About Greg Gibson

I was born in Massachusetts in 1945. My father was a traveling salesman so we moved around a lot, mostly in the northeastern quarter of the country, maybe ten or twelve locations. My family situation was traditional mid-century dysfunctional. By the end of college, I’d realized I was unfit for any kind of normal life or career. I decided to become a poet but the Vietnam war was going on and they were not giving out poetry deferments. I beat the draft by joining the Navy and spent three years as a shipfitter on a sub tender, sailing up and down the Pacific coast. It was, in retrospect, an ideal grad school experience.

After the Navy I wrote a lot and read a lot, and then met Anne Marie and had kids and got jobs and pretty much stopped reading and writing. Then, in 1976, I got into the antiquarian book business and got to read and write to my heart’s content. I read histories, bibliographies and biographies, and I wrote catalogs of used books for sale. Our family went through some lean years while I was learning my trade, but in the end it proved to be a very satisfying job.

When Galen got killed my earlier interest in writing resurfaced. Writing a book was my focus in this difficult time; my revenge initially, and ultimately my salvation. While I was working on the book, I thought a lot about Raymond Chandler, Norman Maclean, Frederick Exley and Herman Melville. I listened to the music of Thelonious Monk, Abdullah Ibrahim, Muddy Waters and Beethoven. I rooted for the Red Sox and drank Jack Daniels and read all the “Spencer” novels. And yes, the last scene in my book actually was inspired by the movie “Repo Man,” that profound spiritual document of the 1980s.

“Since June of 1999 I have appeared at public and private conferences and seminars, and at churches, schools and colleges, speaking on victim’s issues and on issues of gun violence and school safety. My personal experience has given me a wide familiarity with these topics, and my researches in preparation for Gone Boy have only strengthened my conviction that there are things we can do to address the problems of gun violence that plague our nation. I think I bring a unique perspective to the ongoing dialogue between educators and law enforcement officials, and I am always happy to do so. Interested parties can contact me via this address tenpound@tenpound.com”
– Greg Gibson