Joe Douglas Trent grew up in a Northwest Texas farming community and assumed that when he grew up he would follow in the footsteps of his ancestors to grow cotton for a living. The farming life involved hard work, but had its rewards. One particular dividend came in a character-building exercise called “hoeing cotton,” in which one spent long, thirsty hours in the blistering sun, trudged through hot, soft dirt, and wished for a cloud or cool breeze. Joe soon came to believe that he had accumulated a sufficient measure of character.

After high school, Joe found and married his sweetheart, Rhonda, and worked in a manufacturing job where the character meter ranged further toward the “full” mark. Joe took his new partner and headed off to electronics school at a time when the textbooks still explained vacuum tube theory and maintenance. The computer repair job led to a programming career and a management position. Good fortune gave him two children along with the joy and consternation that are inevitably intertwined. A pair of grandchildren brought agreement with the old saying: “If I knew that grandkids were this much fun, I’d have had them first!”

Along the way, Joe learned to play the guitar and cultivated a love of reading. He began writing a novel and then discovered that songwriting had a much shorter development cycle. Writing and recording songs at home for his own amusement occupied him for the next few years. His mother’s personal favorite continues to be You Can’t Tell Me I’m Old While I Can Still Grow (What’s Left of) My Hair Out Long, written on the cusp of Joe’s fortieth birthday.

On the eve of the new millennium, Joe and Rhonda went temporarily insane and agreed to become live-in supervisors in a men’s dormitory at a small private college. Joe returned to the classroom during their four-year stint, completing a bachelor’s degree before going on to gather a graduate business degree. While in school, he rediscovered his passion for writing. His current work, The King of Silk, grew out of the question: “How would I use my skills to survive if I were placed 500 years in the past?”

Joe and Rhonda live outside Lubbock, Texas, not far from a cotton field where they can watch the character-building process in action.

He is a member of Panhandle Professional Writers in Amarillo, Texas, Write Right Critique Group in his home town of Lubbock, Texas, and the Muse Online Conference Group.