I was born in San José, Costa Rica, to Canadian parents. At an early age, I fell under music's spell and trained to become a classical pianist and composer, first at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and later at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music.

In addition to music, I learned the trade of phototypesetting, which was my first introduction to computing—a passion that has stayed with me since.

I've been writing since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but waited several decades before publishing my first novel, The Schumann Proof, a music-themed mystery available at Amazon.

Neither music, nor writing, nor even typesetting (in these latter days) provides a steady income, with the result that I have a colourful history of jobs. I have at various times been a fraternity house cook, a landscaping grunt, a wine writer, a lounge pianist and an escort. The latter provided unparalleled first-hand material for The Binbrook Caucus.

Aside from writing, I contribute to the GNU free software project by developing and maintaining the mom macro set for groff, a document processing system widely used in Linux and other Unix variants.