Don Milton’s love for stories began the same way as for most of us, with bedtime stories. Then a speech impediment in 1st grade turned into a blessing. The pronunciation drills his teacher taught him gave him a love for reading aloud to others. By the end of 1st grade, his teacher was using him as a motivational reader for 2nd graders. She’d sit him down in front of the 2nd grade class and he'd read: What Fox Did Not Know. This was one of the many books his parents gave him to improve his speech. Speaking and reading in public came naturally after that and was never one of his fears. Adventures such as Marco Polo, Lewis & Clark, and Robinson Crusoe were his favorites. By age ten, he was telling his own stories to friends in the neighborhood. In the summer before 7th grade, he began studying French using Berlitz LP records. He’d hoped it would improve his ability to pick up girls. And it did, along with playing guitar. But a tragedy struck when he was 16, his brother, who was also his best friend, died. Grief-stricken, he dropped out of school. But he returned after a month. His teachers did all they could to help him catch up. His creative writing teacher even promised him that if he could get an A on his class poetry project, she’d pass him, despite missing over a month of classes. When he got an A, she still failed him. She accused him of stealing his own original poems from Robert Frost, Longfellow, and others. He didn’t even know who those other poets were. So he challenged her to find any poem that was plagiarized. She couldn't, and she had to admit, he indeed had written the poems himself. Shortly after graduation, he took his first shot at writing for a living. He put placards on telephone poles advertising poems made to order in the tradition of Cyrano De Boujerac. A Seattle TV station caught wind of it and with the backdrop of Seward Park and Lake Washington, they did a segment on him. Don graduated from Ron Bailee School of Broadcasting a year later. But instead of pursuing life as a DJ, he put out his thumb, hitchhiking from Seattle to Vancouver, then all the way across Canada and back. He earned enough playing guitar on street corners and cafes to cover the costs of food and youth hostels. And he was finally able to practice his French with native speakers in Quebec. There wasn’t a province he missed. There still isn’t. His next venture into the art of language was to study Tagalog, the Philippine national language, then Mandarin, then Spanish. Don earned his BA in Linguistics at the University of Washington and then opened an insurance agency. But it was the ads he wrote for his insurance agency that first got him serious attention. His ads were a hit, and his agency became the most profitable Allstate agency in the state of Washington. He’d marketed his agency as That 255-7799 Guy, a ploy that assured KISW radio listeners would remember his number, a must, in the era before the Internet and smart phones. But after 10 years of selling insurance, he grew tired of the repetitiveness of insurance and sold his agency to move to the Philippines. The ill health of his parents, however, brought him back to Seattle where he was blessed to be at his mother’s side and then his father’s side as his parents went on to be with the Lord. Since then, he has published eleven books, and authored three. In 2020, Don lost his firstborn to the doctatorship, the organization whose reckless health directives have killed mil-lions. He hopes this book will lighten the hearts of those who’ve suffered similar losses and give them a sense of closure. Don now lives a quiet life with his wife, Jen, and their two young daughters.Read more about this authorRead less about this author