About the Author

Michael Julian Phillips is a 54-year old retired journalist-artist, a Fifth-generation Californian whose career has included many projects for film-video, stage, numerous children's books, newspapers and magazines, and music. Julian was born in 1957, at Saint Mary's Hospital in Long Beach, California, the son of John William Phillips, an Army Radio Man who served in World War 2 and the Korean Conflict, and his young German born bride, Brigitte, an orphan girl whose childhood included witness of Hitler's murderous rule, and Russian military incursion into East Germany. Julian's grandfather, Edward Julian Phillips, known as 'Jules', was a Salinas area farmer and crop scientist, who was schoolyard pals with famous California writer John Steinbeck. Julian has worked in freelance and small newspapers since about 1973, and was editor of a countywide weekly tabloid newspaper, year 2000 to 2003, in San Luis Obispo County, California, where he spent most of his life, and grew up on ranches and farms. The writer earned a BA degree in Journalism/Communication from San Jose State University in 1981. Julian has been married for 25 years to his wife, Carol Lynn, and his son Preston Laverne Phillips is now an art student in San Francisco.