Steven Athanas

Steve Athanas was born in 1959 in Worcester, Massachusetts. A budding military gene combined with public school failure led him in 1974 to ask his parents to send him to Fork Union Military Academy in rural Virginia. There he flowered under the discipline despite routine attack from his southern classmates over his Yankee accent. He subsequently graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1982, grateful that the much more diverse cadet body was tolerant of his regional pronunciation. In the Air Force he flew heavy-lift helicopters, wanting to be where the action was, and when not in the cockpit discovered he could write. He left the Air Force and after several civilian jobs answered an advertisement on dangerzonejobs.com that led him back to aviation, this time as a civilian helicopter pilot flying in Afghanistan. There he served with crazy characters brought from around the globe in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, while also coming under the whip of a war strategy designed not to lose rather than win a war. He has published two novels, Ramrod from his Afghanistan experiences and The 'Canal, an alternative telling of WWII's Battle for Guadalcanal.