I’m actually an electrical engineer by training, not an English major or anything. After a varied career I decided I loved etymology and wanted to write a book. Here’s how it happened.

One day in 1996 I bought a book by Mark Morton called Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary curiosities. Although I’d always liked wordplay, I had never thought word histories might be so much fun.

Time went by, I left engineering, joined consulting, became a born-again-environmentalist, rejoined hi-tech just in time for the dot-com bust, then decided to go for it and write the damn book. It took a year full time to write, then two years to find my agent Elaine Koster. My publisher St. Martin’s Press has been fantastic, although there was a long delay as plans shifted on the book format, moving the planned publication date out from fall of 2006 to summer 2007.