Actually, the co-host of Fin Flicks is Drew Dietsch, with whom I think you've been in contact before. S: Yeah, they came out about the same time. I read it, and then a couple weeks later I think I found Meg in paperback. There was one called Extinct by Charles Wilson. There were a few books at the time that kind of sparked our interest in prehistoric marine biology. And there was definitely a push among all of my kid friends to read it. I was about 13 years old at the time and definitely grew up a shark kid. T: I read Meg when it hit paperback in the late 90s and I was hooked. S: Not from an academic standpoint, but from a literary standpoint I did. T: Did you have any interest in marine science before you heard about the Meg?
My wife was upset, and I said: "honey, this is the best thing that could happen because now I can start a second book!" And she about threw a frying pan at my head! Four days later, Meg went out to the six big publishing houses in New York and garnered a two-book deal. I went home with virtually no money in the bank. I found that family that was running the company, uh, no longer needed me and fired me. At the time I was working as the general manager of a wholesale meat company.
And on Friday the 13th in September 1996, I went to work. We worked on the book together for about six months. And in order to pay for editing fees, I wound up selling one of my cars. Ken felt the manuscript would make a good book, but it needed a lot of editing. Then I took out the manuscript and was able to get a literary agent interested - Ken Atchity in Los Angeles. And because I had a job in the evenings, I basically had to work on the book from 10:00 at night till 3:00 in the morning and on weekends. T: So it was the Megalodon that kind of sparked your first interest in writing fiction? And there was always a mention of a prehistoric shark called a Megalodon and I remembered reading about it and uh thought "boy, this might be a neat place for that shark to be." And so I went to the library and did about three weeks worth of research and found that it was feasible and decided that I was going to become an author. And when I was younger, I had loved reading stories about sharks. S: In August of 1995, 22 years ago, I picked up a Time magazine article and there was a story on the Mariana Trench: the deepest part of the ocean. And I was looking to do something - anything else.
And I found myself, after going through 10 straight years of college, earning a bachelor's, master's and doctorate degree in education, working for myself selling water treatment systems door-to-door.
I sold it to a partner and opened up a smaller one in Fort Lauderdale. I had owned a water treatment company up in Delaware. S: Well, it's warm down here! So I eventually gravitated down here. What brought you down to the South Florida area? T: So I understand you grew up in Philadelphia.
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