When Cornelius van Dijk's mother told him she wanted him to get an education after high school, he told her that he was going to go to the "school of life." True to his word, he has worked at a variety of jobs, including dairy herdsman, journeyman welder, power engineer, and water and wastewater technician.

The product of five years of work, Echoes of the Red Earth is Cornelius's first work of fiction, which he hopes to use as a foundation for a series. He and his wife, Rebecca, live in Lacombe, Alberta.