Dirk grew up in a minister’s family, watching each week as Chris, his father, shaped what he believed was a divinely inspired message. The Lord never gave Chris all the details, just the basic “message” and it was dad’s job to craft that gospel into a persuasive, engaging twenty minute homily—every week. Little wonder Dirk has a life-long fascination with words and their power. Both of Dirk’s sisters are published authors.
Dirk was an actor throughout high school, much of college and one season of summer stock. Trained as a choral music teacher, he taught in public schools for several years after earning his MS Music degree at the University of Illinois.
While earning his livelihood trading for his own account on the floor of the Chicago Boar
Lewis Kingston was born in 1986. His early introduction to the world of science fiction came in the form of a taped version of the original radio broadcast of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and, before long, he had consumed all of the books, the BBC TV series, and the radio script itself.
By the age of eight, he had moved on to titles such as The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, only later his parents remembering what they contained, but, despite a voracious appetite for reading and writing, the thought of working in the field never crossed his mind. He subsequently studied Motorsport Engineering at Coventry, and graduated with a good qualification, but deemed himself not much of an engineer and sought work in other fields.
