Close to Home by John McPherson

Born and raised in Painted Post, N.Y., (we're not making this up), John McPherson first began drawing cartoons at age 5, on the dining room wall. Discouraged by the poor reviews these early cartoons received (and the fact that he was grounded for the next 13 years), John put his cartooning career on hold until he was 25.

After graduating from Bucknell University in 1983 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, John worked for seven years as a design engineer. It was during this period that he again took up cartooning, discovering that his drawings looked much the same as they had 20 years earlier. Nonetheless, John was able to moonlight his way to a thriving free-lance cartooning career, working as a regular contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, Campus Life, Yankee, Christianity Today and 30 other national publications.

Although people laughed a lot at John's engineering drawings, they laughed even harder at his cartoons, and in 1990 he made the totally irresponsible decision to leave his engineering job and leap into the terrifying world of full-time freelance cartooning.

After freelancing for two years and publishing five book collections of his cartoons with Zondervan Publishing House, John teamed up with Universal Press Syndicate, now Andrews McMeel Syndication, and in November 1992 Close To Home debuted in 50 papers. Known for its offbeat glimpse at home life, marriage, kids, school, the work place and medicine, Close To Home continues to make readers laugh out loud in over 400newspapers around the globe, among them the New York Daily News, The Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Japan Times, Vietnam News and the Quesnel, B.C., Cariboo Observer.

John has published numerous Close To Home collections with Andrews McMeel Publishing, as well as yearly page-a-day calendars, a children's book, a book of medical cartoons, a line of award-winning greeting cards and many other gift items. John has teamed up with Chicken Soup for the Soul and has authored four collections of his cartoons: Cartoons for Moms, Cartoons for Dads, Cartoons for Teachers and Cartoons for Golfers.

John is also a well-known national speaker, having spoken to hundreds of groups about humor, stress and creativity.

The father of two sons, John lives on a hilltop in the country in northern New York state. When he's not drawing or stacking firewood, John unwinds by trying to expand his extensive collection of bread-wrapper twist-ties.