I come from Alaska and have wanted to be a novelist for as long as I can remember. I’ve always stolen hours away to write while working on ships that crossed the Atlantic and braved winter in the Northern Pacific.

I published my first novel, 'The Life and Death of the Ericsons,' in August. It's a World War II-era odyssey about a young couple who fall in love but are ripped apart and dragged to different sides of the globe. They desperately try to find one another as the War brings their lives crashing down.

It’s an epic that spans generations and continents about passion and the lengths Thomas Ericson goes to chase it while fighting off the shadow of his family’s past.

I live just outside of Tokyo (for now).