About the author.
Howard Seaborne began writing novels in spiral notebooks at age ten. He began flying airplanes at age sixteen. He is a former flight instructor and commercial charter pilot. Today he flies a Beechcraft Baron, a Beechcraft Bonanza and a Rotorway experimental helicopter, which he built in his garage. He lives with his wife and writes and flies during all four seasons in Wisconsin, not far from Essex County Airport.
Lies.
This all started with lying.
I’m the second of five kids. Being a second-child, I have a genetic predisposition for shortcuts. As a child, I learned that lying served as a shortcut for almost any situation -- or as I prefer to think of it now, embracing alternate truths. (Hey it works for politicians.) Unknown to me at the time, my parents were much smarter than I assumed. My clever lies were obvious to them. It took me a while to catch on. By the time I did, however, my affinity for alternate truths had been imprinted. It took on the form of daydreaming in school, making up stories in my head in church, and eventually filling spiral notebooks with fiction.
So here I am. Still spinning tales. Making up stuff.
Flying.
My wife patiently accepts the fact that she is not my first love. We married when I was eighteen, and the wedding band she gave me has never left my hand. But there’s a vintage Army Air Corps ring on the third finger of my right hand, and it’s been there longer. It was a gift from my cousin Rich, who gave it to me when I began flying at sixteen. If that’s not evidence that my first love is flying, then I submit a photo taken when I was six. I’m holding a birthday cake and instead of candles or a wax numeral six, an airplane rests in the frosting.
I hold a commercial pilot’s license with ratings for airplanes, single- and multi-engine, instrument, instructor ratings for all of the above, and a private-pilot rating for rotorcraft. I have worked for a living as a flight instructor and as a charter pilot. These days, when I’m not flying the Rotorway helicopter I built from a kit (www.rotorway.com) you will find me flying a lovely Beechcraft Bonanza or an absolutely gorgeous Beechcraft Baron.
In the Divisible Man novels, I have found a way to merge my love of aviation with my love of making things up. Toss in the fact that I taught myself touch typing in my early twenties (on an IBM Selectric -- wish I still had it) and you now know my Happy Places. The airport. The laptop. Sometimes both simultaneously.
Technically being my second love doesn’t mean my wife isn’t my true love. As a first child, she is the gift God gave to keep this second child’s life on the rails, and to make impossible things possible. I am blessed with having her, and with knowing, as all pilot’s know, that no matter how cloudy things get, if you fly high enough, the sky is still blue.
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