Who Am I?

I've been working with personal computers since the mid 1980s. In 1990, after an extremely boring career as an auditor and financial analyst (I have a bachelor's degree in accounting), I began a freelance career as a writer, computer consultant, and computer applications trainer. By 1992, I was writing how-to books for popular computer applications. (I've written 28 books since then. You may see estimates of "billions and billions," but it only seems that way.)

I got involved with the Web in 1995 when one of my clients decided to build a Web presence. I learned HTML and started building Web pages. Since then, I've built quite a few Web sites for small businesses, including most of the local Web sites illustrated throughout this book.

My Web work has taught me many things that I think are vital to the success of a small business Web site. It has also helped me develop my own Web authoring philosophy, which is constantly being refined. This is some of the information I'm sharing in this book.

These days, I spend most of my working hours writing computer how-to books and articles and maintaining the Web sites I've built. My labor of love is wickenburg-az.com (http://www. wickenburg-az.com/), which I hope you'll find time to visit.

When I'm not working, I'm nowhere near my computer. Instead, I'm usually outdoors (weather permitting; it gets pretty darn hot here in the summer!), working in the garden, horseback riding , motorcycling, off-roading in my Jeep, or flying a helicopter.