Carol J. Amato is a writer, editor, trainer, and educator. As a writer she has published nineteen books, over 175 articles, and two short stories. She has written software user manuals, training guides, policy and procedure manuals, marketing materials, and general busi­ness documents for software development firms, banks, aerospace, and commercial industry.

Her editorial experience includes twelve books, two book series, and numerous articles, and she has served as editor for two magazines and several newsletters. She is a guest lecturer, has given many papers at conferences, and has appeared on television and radio shows.

Ms. Amato conducts communications training seminars in the corporate world and train-the-trainer and APA seminars in the academic arena. An adjunct faculty member of the University of Phoenix (Online and Southern California Campuses), where she teaches communications classes, Ms. Amato served as the Area Chair of Communications for the Online Campus. She served as the Area Chair of Communications at the San Diego Campus from 1990-1994. In addition, she has taught at the junior high and high school levels, both in the United States and England.

Ms. Amato has a B.A. in Spanish and French from the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, and an M.A. in Environmental Anthropology from California State University, Fullerton, California. She is a past president of the Professional Writers of Orange County and a board member of the Writer's Club of Whittier, Inc., a professional writers' workshop. She was a board member of the Orange County Section of the Independent Writers of Southern California from 1988-1993. She is listed in Who's Who in America, Who’s Who of American Women, Who's Who in the West, Who's Who in Orange County, and the World Who's Who of Women.

Gretchen McMasters grew up in South Carolina, and she spent a lot of time outside. “My dad really loved to be outdoors,” said Gretchen. “He taught me to swim, fish, hunt, water ski, ride motorcycles, hang glide and do other things that girls just didn’t do back then.”

In elementary school, Gretchen struggled to read. Her mother took her to the public library. There, she discovered the Black Stallion series by Walter Farley. A huge horse lover, Gretchen devoured all of Farley’s books. Suddenly, she was reading everything in sight. By the time she reached the sixth grade, she was a good reader.

Words were a big thing around Gretchen’s house. Her father was self-educated, and he had a voracious appetite for knowledge. “If Dad heard a word that he didn’t know, he would trot to the bookcase and pull the dictionary off the shelf. I remember watching his long fingers turn the pages as he searched for the word. Then with eyes gleaming, he would read the definition out loud.”

When Gretchen was in the sixth grade, her teacher, Mrs. Mabry, put a sign over the blackboard that quoted Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Gretchen looked at the sign every morning. The words stuck. “I still remember that sign. I never forgot the words, and I’m proud to say that I learned to apply them.”

Gretchen wasn’t always a writer. She’s done many things over the years. She started and ran her own businesses, helped other people start and run their businesses, worked in TV production and high-tech, trained people to do their jobs better, taught school and finally became a published author.

Gretchen became Aesock’s mother when he dropped in from Static Island for a visit…and stayed! The little fellow explained who he was, and then returned several dozen pairs of odd socks that had gone missing over the years. Once his mission was accomplished, he found a comfortable spot in the living room where he now sits except when he’s helping Gretchen write.

“Actually, Aesock does all the writing. I just type,” said Gretchen. “He’s really committed to helping kids and adults learn that all things ARE possible to those who believe.”

Gretchen loves to read, travel, write, talk to kids, and share time with her cat, Hollis. She now lives in sunny Southern California.

Thomas Midgley IV is not a chemist nor is he an engineer. He admits to having a lot of wonderful people help him put together From the Periodic Table to Production: The Life of Thomas Midgley, Jr., the Inventor of Ethyl Gasoline and Freon Refrigerants. This book, the life story of his grandfather and namesake, was a project upon which he embarked simply because he felt strongly that this story should be told.

Midgley IV was born in Columbus, Ohio, when his father was a freshman at Cornell University’s School of Engineering. He spent his first four years in Ithaca, New York, and upon his father’s graduation from Cornell, lived in Birmingham, Michigan, and Hartford, Connecticut, before moving to California at the beginning of World War II.

He attended the Chadwick School in Rolling Hills, California, as a boarding student from 1944-1954 and graduated from the University of Oregon’s School of Business Administration in 1958 with a double major in business and economics. He competed as a sprinter on both his high school and college teams and ran the 100-yard dash in the world-class time of 9.7 seconds, which, at the time, was 4/10ths of a second off the world record.

Following college, he served as a Naval officer and a stockbroker prior to pursuing a 25-year career in advertising sales, from which he retired in 1997 as Executive Vice-President of his advertising firm. Since his retirement, he has become a single-digit handicapper on the golf course, which he jokes is fine for someone on Medicare.

He has been married to the same lovely lady, Sandy, for 39 years; they have three children and three grandchildren. He loves pointing out that Sandy has devoted over 30 years to raising scholarship funds for students in engineering, science, and medicine and is held in high esteem by all of the universities in Southern California that she has supported.

Joan Horvath founded management consultancy Takeoff Technologies in 2000. Takeoff assists companies with locating and using technology, and in particular helps entertainment and media companies understand science.

Before starting Takeoff, she had a 16-year career as a “rocket scientist” at the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a  NASA center for the exploration of the solar system. At JPL she played key roles on various spacecraft, particularly the Magellan spacecraft to Venus and the TOPEX/Poseidon earth orbiting spacecraft that measured the El Nino phenomenon accurately for the first time.

The teaches in the Graduate Industrial Design program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and has taught graduate and undergraduate classes for the University of Phoenix. She is the author of technical papers and nonfiction popular articles. She is a coauthor of Saturn: A New View, from Harry Abrams Publishers (2006).

Ms. Horvath holds a BS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, and an MS in Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering from UCLA. She lives in Pasadena, California, with her astronomer husband, and tries to find time to hike, bicycle, and figure skate.

Nickolae Gerstner began her freelance career writing stories for love magazines. She says, “Their typical reader has to be emotionally captured in the first paragraph, and writing for that market was an invaluable experience.”

She enjoys doing research and writes nonfiction features on a wide variety of topics for newspapers and magazines. Accepting an invitation to teach, she designed writing classes for adult schools, and several of her students have become published writers.

As a staff writer for Los Angeles County, she handled a great variety of assignments and had extensive contact with the general public. Her first books were historical novels, and she intended to continue in that genre. Then she attended a writers’ conference with Barbara Pronin. After they heard Mary Higgins Clark give the keynote address, they played with the idea of writing a mystery together. Their book, Finders Keepers, was born on the ride home from the conference. It became a best seller and, as a Reader’s Digest condensed book, was distributed all over the world. Nickolae’s next book, Dark Veil, a mystery about a clock dealer, was born when she flew to England seated next to the clock dealer who talked clocks all across the Atlantic.

A native Chicagoan, she graduated from the University of Illinois. She and her husband, John, divide their time between homes in California and New York.

Member of:

Independent
Book Publishers Association

The National
Association
of College Stores

The California
Association
of College Stores

Society for Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators