Stan's life has pretty much centered on reading and writing (he wasn't all that good in "rithmetic"). He has always loved to read, from his steady diet of fantasty and science fiction in grade school to his current fascination with twentieth-century novels. He wrote his first story in the third grade and got big laughs when he read it aloud at the request of his teacher, Mrs. Stallis. At the end of that school year, his widowed mother married a bookseller, and Stan's future was set. His father's bookstore was no ordinary run-of-the-mill retail shop. It was a Christian bookstore, and one of the largest in the nation at that. Stan learned the business of bookselling, and after going away for college, returned with his wife, Karin, and began working in the family store full time. Except for a three-year stint working for a large Christian music company in Texas, Stan has continued to work with books in one way or another for more than 30 years. Stan began writing books with his long-time writing and business partner, Bruce Bickel, in the 1980s. To date Bruce and Stan have written more than 65 books with close to 3.5 million sold. Their latest venture is ConversantLife.com, a new media company they founded in 2007 to encourage conversations about faith by meeting people where they are with engaging content from trustworthy communicators. Athough he and Bruce continue to write books, Stan's greatest joy comes from discovering and developing talented communicators.