E. J. Knapp was born during a thunderstorm in Detroit, Michigan several years before the Motor City discovered fins. Three days after his somewhat clamorous birth, his mom and dad gave him the first and middle name which he never uses, while his long lost uncle, appearing, drunk, out of nowhere, gave him the nick-name (Skipper) which has been, in various forms, with him since then, and then promptly disappeared again (the uncle, not the nick-name), ultimately to die in Utah, of all places. Shortly thereafter, mom and dad headed in different directions. EJ, and his sister, went with dad.

 

EJ was raised in a working-class, blue-collar neighborhood where he discovered the joy of kissing girls at an early age. Passing swiftly through puberty, he morphed into the stereotypical hoodlum that a teenager growing up on the west side of Detroit was expected to be: Grease slicked hair with waterfall and duck-tail ala Elvis, white shirt with black pegged pants beneath a London Fog trench coat and Tom McCann pointed shoes with shit-kicker heels. After skipping more days of his first two months of High School than he attended, his despairing father sent him to live with his mother in a tiny little hick town in Florida. The last thing he remembers upon leaving Detroit is watching the Soupy Sales show and walking over to the Warren G. Harding Elementary/Junior High School to tell them that President Kennedy had been shot.

 

Five months after arriving in Florida, he was declared persona non grata and promptly sent home to his father in Detroit where, as a full fledged teen-ager, he took to ten-inch switch blades, bike-chain belts, the proper assembly of zip-guns in shop class, rumbles, beer drinking, heavy petting in the park and juvenile delinquency in such a lack-luster way that he was finally forced to drop out of highschool at 16 and hit the road.

 

Back to Florida in a 60 Chevy for a short stint, then into the Navy where, less than two years later, after spending several months on the psychiatric ward at the Oakland Naval Hospital as the lead singer in a porch-bound band of psychotics, he was discharged honorably.

 

Back to Detroit. Married. Son born. Divorced. Married again. A Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of Detroit. Daughter born. Drop out of Masters program. Wife 2 meets fate of wife 1. Meet wife 3. A couple of years in Mt. Clemens, Michigan; a couple in Dallas, Texas. Roller coaster time. Yet another divorce. Three strikes. You’re out. That’s the law!

 

Throughout his life he has been a paper boy, a bagger in a grocery store, a roofer, a forestry ranger trainee, an auto mechanic, a factory worker, a long haul truck driver, a professional college student, a peer counselor in a street clinic, a drug dealer, an ice cream truck driver, an audio/visual technician, a professional photographer and the IT manager for a San Francisco law firm.

 

He has published several short stories in obscure on-line magazines, most of which no longer exist, though he insists this is not his fault. He is also the author of a non-fiction work, The Great Golden Gate Bridge Trivia Book, not his idea for the greatest title in the world, published by Chronicle Books in 1987.

 

Though he has written through out his life, he has never taken it seriously until recently. He worked on his first novel for 12 years before finally giving it up, working for several years under James N. Frey and Cindy Ford, chalking it all up to a good learning experience. His second novel he wrote in a year of weekend writing, got the agent he wanted on his first try, and the novel is currently on submission to half a dozen publishers. He is midway through his third, with a fourth playing around at the edges.

 

Currently, he writes full time and lives with his seven cats in Albuquerque, New Mexico.