Writing under the pen name of Taffy Watkins, the author is the grandson of a true Welshman named Llwellyn Watkins. He spent many summers roaming the fields and forests of his grandfather's farm in the hills of western New York, where his love of nature led him to acquire Master's and Ph.D degrees in wildlife ecology. His work history included a 13-year stint as a college professor, another 13-year stint as a Forest Service scientist studying forest-wildlife interactions, and a final 13-year stint as a wildlife consultant focusing on impacts of deer on forests and other wildlife.
His spinster aunt instilled a love of reading in him as a young boy (gifting him with books at Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, birthdays and many other times), which was furthered by his exposure to Beat Authors of the 50s in an English class at Dartmouth, his alma mater. This led to his final career (11 years and counting) as a writer of technical books and novels. His favorite authors' (Wouk, Wolfe {Thomas, not Tom}, King, Tolkien, and Kerouac) focus on sometimes historic and sometimes romantic novels inspired his own writing. He resides on Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes region with his wife of 58 years and continues to write with a backlog of about 11 books, some of which he has started..