I always wanted to be a writer, but in my sophomore year of high school in northeastern Ohio I didn't think it would be possible. Sister Mary Donald, my English teacher, encouraged me to write an essay for bonus points (which I needed) and so I wrote The Art of Sitting on a Cold Toilet Seat. Several nights later my mother came home from the PTA meeting and shook me out of bed. "What did you write? Sister said it was trash!" Uh oh. . . . I stopped writing, but only for a while. Right out of high school I got a job with a local newspaper and while studying journalism at Kent State University my articles appeared in newspapers and magazines. Eventually I decided to also write books -- so far 18 of them, including James A. Michener: A Biography, which served as my doctoral dissertation at Temple University; Start Small, Finish Big with the co-founder of Subway restaurants; You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, with David Sandler; Network Marketing for Dummies with Zig Ziglar; MOONEY: The Life of the World's Master Carver; Lonely Fighter, One Man's Battle with the IRS . . . After I wrote Franchising: The Inside Story, I developed a franchise marketing agency that kept me busy for about 30 years. Michener once told me that a great life would consist of teaching at a university and writing a best seller every three years. So far I've managed to consistently lead one-half of a great life -- I love teaching at Gulf University for Science & Technology in Kuwait. I'm working on the other half of Michener's formula, and thinking that maybe I'll resurrect that cold toilet seat story. It's okay. Sister's been dead for years.