W.J. Brutocao

W.J. Brutocao was born in Toronto, Canada in 1950 and moved to California as an infant in 1951. He became a naturalized citizen in 1962. Raised in California, W.J. Brutocao went to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he graduated with a B.A. degree in 1972. He went to law school at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, where he obtained a J.D. degree in 1977, and became a practicing attorney. In the spring of 2008 he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. For the rest of 2008 he underwent chemotherapy at the City of Hope, which successfully put his cancer into remission. While going through the cancer ordeal, he read a flyer at the City of Hope suggesting that writing about your experience fighting cancer can be therapeutic. He decided that he would like to write -- but not about cancer or his experience with it. Instead he began to write fanciful children's stories about animals and birds who communicate and interact with two special children. His whimsical world is set in Mendo and Morro, two fictional California coastal communities based on Mendocino and Morro Bay. Some of his bird characters were inspired by the Morro Bay Bird Sanctuary, which is home to many species of birds, particularly, herons, egrets, and cormorants. One of the main characters in his stories is Corky the Cormorant, a good-hearted bird who doesn't always get things right, and has the peculiar habit of repeating everything he says. W.J. Brutocao's books are illustrated by Alan Marder, who also illustrated the "Letters From a Nut" series of books by Ted L. Nancy and other humor books. Brutocao and Marder both live in southern California.