). My dad, whose name was John, got flustered and without thinking said “John.” I think he meant it to be my middle name, but the rest is history.

Growing up in Florida’s post-war boom years, I quickly recognized how critical real estate development would become. My maternal grandfather was a citrus grower and owned substantial tracts of land along the Halifax, Tomoka, and Indian Rivers and near beaches. As a teenager, the future seemed clear to me. But my mother had different ideas. She wanted an engineer in the family to the extent that she chose my courses in high school—all math and science.

Once I got to college, I switched to pre-law after ten minutes in an intro to calculus class. I graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Law, passed the Florida Bar exam, and practiced transactional law for several years representing real estate investors, developers, and lenders. Eventually, I was brought over to the “dark side,” real estate development operations. Along the way, I earned the MBA degree and a doctorate in Business. This background of academics and real estate development operations led to a request from the dean of a graduate school of business to develop and chair a Master's of Science degree program in Real Estate Development. Then, the dean moved on and I’d had more than enough of the academic slant on politics. Between law, business, and academia I learned the power of words and the importance of using precisely the right ones.

I left academia, withdrew from my real estate development activities, and returned to my original first love—writing novels. I had written my first book, The Quixotics, while in law school. A couple of decades later, I got back into it and the Sleeping Dogs series was born. At the request of some powerful literary agents, my thriller, The Taxman Cometh, is a one-off (and possible start of a new series). I intend to maintain my pace of at least one novel each year. And, no, we haven’t heard the last from those Dogs.

I have been a lifelong fitness freak. Blessed with good genetics, I make it a point to train every day. I’m particularly addicted to swimming, biking, runnng, weight-training (and, on rare occasions, a ski trip). On some days, I’ll do two or three activities such as a brick—swim then leap out of the pool and immediately climb on my bike. Yeah, I know, it helps to be crazy.