Beal, Clifford

Clifford Beal, originally from Providence, Rhode Island, worked for 20 years as an international journalist and is the former editor-in-chief of "Jane's Defence Weekly" in London. He is the author of "Quelch's Gold" (Praeger Books 2007), the true story of a little-known but remarkable early 18th century Anglo-American pirate. But he's also been scribbling fiction from an early age: his seventh grade English teacher nicknamed him "Edgar Allen" undoubtedly due to the gothic subject matter of his extremely short stories.

For recreation, Clifford used to don plate armour and bash the tar out of...