Perelman that 'the dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom to starve anywhere.' After the requisite period of penury, Preston achieved a small success with the publication of Cities of Gold, a non-fiction book about Coronado's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. In 1986, Douglas Preston piled everything he owned into the back of a Subaru and moved from New York City to Santa Fe to write full time, following the advice of S. Rex, Child turned to Preston and said: 'This would make the perfect setting for a thriller!' That thriller would, of course, be Relic. During this period, Preston gave Child a midnight tour of the museum, and in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Martin's Press, a polymath by the name of Lincoln Child. (Preston also taught writing at Princeton University and was managing editor of Curator.) His eight-year stint at the Museum resulted in the non-fiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by a rising young star at St.

After graduating, Preston began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as an editor, writer, and eventually manager of publications. It is a miracle they survived childhood intact.Īfter unaccountably being rejected by Stanford University (a pox on it), Preston attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, chemistry, geology, and astronomy before settling down to English literature. They were local celebrities, often appearing in the 'Police Notes' section of The Wellesley Townsman. With a friend they once attempted to fly a rocket into Wellesley Square the rocket malfunctioned and nearly killed a man mowing his lawn. (Richard went on to write The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, which tells you all you need to know about what it was like to grow up with him as a brother.)Īs they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet suburbs of Wellesley, terrorizing the natives with home-made rockets and incendiary devices mail-ordered from the backs of comic books or concocted from chemistry sets. Notable events in his early life included the loss of a fingertip at the age of three to a bicycle the loss of his two front teeth to his brother Richard's fist and various broken bones, also incurred in dust-ups with Richard.

Following a distinguished career at a private nursery school-he was almost immediately expelled-he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston.

Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley.

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