Geoff Rodkey grew up in Freeport, Illinois, a place with no ugly fruit plantations, volcanoes, or gainfully employed pirates, although someone did briefly want to kill him when he was a teenager. He currently lives with his family on an island just off the coast of North America. He has not been to sea since an ill-fated kite fishing expedition in the Florida Keys encountered such choppy waters that his nine-year-old son threw up on his four-year-old son's head while the author was preoccupied with trying to help his seven-year-old son barf over the gunwale. This is his first book.