Growing up in one of those little beach towns between San Diego and LA, Joe didn’t surf or skateboard like the rest of his friends. What he did instead was collect maps and spend hours poring over National Geographics on the living room floor, wondering what those exotic places and far-off people were like. A year after college, he quit his job as a sports magazine editor, sold his Ford Pinto, drained his bank account, and bought a one-way airplane ticket to South Africa. That was the start of 13 years overseas as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, freelance journalist, and sometimes novelist while living in Johannesburg, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore. How did he get back to Southern California? One of those novels got optioned as a movie (that never got made) and an invitation to develop ideas and write scripts for a TV production company in Hollywood. But he longed to hit the road again. And it was National Geographic that gave him that chance, a book about traveling the Pan American Highway from Texas to Argentina. That was the first of more than 40 books he’s worked on for Nat Geo, either as the solo author or part of a small writing team. While he’ll basically write about anything, he’s especially keen on wildlife, wide open spaces, road trips, epic waterways, and wandering aimlessly through new cities.