A graduate of the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program, Gene Ayres has been a journalist, documentary film producer, writer for public television, Hollywood screewriter, animator, TV film critic, and mystery novelist. He also lived and taught in China for three years, resulting in a startling and insightful new book about what that country is really like, and married a Chinese national in the process. His influences include fellow Syracuse alumni David Meggyesy, Rod Serling, Elmore Schwartz, and Joyce Carol Oates, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Christopher Marlowe. Gene (E.C.) Ayres(aka John Underwood) is a lifelong environmental activist, and his mysteries reflect those views, although his protagonist, ex-hippy and war veteran Tony Lowell has to deal with the real world and all philosophies and comers. As does his fictional investigative journalist Jake Fleming in the still forthcoming Shakespeare Chronicle books.  

As a filmmaker, winner of two silver medals at the Atlanta International Film Festival, 1972. He has been published in Harper's Magazine, Worldwatch, numerous newspapers, and journals on social and environmental issues, and worked for a time as a television film critic in Tampa. His first novel, Hour of the Manatee, was winner of the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First P.I. Novel competition in 1992.