When asked why I wrote Esteban's biography, I reply that all my books are about average people who face such daunting obstacles that they seemed destined to fail. They are the underdogs that end up winning.
     As a slave to Spaniards, Esteban could not have been expected to survive, much less come to the attention of a king, in the harrowing circumstances he endured.
   Besides Esteban, other underdogs in my books include the Pueblo Indians in Winter of the Metal People who prevailed against Europeans in 1540–42 despite being hopelessly outnumbered and facing that time's advanced military weapons. In the near future there is the sergeant, brave enough but still an enlisted man, who finds himself the lone survivor of his Army base after an alien invasion's attack in War of the Planet Burners and goes on as a hero fighting for Earth.  In the modern day, there is the twice-divorced, hard-luck newspaper reporter in A Brother's Cold Case who keeps looking for his brother's murderer when the police won't.