About Brian
Brian Jay Jones served for nearly ten years as a speechwriter, ghost writer, and policy analyst in the United States Senate, where the majority of his writing landed in the distinguished but relatively obscure pages of The Congressional Record, and his speeches were garbled by unanimous consent. As a policy expert in education, welfare, and job training, he was frequently required to analyze 900-page bills, which he dutifully tabbed, underlined, highlighted, outlined and scribbled cartoons on—all skills which prepared him for the formidable seven-year task of digging through Washington Irving's letters and papers. Yes, even the cartoons part.
Born in Kansas City, Kansas and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Brian graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in English the same year the first Batman movie opened. He spent the better part of the next year selling comics at a comic shop by day, and pretending to write fiction by night. Realizing he could live on neither, he soon gave up comics for Capitol Hill and fiction for federal policy. He considers himself fortunate to have worked for two true statesmen and all-around good guys: Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont.
In the late 1990s Brian was appointed to a post as an associate state superintendent of education in Arizona, and moved to Phoenix, where the 166-degree dry heat caused his nose to bleed for the better part of a year. Wisely, he returned to the Washington, D.C., area several years later and now works as a writer and policy analyst in Maryland.
Brian lives with his wife, daughter, and very large dog in Damascus, Maryland, which is not in Syria, and where he reads comics and plays the banjo badly. He loves listening to classic jazz and blues, admires the films of Charlie Chaplin, reads anything having to do with the Beatles, and generally succeeds in trying the patience of his wife. And while he was indeed born during the Summer of Love, he is not the dead member of the Rolling Stones. Like he's never heard that one before.