Brian Cramer was born in New Jersey. Because of several failed attempts to escape the mysterious pull of the Garden State, he still lives there. He works for a ground penetrating radar company and enjoys computers, electronics, the universe, and a hot cup of tea.

Instead of boring you with tedious facts about my life and background, I thought it would be more interesting for you to learn about how I came up with the idea of Zero Calvin, and why I decided to devote ninety percent of my free time to writing it, and so, here is the story:

Once upon a time, somewhere in New Jersey, a man sat in his small, upstairs apartment overlooking a busy highway. He was looking out the window at the cold, dreary rain and wondered what on Earth he was going to do to make it through another winter without going insane. I was that man, and the answer I finally came up with was to write a book. But what would I write about?

That night, I was eating at a restaurant, and I couldn't help but notice that several people were on their cell phones--even while they were eating! This wasn't hard to miss because they were talking twice as loud as anyone else was in the restaurant (why is that, anyway?) The thought that ran through my head at that point was this: Some people are on their cell phones so much that the phones might as well be permanently attached to their heads. This idea was further solidified later that evening when I went to the mall.

So, back in my apartment, I paced around in circles, drinking tea and frowning in concentration. I was thinking about how such a cell phone would work, how one would interface to it, and what would happen if it were on the Internet? Several cups of tea (and a few gin and tonics) later, I combined this idea with an idea I had about a proactive search engine, based on an artificial intelligence, that gives a person useful information in real time. And so, Ariel was born.

After much more pacing, many more cups of tea, and a few more gin and tonics, I developed a whole society around this technology. I wanted the reader to learn about this society and its technology through the eyes of someone from the current time. After much fretting, I decided to use the old guy-gets-cryogenically-frozen-and-wakes-up-in-the-future bit. Cheesy, yes, but the way it is incorporated into to plot is really quite amusing. And so, Zero Calvin was born.

There, wasn't that much better than dull facts about where I grew up, what schools I attended, and all that other rubbish?