AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Rachel Turpin-Smith:
Rachel is forty-three years old, and spends her leisure time gardening and hiking the trails at her home near the Pisgah National Forest in Brevard, North Carolina. She has worked with day care and middle school students, and in 1986 became part of the team that opened a new "state of the art" treatment center for troubled teens in Cape Coral, Florida. She then became the Program Director of the Center until her medical condition forced her retirement. Her duties included counseling, fundraising, public relations, and active interventions for the Center. She had an episode of Sudden Cardiac Death, in December 1991, which produced temporary blindness and lasting visual impairment. She subsequently appeared on three television programs, and has been the subject of news articles in local periodicals and the nationally distributed Shape Magazine. She is also a former marathon runner and triathlete, who remains a health enthusiast. She's recently been a guest speaker at local ICD (implantable cardio-defibrillator) support groups, training sessions for nursing students, and in-service training for nurses and other medical professionals.
Jeff Turpin:
Brother and co-author Jeff is a writer, freelance journalist, and itinerant archaeologist. He was fiction editor for the University of Texas San Antonio's Cactus Alley magazine, A&E Editor for the UTSA Paisano, and entertainment editor for The Current Weekly, in San Antonio, Texas. He spent several years freelancing for the San Antonio Express/News, the San Antonio News, and the San Antonio Business Journal, and has published numerous articles on health and outdoors subjects. He has written two novels (The Foolish House, Common Sense) and two dozen short stories. In 1996 he won the San Antonio Writer's Guild Award for Best Short Story ("Bjarne's Gift") and second place for Best First Chapter, Novel (The Profit). Jeff has a M.A. in English from the University of Texas in San Antonio.
