Lee Maynard was born and raised deep in the mountains of West Virginia, a location that drives the emotion and grit of most of his writing. He says he had never had a "career." Rather, he sought out "day jobs" while doing his real job--writing. Among several other things, he has been a criminal investigator, college president, and COO of a national experiential education organization. He now lives and writes at the edge of an Indian reservation in the high desert of New Mexico. He is the author of The Pale Light of Sunset: Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life and theCrum trilogy: Crum, Screaming with the Cannibals, and The Scummers.