That's the official author bio. Here's the inside story.

I was born on February 12, 1964 at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. The moment was unusually dramatic, my mother recalls, because the doctor arrived in the delivery room at the last possible second wearing black tie. Why the tuxedo? He had rushed to the hospital from a charity dinner after nurses determined I was making an early entrance.

My parents - Richard and Dorothy - were high school sweethearts. They loved art and travel, and our family was always in the air and on the road with trips across America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

TV was all but forbidden in our home - except the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite - so I escaped into books. Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are was my first favorite. Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came next. Soon, The Guinness Book of World Records became my obsession. In 1973, the pogo stick record seemed the most attainable: 17,323 consecutive jumps in 2 hours 50 minutes. My big sister Elizabeth and I managed around 750 jumps in the driveway one night before my mother called us in for dinner.

I attended University Elementary School and the Harvard School in Los Angeles. In 1981, I left home for Harvard College where I studied American government and history. Those years are a blur of libraries, papers, exams, Red Sox games, and Nor'easters. After junior year, I took time off for work and adventure. My first stop was the South, where I wrote for The News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Next, I tried my hand as a cub correspondent with the Los Angeles Times in Paris. Finally, I worked for the U.N. Border Relief Operation in the evacuation sites for displaced people on the Thai-Cambodian frontier.

After graduating in 1986, I spent the next three years in Oxford, England as a Rhodes Scholar, earning masters degrees in history and economics, playing sports, traveling and learning to cook because dormitory food was boiled or burned beyond recognition.

I returned to New York in August 1989 and went right to work in broadcast news, the natural choice for a kid who wasn't really allowed to watch TV growing up. I landed a job in the investigative unit of ABC News PrimeTime Live with Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson and worked on stories ranging from the illegal ivory trade in East Africa to the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia.

When my father died suddenly in April 1993, I left ABC and moved back to California to be closer to my family. I worked in politics on an ill-fated gubernatorial campaign and began to dabble in fiction. In July 1996, I wrote and published a terrorism techno-thriller with an unmentionable title. There's only one good thing to say about that book: My agent insisted I use a pseudonym. God bless her. Trust me: That book is a catalog of every imaginable first-time writing mistake. It belongs right where it is: Out of Print. I beg you: Please don't go looking for it.

In May 1997, television beckoned again, and I returned to New York to work as a senior producer with the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. In that role, I helped guide coverage of many stories including the September 11th attacks on America, the Anthrax poisoning cases, the 2000 presidential election debacle, and the impeachment of President Clinton. During that time, Nightly News received many honors including two Emmy Awards and two Edward R. Murrow Awards for best newscast.

In 1998 while producing the news, I began to write a new novel called The Man Who Ate the 747. The main character was a record keeper with The Book of World Records, my childhood favorite. The setting was Superior, Nebraska, a little town smack dab in the heartland. On weekends and vacations, I made many research trips there, flying in crop dusters, harvesting corn, and working the fields. I'm a proud graduate of the Lefty Bothwell Farmhand Training Academy (stacking hay bales and driving fence posts are my specialties), and in September 2000, after hardcover publication of 747, I was made an honorary citizen of the town.

The warm response to 747 surprised us all. The book has been translated into 13 languages including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese, and was sold to Bel-Air Entertainment and Warner Brothers as a feature film. It is also being developed into a musical.

In January 2002 I decided to leave NBC and devote myself to fiction. I had already signed up with Bantam to write two more novels and my new book, The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, needed fulltime attention. I was also determined to find more balance in life, which led me to the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building in August 2002, where I proposed marriage on bended knee to Karen Kehela. A native Californian, she's a movie producer and co-chair of Imagine Films, the Ron Howard-Brian Grazer entertainment company.

In March 2003, we were married in Los Angeles. The ceremony took place under the sycamore tree where my father courted my mother 50 years ago and where my sister and I played as children.

In April 2004, I returned to the news business as executive producer of ABC News' Good Morning America. It was an opportunity and challenge that I couldn't resist. The hours and demands of morning television have definitely turned our lives upside down. But all that tumult has been nothing compared to the thrill and happy upheaval in October 2004 when Karen gave birth to Will Sherwood (7 pounds 8 ounces and 20.5 inches).

We live in New York City and spend time every month in Los Angeles. In very brief moments, I'm working on a new novel - Lucy the Unforgettable - about love and memory that I look forward to publishing some day.