About the author

This is the part where I attempt to describe myself. Ah, the everlasting philosophical question: How to grasp the enigma of the self? Is it even possible to identify this loquacious author—a voice without body—with whom you've been interacting?

Well, call me Ian Dunross (a pseudonym); for it doesn't really matter what my real name is because evidently I don't exist—at least according to the renowned semiotician Umberto Eco, who states that the author is not important:

I'll tell you at once that I couldn't really care less about the empirical author of a narrative text (or, indeed, of any text).

My ontology gets even more complicated, because Eco proclaims that:

The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.

In other words, we are to forget the author who created the text. The author is not here before you. Only the other entity, the text, is here, speaking to you. But if it's any comfort, there are traces of my existence. I can say with certainty that I'm in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina. A graduate of San Jose State University (where my I managed to impress the Marxist professors in the English department), I've been in the high-tech industry for many years, writing product documentation and developing multimedia. When I'm not at the day job, I'm off on my own journey, delving into music in my home studio. In this world, I explore recording technology and create music with various instruments—keyboards, electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, bass guitar—and experiment with arranging and capturing music for myself. To fulfill the occasional impulse for pure escapism, I enjoy photography, driving sports cars, standing in my closet-converted wine cellar and staring at my humble wine collection, savoring fine wines, roaming wineries and, well, savoring fine wines. I spent my childhood in Toronto, Canada and currently divide my time between North Carolina and Florida.