Marc MacYoung has never fit well into simple categories. That's because of his diverse past. When his family fell into situational poverty he found himself facing lifestyles and problems that most people have no idea exist, much less have experience dealing with. It was during that time the earned the street name "Animal." Many of his stories start with qualifiers like "The first time I was shot at..." and "The last time I had someone try to stab me..." (It was a long hard climb out of that lifestyle.) Decades of experience in environments and professions where violence was common, would eventually lead him to being a court recognized expert about violence, crime, and self-defense.

This wide ranging background gives him a completely different perspectives of the complex problems involved with personal safety, conflict, violence, and crime avoidance —especially how there are no simple answers (e.g., martial arts or carrying a gun). Those approaches may soothe fears, but they don't actually address danger —or the problems you'll face if you have to use them.

Over the years his works have evolved from that of a streetfighter to taking a more practical approach of avoidance and/or deterrence. This opens far more effective and non-violent options for his readers. As he often says "I'm not about fear management. My goal is danger management. I'm more interested in teaching you how to avoid walking into the lion's jaws than giving you false confidence about doing so."

The serious bio:

Rory Miller is a seventeen-year veteran of a metropolitan correctional system. He spent seventeen years, including ten as a sergeant, with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Portland Oregon. His assignments included Booking, Maximum Security, Disciplinary and Administrative Segregation, and Mental Health Units. He was a CERT (Corrections Emergency Response Team) member for over eleven years and Team Leader for six.

His training has included over eight hundred hours of tactical training; witness protection and close-quarters handgun training with the local US Marshals; Incident Command System; Instructor Development Courses; AELE Discipline and Internal Investigations; Hostage Negotiations and Hostage Survival; Integrated Use of Force and Confrontational Simulation Instructor; Mental Health; Defensive Tactics, including the GRAPLE instructors program; Diversity; and Supervision.

Rory has designed and taught courses including Confrontational Simulations; Uncontrolled Environments; Crisis Communications with the Mentally Ill; CERT Operations and Planning; Defensive Tactics; and Use of Force for Multnomah County and other local agencies.

In 2008 Rory Miller left his agency to spend over a year in Iraq with the Department of Justice ICITAP program as a civilian advisor to the Iraqi Corrections System.

He has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a blackbelt in jujutsu and college varsities in judo and fencing. He also likes long walks on the beach.

His writings have been featured in Loren Christensen’s “Fighter’s Fact Book 2: The Street” Kane and Wilder’s “Little Black Book of Violence” and “The Way to Blackbelt.” Rory is the author of “Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence” published by YMAA; “Violence: A Writer’s Guide” published by Samshwords; and the soon-to-be-released “Facing Violence” out in May 2011 from YMAA.

Less serious:

How to make a Rory:

First you take a kid and raise him without electricity or running water or television. Especially television. You get a whacked out doctor to convince his parents that he has a birth defect such that if he ever loses muscle tone his joints will spontaneously dislocate, so you encourage hyperactivity. Instill a love of reading and introduce to meditation at a young age. Teach him to hunt and track. Send him away to college at the age of seventeen painfully aware that he has almost no experience with people. Arrange for him to luck into world-class trainers in his first martial arts. Let him obsess on martial arts even at the expense of his school work. At some point he will get a need to go someplace strange, maybe Reno, and do something different, like be a bouncer. Let him, he'll come back. When he comes back, if he falls in love with the right princess ('cause every thug needs a princess) he'll start doing crazy things like joining the national guard and working in a jail. Let him. He'll discover that he has a way with violent and crazy people and might wind up doing stuff like running a tactical team and teaching officer survival skills and designing classes and teaching jujutsu. If he has an ugly year (and he will) he'll start writing. If he gets really bored he will suddenly quit and go to Baghdad. We're still waiting to see how that part turns out.

Lawrence was inducted into SIG Sourcing Supernova Hall of Fame in 2018 for pioneering leadership in strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier innovation, and digital transformation. In 2022, he was honored with a Top DEIB Leader Walk the Walk Award. He has been studying and teaching martial arts since 1970, often putting what he learned into action while working stadium security part time. The bestselling author of 27 books, he earned a Beverly Hills Book Award and Presidential Prize, a USA Best Book Award, three National Indie Excellence Book Awards, two eLit Gold Medals, an Independent Press Award, a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and a Living Now Book Awards Gold Medal, among other honors. He has been interviewed by FOX News, The Jim Bohannon Show, Computerworld, Forbes, Art of Procurement, Le Matin, Sourcing Industry Landscape, Information Week, Police Magazine, Negotiations Ninja podcast, and more...

He can be contacted via e-mail at lakane@ix.netcom.com.

Denton's day job used to require a lot of travel and hence a lot of time on airplanes and in airports. Because of this, it allowed lots of writing time. When the pandemic hit, the habit got worse. Therapy hasn't helped.

The stories tend to be extensions of a terrible tendency to tell lies and make things up. Truth can be so limiting and the fairy tales and legends he heard growing up sounded like a much more fun world. So many of his stories draw on Eastern European folklore. After all, who won't want a world with three-headed dragons, wolf-wizard, and enchanting immortal maidens?

His books also tend to include pandas. Because pandas rock.

Mostly he works as a physical scientist, which is why he likes fantasy. He also likes dogs, particularly standards, and coffee. His hobbies include metalwork, woodwork, martial arts, and cooking. He can be found at dentonsalle.com