EJ at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico

E. J. Knapp, AKA Skip Knapp, was born during a thunderstorm in Detroit, Michigan several years before the Motor City discovered fins. Three days after his somewhat clamorous birth, his mom and dad gave him the first and middle name which he never uses, while his long lost uncle, appearing, drunk, out of nowhere, gave him the nick-name (Skipper) which has been, in various forms, with him since, and then promptly disappeared again (the uncle, not the nick-name), ultimately to die in Utah, of all places. Shortly thereafter, mom and dad headed in different directions. EJ, and his sister, went with dad.

EJ was raised in a working-class, blue-collar neighborhood where he discovered the joy of kissing girls at an early age. Passing swiftly through puberty, he morphed into the stereotypical hoodlum that a teenager growing up on the west side of Detroit was expected to be: Grease slicked hair with waterfall and duck-tail ala Elvis, white shirt with black pegged pants beneath a London Fog trench coat and pointed Tom McCann shoes with shit-kicker heels. After skipping more days of his first two months of High School than he attended, his despairing father sent him to live with his mother in a little hick town in Florida. The last thing he remembers upon leaving Detroit is watching the Soupy Sales show and walking over to the Warren G. Harding Elementary/Junior High School to tell them that President Kennedy had been shot.

Five months after arriving in Florida, he was declared persona non grata by the local authorities and promptly sent home to his father in Detroit where, as a full fledged teen-ager, he took to ten-inch switch blades, bike-chain belts, the proper assembly of zip-guns in shop class, rumbles, beer drinking, heavy petting in the park and juvenile delinquency in such a lack-luster way that he was finally forced to drop out of high school and hit the road.

Back to Florida in a 60 Chevy for a short stint, then into the Navy where, less than two years later, after spending several months on the psychiatric ward at the Oakland Naval Hospital as the lead singer in a porch-bound band of psychotics, he was discharged honorably.

Back to Detroit. Married. Son born (Ryan John). Divorced. Married again. A Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of Detroit. Daughter born (Courtney Mackenzie). Dropped out of Masters program. Wife 2 meets fate of wife 1. Meet wife 3. A couple of years in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, a couple in Dallas, Texas. Roller coaster time. Yet another divorce. Three strikes. You’re out. That’s the law!

Throughout his life he has been a paper boy, a bagger in a grocery store, a roofer, a forestry ranger trainee, an auto mechanic, a factory worker, a long haul trucker, a professional college student, a peer counselor in a street clinic, a drug dealer, an ice cream truck driver, an audio/visual technician, a professional photographer and the IT manager for a San Francisco law firm.

He has published several short stories in obscure on-line magazines, most of which no longer exist, though he insists this is not his fault. Besides Stealing The Marbles, he is also the author of a non-fiction work, The Great Golden Gate Bridge Trivia Book – not his idea for the greatest title in the world – published by Chronicle Books in 1987. It has been reissued as an eBook titled Secrets of the Golden Gate Bridge and is available at Smashwords, the Amazon Kindle store and other fine eBook retailers.

Though he has written through out his life, he has never taken it seriously until recently. He worked on his first novel for 12 years before finally giving it up, working for several years under James N. Frey and Cindy Ford, chalking it all up to a good learning experience. He now has two novels finished which he should probably try to pitch to someone and from time to time gives serious thought to actually working on a third one. Currently he is back in the armpit of Florida a stones throw from the Suwanee River with his numerous cats and trying to figure out how the hell he got here.

If you care to contact him, knock yourself out on the form below. If you’re not trying to sell him something or sue him and the cats are all fed and he can find his way out of the jungle, he’ll probably get back to you.

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