My story begins in the desert, which is where I grew up. The old adage "you can take the boy out of the desert, but you can't take the desert out of the boy" is certainly true for me. I have retained a wondrous respect for nature, which has been manifest in my many camping trips in Death Valley and  numerous backpacking trips in the HIgh Sierra, Grand Canyon, and Alaska. My love of the desert was the inspiration for my first novel, Blowing in the Wind. My time in nature has taught me to be highly aware of my surroundings, a critical requirement for survival. Desert tales told to me by my father, who was editor of small town newspapers, provided me with a large palate  of desert tales to work with.  My desire to understand the world around me also gave me a love of science, which was the force behind my determination to do medical research and receive my PhD from UCLA. I became a molecular biologist, focused on DNA repair, cancer genetics and telomeres. I spent nearly 40 years doing research at UCSF, where I retired as a Professor Emeritus. However, my interests extend to many other scientific fields, including earth science, astrophysics and evolutionary biology. My love of science and teaching was the inspiration for my second novel, The Rose and the Thistle. This historical fiction novel about the discovery of vaccines is a result of my desire to make science more accessible through story telling, and my wish to convey how science is really a human endeavor, which often does not come across in most nonfiction books of popular science. The novel is about Emile Roux, who as an assistant in the laboratory of Louis Pasteur, makes the key discoveries leading to the first vaccines.