ROBERT DEAN ANDERSON

I grew up in northern Missouri on a farm. I wrote my first newspaper when I was nine. The articles were mostly about the animals on the farm and conversations I overheard between my Mom and Dad about the neighbors. Somehow, that copy of my first newspaper never survived.

My first choice as a career was as a cowboy until I figured out it had something to do with cows. I changed to baseball as my Dad was a Sunday afternoon town team baseball catcher. I tried out for the St. Louis Cardinals, but didn't make the cut. Next, I decided I would be a writer. I had a fascination for ink on paper. I finally got there after earning an engineering degree and spending fifteen years as a spacecraft and aeronautical engineer.

I worked on all the early spacecraft—Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. I often say no rules existed then so we wrote the rules. Then we had to follow our own rules and that turned out to be less adventurous. That's when I switched over to newspapers, becoming a reporter, editor and publisher. I had already spent early years as a copyboy on the Kansas City Star. I like to boast that I worked for an editor there, Pete Wellington, who Ernest Hemingway called his personal writing teacher. I try to write—mostly—in what was known then as 'Star style,' that is, brief, terse and to the point. I recall editors at the Star berating reporters for being too wordy. "Remove all those unnecessary words."

The authors I have most enjoyed reading are: Hemingway, Elmore Leonard, Robert Parker, John Grisham, Dick Francis, Joyce Carol Oates and Tony Hillerman.

As time goes by, I'm going to share my thoughts and rules about writing. The first of my top ten rules is: Have a story. My first published novel, LIMB OF THE JUDAS TREE is based on a true story about Missouri's first female sheriff.