Born in New York City, Haydon Rochester, Jr. lived from age four until his early twenties in Hardwick, Vermont, a former granite cutting village. He enjoyed an idyllic childhood and teenage years consisting of doing whatever he liked most of the time. Haydon began his professional career in Philadelphia as an abstractor/indexer and later as a noted scientist’s research assistant. Finding both occupations unsatisfying and poorly paid, he embarked on a forty-three-year career as a freelance technical and marketing writer. While pursuing his trade, Haydon wrote, rewrote, or edited more than 116,000 pages of documents ranging from research reports to direct mail pieces. Inspired by a client’s observation that his contribution to a government-sponsored report was largely fictional (a compliment—it enabled the client to bill for the project), Haydon began writing fiction. Since then he has completed several novels, a book for children, and two collections of short stories. Haydon says about fiction, “First, it should be genuine fiction—not disguised autobiography or gossip about the personal lives of family and friends—and second, fiction should be edifying and pleasurable for both author and reader. Although today’s world needs many changes, my work is not intended to accomplish anything beyond making my readers’ lives more enjoyable.” A long-time resident of Philadelphia, South Jersey and, most recently, the Eastern Shore of Virginia, Haydon now lives in Williamsburg, Virginia.