John Stapleton began writing in childhood. He exited Newport Primary School on Sydney’s northern beaches with straight A's and after leaving home and high school at the age of 16. His School Certificate consisted with straight A’s with one F for Latin. He subsequently finished his secondary education by correspondence in the late 1960s, topping the state for those studying by correspondence. The first money Stapleton ever made out of writing was in 1972 when he was co-winner of the country’s then leading cultural celebration the Adelaide Arts Festival’s Short Story Competition. The amount of $75 seemed like a windfall at the time and opened his eyes to the fact he could make a living out of what he liked to do the most – that is to write. While qualifying for every university in the state, Stapleton chose to study at Macquarie University and subsequent attempts to transfer to Sydney University to study philosophy failed. He graduated in 1975 with majors in philosophy and anthropology. Stapleton did his post-graduate thesis for a Diploma in Social Sciences within the Department of Sociology at Flinders University in South Australia on gay bars under the tutelage of academic and author Allan Patience. Patience was later to author books including Australian Federalism and became Professor of Political Science and Chair, International Studies Program, Victoria University, Melbourne. The one essay it would have taken to add the second degree to his name has convinced him to finish what he starts and to advise others to do the same. His first play, The Police Commissioner’s Grandmother, was a comedy directed by Bill Rough and with the late Richard Trevaskis as the male lead. It was performed in Adelaide in 1975 and rates a small mention in The History of Australian Drama. By 1975 Stapleton had already been around the world several times as a result of the free air fares provided by his father’s job with the national airline. Stapleton’s adventures at that time included spending his first night in Paris sleeping under a car, spending a month in Berlin with his belongings left at the train station and hitch hiking across America with $50 to his name. Having failed to achieve any success with his novels and only random success with his numerous short stories, Stapleton began his career in journalism writing for a wide variety of Australian publications on a freelance basis. These included university magazines such as the now defunct Ashes and The Metallic Tadpole, rock music publications such as RAM along with a number of more mainstream publications including esteemed and now defunct news weekly The Bulletin. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was a regular contributor to the nation’s then leading financial newspaper The Financial Review. His articles and fiction have also appeared in a number of other magazines and anthologies, including the books Men Love Sex, Australian Politics. He wrote the introduction for the anthology Writers in the Park and his video recordings of these events are now held by Sydney’s Mitchell Library. After a long period as either a contributor or doing casual shifts as a reporter, Stapleton joined the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald in the mid-1980s. This life changing event occurred following the publication of his first front page story while working as a casual. At that time the SMH was listed as one of the world’s leading top 20 newspapers. As a general news reporter in Sydney John Stapleton, or “Stapo” as he was almost universally nick-named, covered literally thousands of stories, from the funerals of bikies, children and dignitaries to fires, floods, droughts, from the demonstrations of inner-city worthies concerned over the plight of refugees to the sad and pointless deaths of youth in the city’s poverty stricken housing estates. He spent the last 15 years of his journalistic career, until 2009, working as a general news reporter on the country’s national newspaper The Australian. John Stapleton is the very proud father of two successful young adults. In 2000 he joined a group of small group of separated dads at the community radio station 2GLF in western Sydney as a volunteer, thereby helping to found Dads On The Air. It went on to become the world's longest running show dedicated to issues concerning fatherhood. An interview with the author about Chaos can be found in the December 2010 archives at www.dadsontheair.com. au. An article on the book can also be found at Australia’s most prestigious website for intellectual debate: www.onlineopinion.com.au Stapleton has more than 25 years’ experience on the road as a general news reporter and written a number of books, including Hunting the Famous and Not For Publication.