David Lee Jones

David was born in Nevada Missouri, just east of the Flint Hills. His mother had three children. He is the middle one. Unfortunately, his father had drinking problems, so his parents divorced when David was 5. The family came west to Culver City Ca. She lived with her sister, worked at Douglas Aircraft and remarried a few years later to a machinist who worked there.

David went to the local elementary school until the 4th grade, when it was discovered that he had a disease that had collapsed his left hip socket. So, he spent the next year in Chino, Ca. at a children’s home. The treatment at the time involved a leg brace to take the weight off the hip. The hip healed and he was released a year later.

By that time, his parents had moved to Oak View, Ca. into a housing development known as Skyline Estates. His family lived on a three quarter acre lot on a mile oval track, where all of the backyards faced the middle of the oval. This became the family “farm”, sporting 26 fruit trees and a vegetable garden. He drove by few years ago, and the place is still there.

He attended Mira Monte elementary, and first discovered writing when his teacher gave the 6th grade students an assignment to make a story from the week’s vocabulary. He was amazed at the power of words.

He had gotten ahead in school while in the children’s home, and was asked if he wanted to skip the 7th grade, but decided that he didn’t want to miss anything. He attended Matilija junior high and was put in the highest academic group. But due to lack of proper role models and self-motivation, he goofed off and flunked the eighth grade, making it up in summer school.

After Matilija, he completed the 10th grade at Nordhoff, playing on the varsity golf team. His mother divorced again and moved back with her sister, this time to Westminster Ca., next to Huntington Beach.

At Westminster David was featured as a student author, writing an essay about how the lunch crowd acted a lot like cattle at the feed than civilized students. He graduated in 1966 and went 2 years to Golden Gate junior college in Huntington Beach, then 2 more years at Orange Coast college in Costa Mesa Ca., majoring in general studies, still looking for a career, and living on food stamps plus a grant from the school, since his mother had no money or job.

It was at Orange Coast College where his writing teacher, Dr. Kubis, discovered his love of writing. She recommended him to the UC Santa Cruz writing program, but he was accepted at Berkeley instead, though he did not apply. Not liking the big city, he moved to Santa Barbara instead, where he went briefly to UCSB, until he found out that they didn’t have a writing degree program at the time.

He quit and went to work in electronics, had a childless 5 year marriage in the seventies, and remarried in 1983. He is still married to his second wife, Paula. They have a daughter, Rosemary, a cattle dog and a pet snake. His daughter started graduate school at the University of California Santa Barbara and it working on a masters in computer science.

He worked in electronics for 31 years, earning a Business Management degree at night, and graduating Magna Cum Laude. He has now retired to write full time. He began writing poetry and novels in the seventies. Then, in 1989, there was a publishing seminar at UCSB given by a literary agency, His wife urged him to go. He hastily took an old poem and made it the subject of a novel. After the agent read the first chapter of Unicorn Highway, the rest became history.

He has since written 2 more contemporary fantasies, and has returned to his first love, Unicorn Highway, for which he has just updated and released a 25th Anniversary Edition on Kindle in July of 2017.