John Brown (American author) John Brown (American author) John D. Brown is an American author who writes thrillers and epic fantasy. Brown was born in Utah and spent many years working in the family floral and nursery business. He served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Netherlands and Belgium and graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a master's degree in Accountancy. After college Brown worked as a business consultant and instructor in Livermore, California and Westerville, Ohio. He current lives in Laketown, Utah, a ranching environment that inspired
John Steinbeck who would go on to write a classic early textbook on ecology. Ricketts became a proponent of ecological thinking, in which man was only one part of a great chain of being, caught in a web of life too large for him to control or understand. Meanwhile, Ricketts operated a biological lab on the coast of Monterey, selling biological samples of small animals, fish, rays, starfish, turtles, and other marine forms to schools and colleges. Between 1930 and 1936, Steinbeck and Ricketts became close friends. Steinbeck's wife began working at the lab as secretary-bookkeeper. Steinbeck helped on an informal basis.