Ken Jones retired as chairman of the world's largest commercial helicopter company. His inspiration comes from a life in the international oil business that included presidents, politicians, and ordinary people from around the world. Now in his eighties, he resides in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Letters from the Skeleton Coast is his first novel. He is at work on another story to be published later this year, The Black Pearl Necklace, that is a tribute to courage in the face of certain death.