About DAVID ISEMINGER

BEGINNINGS

David Iseminger was born in Yakima, Washington, around the time the first man walked on the moon. He was the third child, with an older brother Paul and sister Candice. He grew into his teens with loving parents, siblings who taught him all sorts of interesting things (milk ice cubes don't taste good), and a perfect small-city suburban neighborhood.

Just before he entered junior high, David's family was fractured by health problems that claimed his mother and incapacitated his father. He and his siblings were scattered to the winds, forced to learn how to look after themselves. David was five years younger than Candice and Paul, and too young to be on his own. Fortunately, he was taken in by a very, very generous family who treated him as one of their own. He considers himself lucky. He graduated from high school in the top five percent of his class.


EDUCATION

David attended the University of Washington in Seattle, getting loans, grants, and jobs to make it through. During his freshman year he bought an Apple IIe with a green screen—a dated computer even in those days—to make better progress on his first novel-length project. Until then, David was penning chapters on yellow legal pads, and had a stack of them an inch thick.  

From the outset David wanted degrees in English and something else, and bounced from pre-med to philosophy. Then he took a Comparative Literature course from an entertaining and colorful professor named Willis Konick, who insisted students call him Willis. In each class of 400, Willis learned every student’s name in the first week.

David graduated with a degree in English and Comparative Literature and had a lot of fun in college, and also managed to meet his wife while he was there. A year after graduation they were married.


THE REAL WORLD

During college David learned his way around computers. He moved back to Yakima after graduation, and taught himself how computers worked. Somehow his computer savvy got him a job with a real estate development company, where he worked alongside its owner on large tax credit projects. His job was straightforward... kind of: understand how to obtain tax credits in various states, then do so; understand how the financials need to come together, then create spreadsheets to automate and double-check flow-through of the numbers; visit construction sites to ensure the draws reflect the progress in the field. While he wasn't running the show himself, he was learning a bunch.

After a while he was bitten by the technology bug, however, and decided to take a job in the Windows Performance Group at Microsoft, focusing on networking. That group enjoys quite a reputation: it tweaks Windows code to make it run faster. In Microsoft culture, faster is always better.

David was specializing in the hottest topic around: remote network communications. He enjoyed some early success, and was a known expert on networking and remote communications. All the while, new novel ideas were rattling around his head, wanting attention.

Looking for a new work challenge that aligned with his passion for writing, knowledge, and helping people learn new concepts and ideas, David moved within Microsoft to become a programmer/writer, explaining how programmers could write network-enabled programs that run on Windows..

Today, David leads a team of approximately twenty networking experts in User Education for the Windows Server Division, developing guidance for millions of users to understand, program, and administer all aspects of networking technologies on Windows desktops and servers.


WRITING

When David was in eighth grade he attended a career fair of sorts, and clearly remembers investigating his chosen profession: writer. It listed various aspects of the job, including average annual income. For writers, average annual income was reported at around $14,000. Even then, that wasn’t a whole lot of money and he knew it. He wasn’t dissuaded.

Fifteen years later David happened upon an appeal pasted across a computer book publisher’s website: CALL FOR AUTHORS. By that time he had written over a million words, between rewrites and his horror novel, and knew he could write computer books with his eyes closed. He put together an outline and queried two agencies through Priority Mail. Two days later, he received two good calls, one from each agency.

David delivered his first manuscript months early. He authored seven books in the next two years—including one …for Dummies title—and another five as Series Editor the year that followed. Each was ahead of its deadline.

While writing computer books David put together a thriller outline and wrote a handful of chapters. He found a three month lull, and wanted to finish the novel. He set himself to the task, keeping tabs of daily progress, and loved every midnight oil moment. In 43 days he wrote the final 80 percent of THE WHITE ELEPHANT CONSPIRACY, and sent it to Sterling Lord Literistic. A few weeks later David received a call from Sterling Lord himself.

The months afterward were a blur. David was his own general contractor and building his house on the hill. He took a few months to regroup and get settled into the new house, then came up with an outline for another thriller. Four and a half months later, David finished THE JUDAS PROTOCOL.

Despite Seattle's reputation for sogginess, Yakima is only two hours' drive and is called "The Palm Springs of Washington" due to its summertime warmth and nearly perpetual sunshine.

While David was attending college, Washington won its first National Championship in football. Hard not to be a Husky fan after that.

Early into a 400-level philosophy course on Phenomenology (taken as a sophomore), David was asked his thoughts on the topic. David answered: "I don't believe what you're talking about is phenomenology at all." His comment didn't endear himself to the professor. Not a bit.

David proposed to his college sweetheart in 20 inches of snow, patted down for the event, on a frozen lake during a candle-lit desert after a privately catered dinner.

Although he never slept in his Microsoft office in his first few years, it wasn't uncommon to get home after 2:00 A.M.

David helped fashion the way Microsoft writers documented information for the Department of Justice Consent Decree.

During his adolescence, David learned that family is what you make it. He considers himself lucky to still be part of their lives today.

When David was a young kid, he created Dungeons & Dragons adventures that played out more as stories than games. They were, essentially, his first works of fiction.

Then girls became more than just friends to chase around with frogs and spiders, and Dungeons & Dragons was out the door. But his love for creating adventures remained.

When David started at Microsoft it was unusual to have corporate-wide Internet access. And Internet-accessible email was unheard of.

David was working at Microsoft and writing his computer books during the Internet boom, when product cycles at Microsoft were measured in months or weeks, and the culture was infectuous. From those nascent days of the Internet boom, David's writing pace was set.

David is happiest when he's working on projects or helping others. He currently teaches three online courses in Networking, and has taught over 6,000 students. The information he oversees at Microsoft reaches millions of users, and helps them realize their potential.

Locally, David volunteers with various groups and boards, sharing his belief that knowledge, education, and a spark of opportunity can make all the difference in the world, especially for kids who've had a tough start. He should know; a little of each made a huge difference for him.