Leigh Nichols is a pen name of Dean R. Koontz/Dean Koontz. He was born and raised in Pennsylvania where he graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University). When he was a senior in college, he won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and has been writing ever since. His first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. During his first day on the job, he discovered that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and he was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made me an offer he couldn't refuse: "I'll support you for five years," she said, "and if you can't make it as a writer in that time, you'll never make it." By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of his writing career. They live in southern California with their dog Anna, and the enduring spirit of their dog Trixie in southern California. Dean Koontz is an international household name whose hugely entertaining parables for our times have been bestsellers in many countries, selling seventeen million copies each year.