John W. Cassell

Born amid a raging blizzard in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1940's, Cassell was adopted in August of 1950. He attended elementary school in Philadelphia, junior high school in Margate City, NJ and high school in Atlantic City, NJ. He became a disc jockey at a local radio station and wound up having to choose between a program directorship at the network's Camden station and going to college. He left home at 17, attending the University of New Mexico-graduating in 1969.

He traveled in Europe and North Africa, those adventures documented in CROSSROADS: 1969 and SOLDIER OF AQUARIUS, then partook of the Counterculture back in America, living on the Road, supporting himself by truck-driving, dishwashing, factory work, US post office, exterminator, library assistant---whatever he could get. He married and had a child...the marriage ending in divorce in 1973.

Leaving the life of the Counterculture IN 1971, he worked at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal in 1971, did a year's graduate work at Kent State University, working as a teaching assistant in the History Department, then enlisted in the Air Force, serving with the Strategic Air Command. Discharged with service related injuries in 1976, he returned to New Mexico, where he wrote his first book, SOLDIER OF AQUARIUS, along with several short stories. He entered Law School on the GI Bill two years later, graduating magna cum laude in 1980.

In 1979, he married Olivia Pacheco--the girl of his dreams since 1970--they remain married to this day...four children, five grandchildren and a granddog later.

The remainder of his working life he served with the New Mexico State Police, then as a prosecutor. His last job was as an assistant attorney general with the government of a remote Pacific Island, where he lived for over ten years and wrote the balance of his books.

His service-connected injuries combined with those received in a North African prison in 1969 rendered him unable to work by 2006 and he now lives quietly with his wife of thirty years in the American Southwest.

John W. Cassell and James Mundell, author of AN AQUARIAN TRAGEDY...are the same person. A pen name was used and the characters' names changed because the authentic details of the story would have been potentially harmful to some of the characters when originally written as the second half of SOLDIER OF AQUARIUS in 1976.