About Our Authors
Author - Ashley Adams
Ashley Adams has been playing poker since 1963 when he learned it, literally, at his grandfather’s knee. Since then he has gone on to be a winning home game and casino player, having played and won cash games and small tournaments all over the world. He is a poker author as well, having penned over 1,000 poker articles (for Card Player Magazine, Poker Player Newspaper, pokernews.com, and many other publications and websites) and two poker books: Winning 7-card Stud (Kensington 2002) and Winning No Limit Hold’em (Lighthouse 2011). He is also the host, since 2007, of the longest running broadcast poker radio show in the world, House of Cards (www.houseofcardsradio.com). He is happily married, with two poker playing daughters and now a granddaughter, whom he is eager to instruct in poker. He lives in Roslindale (a section of Boston) Massachusetts.
Author - John Addison
John Addison is president of OPTIMARK, a leading consulting firm focused on sales channel strategy and partner development. OPTIMAR, based in Silicon Valley, has helped technology leaders grow their businesses. These leaders include Sun Microsystems, General Electric, Veritas, and QLogic. Mr. Addison is also on the advisory boards of breakthrough, early-stage companies. Mr. Addison provides early-stage consulting to companies who achieved successful IPOs. His workshops and speeches are popular in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, including conferences of sales professionals and solution integrators. Prior to founding OPTIMARK, Mr. Addison was an area channel manager for Sun Microsystems. For three years, he led a sales team to 300% annual growth in 15 states from $4 million to $110 million. Mr. Addison is considered one of the early architects of Sun.
Author - Joseph D. Andrews
Joe Andrews is the founder and Director of The Grand Prix (“live”) World Series of Euchre, Spades, and Hearts. For several years, he was a card game columnist for the MSN Gaming Zone, the Games Magazine. He also invented two new card games - “Jack Attack” and “Match Plus”. An avid collector and card historian, Joe Andrews was also the former director of the American Hearts and Spades Players Association.
He is the author of four “Complete Win at” card game books (Spades, Hearts, Bid Whist, and Euchre) and has played card games competitively for the past 30+ years. Joe Andrews passed away in December of 2019.
Author - Susan D. Artof
Susan D. Artof is a long time boating enthusiast from Marina Del rey California. She has collected boat names and stories for over 25 years while traveling to various harbors with her husband and two competitive sailboat racing kids. She is the author of seven books and numerous articles on a variety of subjects including psychology, a subject she taught at Santa Monica College for 23 years before turning her time to writing and sailing.
Author - Daniel Allen Butler
Daniel Allen Butler is an American author and playwright, who writes about historical topics, particularly maritime history. The Washington Times described him as a “steamship nut”. Butler was educated at Hope College, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Erlangen.
Author - Francis E. Caldwell
Author Francis E. Caldwell never intended to become a professional fisherman, but circumstances and life brought him to Ketchikan, Alaska, where he gradually found himself immersed in the highly insular, sometimes fiercely competitive, but always supportive salmon fishing community. It’s a story of hard work, hard friendships, tough men, and tough ships, as Caldwell recounts the tales of buying his first small boat, learning how to catch king salmon on sport gear, then roving around southeast Alaska, camping on the beach, fishing for salmon from a 16-foot skiff. Ten years, a near-death experience with hypothermia, and some close encounters with giant Alaskan brown bears later, he reached his goal, earning enough money to buy a large salmon troller and join the ranks of Alaska’s professional fisherman.
Author - Bart Crabb
Bart Crabb has been fishing virtually all his life, with first hand experience on most of the major lakes in the US, Mexico and Canada. He currently writes for various fishing magazines and is the author of numerous fishing guides.
Author - Dr. Ben Griffes
Doctor Benjamin Griffes lives in Thousand Oaks, California with his wife and three children. He practices chiropractic in both Tarzana and in Thousand Oaks. He has coached youth soccer and track, and has been the team chiropractor for high school volleyball, basketball and track, as well as collegiate cycling. He was trained as a Hellerwork Practitioner by Joseph Heller in 1981, and set up his practice in structural integration and deep-tissue bodywork in Los Angeles. In 1986, he completed his Master’s Degree in Physical Education, with a minor in Sports Medicine, at California State University, Northridge. In 1990, he completed the requirements to become a Doctor of Chiropractic from Cleveland Chiropractic College in Los Angeles, and began practicing in 1991 in Tarzana.
Author - Bill Heinlen
He wrote Celestial Navigation in Plain English offers a succinct, straightforward explanation of the fastest, easiest legitimate methods. Bill Heinlen presents the basic skills that will enable you to find your way anywhere in the world.
Author - Jerry Kelley
Jerry Kelley was born in Spokane, Washington and moved to West Seattle in 1929. He spent summers in 1939 - 1942 working for the New England Fish Co. at Steamboat Bay and Noyes Island, Alaska. After College, he served in the USNR as an Antisubmarine Officer on APD 111, a new ship on shakedown cruise when WWII ended. He later attended the University of Chicago, earning a degree in Social Service Administration.
Author - Patricia Lander
Patricia Parker Lander was born and raised in the Montlake neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, and attended the University of Washington before leaving for San Francisco in the late 1940s. She was a long-time administrator with the American Cancer Society in the Bay Area, and while there, wrote for newspapers and television. In Santa Clara County, CA, she was a Public Information contact-person, and before retiring, was the Assistant Manager for the Concord, CA Chamber of Commerce, where she wrote annual reports, press releases and other needed informational papers. She now lives in an adult retirement community in Arizona with her husband Jack. Here, she was one of the original founders of the Sun Lakes Community Theater, and during her years with the theater, she acted, directed and wrote news copy. Her idea for writing a book on Puget Sound Ferries came during one of her annual vacations to Washington State about seven years ago.
Author - Jeff Markell
Jeff Markell was formerly an officer in the U.A. Merchant Marine. He has sailed on most of the major oceans of the world except for the Arctic and the Antarctic. He says he prefers to avoid extreme cold whenever possible. Jeff also has over 35 years of experience sailing on small pleasure craft ranging from dinghies to 65’ cruising boats- mostly sail, and some power boats as well. He has been aboard or sailed on a number of the besides described in this book, and it able to give direct first hand impressions based on what he himself has seen. In addition to his experience as a professional mariner he has also been active in pleasure boating circles. He is a long time member of the U.S. Power Squandrons where he has been both a Squadron and direct District Commander, and was the founder of the San Juan Power Squadron in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was also a former officer in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Author - Lily M. Margules
Lily Mazur-Margules, R.T. was born to professional parents. Along with her sister Rachel, Lily was raised with cultural exposure to music and arts and given the best possible education. She is a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto, Kaiserwald and Stuthoff Concentration Camps, Dunawerke and Steindorf Slave Labor Camps, and “the Death March”. The Mazur sisters were liberated by Russian troops in 1945 and, after a long odyssey through Russia immigrated to Buenos Aires in 1948. In 1956, Lily and her husband moved to New York. She is a retired Radiotherapy Technician and is proud of her family’s accomplishments and is dedicated to telling her story through the darkest period in human history.
Author - Scott Michael
Scott W. Michael has been obsessed with eleamobranchs since the age of twelve, after encountering his first shark in a public aquarium. While still in high school he studied the food habits of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, and has since conducted shark and ray research in the Sea of Cotez, Australia, and New Zealand. He is a member of the American Elasmobranch Society, and currently leads dive trips, dubbed Shark Safaris, which give divers the opportunity to observe and learn more about these fascinating animals.
Author - LaVonne Misner
Not only is LaVonne Misner an accomplished storyteller of the written word, she also is an established painter with her talents equally steeped in the visual arts. LaVonne’s own painting of her beloved cruiser The Vonnie-T graces the cover of her first book.
Author - Julie Posey
Julie is a writer, blogger and Web designer from Wichita, KS. She writes about a variety of topics depending on what is going on in her life and what inspires her. She’s particularly passionate about all things electronic, computers and the Internet. She continues to write, blog and help a generation of child abuse survivors.
Author - James Sand
James Sand designed what he thought was a sailboat with auxiliary oars, only to discover it was actually a rowing boat with auxiliary sails. He then proceeded to run the Skagit, circumnavigate Bainbridge Island, encounter a Pribiloff seal on the “River of the Moon” and round Cape Horn (the one just west of Concrete Washington). He later designed and built other rowing boats, with or without auxiliary sails, and learned such things as how to navigate without electronic devices and how to make boating an inexpensive hobby.