Tim KernTim Kern (1951 - ) was born near Chicago and has lived in ten states, from Alaska to Florida. Son of a lawyer and a brilliant poet/professional ballerina and orphaned at 42, he had to rely on his Northwestern MBA and jobs as financial analyst, regionl manager, CFO, and CEO to put bread on the table until he invested fifteen less-lucrative years in teaching economics to high schoolers, undergraduates, and Ph.D. candidates. "The material's all the same," he says. "The laws of economics don't change. Peoples' preferences change. Students change. Change keeps life interesting." He spent a lot of time on talk radio ("Tim Kern, Talking Sense"), nine years on as many as two hundred stations, trying to solve the world's problems, using logic, research, and careful phrasing, none of which changed anyone's mind. A divorce unexpectedly turned him to smithing words. A friend was starting a blog (whatever that was -- this was in 2000), and invited him to be the "editor." Some three years and thousands of articles later, including hundreds of original pieces and interviews, Tim decided to write on his own, and over the next decade and a half wrote for over fifty magazines in the aviation industry, plus approximately a hundred companies - technical articles, how-to advice, new products, programs, sales and marketing... He's been a professional race car mechanic and driver, a motorcycle racer, a race car driving instructor, a machinist, and a nationally-recognized commercial and portrait photographer. He was a competitive pistol and long-distance shooter, and a pawn shop manager. He occasionally helps out at a local automotive garage, changing oil or engines or "whatever they need." And he earned a Bachelor of Music degree. Today, he writes. Manuals, magazine articles, and, lately, novels. He agrees with Stephen King that story ideas need to be spontaneous, and tries to follow Elmore Leonard's advice about "try[ing] to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip." This results in quick-read books, and allows readers to imagine the perfect characters and settings even as they enjoy absorbing the dialog and action. He wrote and published his first three novels (EGOFALL, Caught by a Cat, and Like Murder Like Son) in a two-year period, beginning in 2016. His FB page, Writings of Tim Kern, features other ideas, raw and finished; short stories; reader questions; updates, plus occasional ways to get freebies if people want them. Kern also occasionally edits and publishes others' novels (some now in the works) under his publishing company's MYSTERY ONE (tm) label. He lives near Indianapolis with his calico cat, Moochie. Read More Read Less