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 includes "Rocinante", the camper-truck in which Steinbeck made the cross-country trip described in "Travels with Charley". His father's cottage on Eleventh Street in Pacific Grove, where Steinbeck wrote some of his earliest books, also survives. In Monterey, Ed Ricketts' laboratory survives (though it is not yet open to the public) and at the corner which Steinbeck describes in "Cannery Row", also the store which once belonged to Lee Chong, and the adjacent vacant lot frequented by the hobos of Cannery Row. The site of the "Hovden Sardine Cannery" next to Doc's laboratory is now occupied by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.