About the Author

Sean Danger Rowe was born in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in 1964. His father was a linguist and professor of literature, his mother a teacher, librarian and homemaker. He is the youngest of three children.

Rowe grew up outside Cleveland, Ohio; in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and in Helsinki, Finland. At age 11 he moved with his parents, brother and sister to the place he considers his hometown: Douglas, a farming community near the Okefenokee Swamp in southeastern Georgia.

Rowe attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a New England preparatory school, thanks to a scholarship provided by the Howard Heinz family. He spent two years between high school and college traveling the length of the Mississippi River on a homemade raft, working on a riverboat and a ranch, and roaming the United States, Canada and Mexico on his motorcycle. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar, graduating in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Rowe began his professional writing career at age 17 when he sold his first newspaper story to the Pawtucket Evening News in Rhode Island. This riveting, 5,000-word account of a shopping-mall fashion show earned him $25. Editors at the newspaper wisely cut the story to 500 words and ran it on the back pages.

An award-winning journalist (eventually), Rowe worked throughout college as co-editor of the Phoenix Student Newsweekly, columnist for The Daily Tar Heel, and stringer for the Durham Morning Herald. He joined the staff of the Miami Herald as a general assignment reporter upon graduation. From 1990-1999 he worked as a staff writer for the weekly Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach. During part of this time he also worked as a registered nurse on a cancer ward.

In the spring of 1999, after being hit by a train and sustaining serious injuries, Rowe left South Florida and moved to a friend's farm in North Carolina. There he recuperated and began writing fiction. After completing a 650-page mystery novel entitled Magic City, he wrote a short, fast-paced thriller called Fever of Unknown Origin. He continued revising both manuscripts while employed as a copywriter for North Carolina-based Adam & Eve, "America's Most Trusted Vendor of Adult Products."

In 2004, as the result of an auction run by literary agent Sarah Burnes, Fever of Unknown Origin was sold to Little, Brown & Company as part of a two-book deal. It appeared in bookstores nationwide in September 2005 under the title Fever, available in hardback and on audio and MP3 CD. Foreign rights to Fever have been sold to Holland, Germany and France.

Rowe lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his research assistant, Deadline the Cat. He is working on his next book, a thriller about a returning Iraq combat veteran entitled "I-95." He is also renovating a turn-of-the-century farmhouse in rural Sampson County, North Carolina, where he plans to write more page-turners, and also offer the house as a quiet getaway for exhausted journalists and aspiring authors.

Rowe is a member of the Authors Guild, the Academy of American Poets, and the North Carolina Writers' Network. He serves as a national editor for New Times Inc.

Read Sean's author essay, and other items written by him.