AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.davidbsmithbooks.com
David B. Smith grew up in a missionary family, the second of four sons. His childhood homes were in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, Thailand, the setting for his new ten-book inspirational project, the Rachel Marie Series. He attended elementary school there and then went to a boarding high school in Singapore. His father, Pastor Ken Smith, was the former child film star Darwood Kaye, who acted with Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and Darla Hood in the Our Gang comedy series. David's 2009 book, "Finding Waldo," tells the fascinating story of how a budding actor instead became a missionary hospital chaplain in Asia. His mother is Jean Venden, cousin to well-known college pastors Lou and Morris Venden. His three brothers are all active as pastors in southern California.
After finishing college with a master's degree in mathematics, he taught at the junior high school level for several years before moving on to become a writer and editor for a publisher of religious and health-oriented seminar materials. He credits his work on two monthly kids' newsletters, Planet Earth and Bodywise, with helping him to discover a knack for creative, sometimes zany approaches to finding reader hooks for students. "We spent more time concocting puns and jokes than actually writing the features," he confesses. He then moved into public relations and authoring TV and radio scripts for an evangelical Christian audience, putting in nearly two decades as a scriptwriter. In his role of creating daily radio sermonettes, David co-authored such volumes as "Your Biggest Decision Ever," "Popcorn, the Pearly Gates, and Salvation," "Rising Above Anger," "Time of Terror, Time of Healing," "Aiming For the Pin," "The Music Wars," and "Rock-Solid Living in a Run-Amok World."
His two most popular books are "Watching the War" and "Heaven," both of which went into third printings and sold close to 30,000 copies. He also authored the successful multi-book teen sports series, "Bucky Stone Adventures," with cumulative sales of 60,000. You can download all ten of the Kindle volumes for just ninety-nine cents each.
A devoted fan of the time-travel genre and films like "Back to the Future," he penned a trilogy of stories where the lead character hurtles back to major historical events like the sinking of Titanic, the Lincoln assassination, the Columbine shooting, and 9/11. "The Time Portal," parts I, II, and III are brimming with action and a growing understanding of how and when God interacts with the human race regarding tragedies.
For just a brief three-year stint, David joined his siblings in the field of ministry, pastoring a small English-speaking Korean congregation in Temple City, California. He has fond memories of his time at Upper Room Fellowship - a church group that finds itself in the narrative for his latest manuscript: "Love in a Distant Land." He then returned to his chosen field of mathematics, as a member of the mathematics department at San Bernardino Valley College.
He and his wife Lisa have two grown daughters, Kami and Karli, who are both schoolteachers, and four grandchildren. David enjoys dabbling in music, and occasionally plays the keyboard or guitar for kid programs. He otherwise spends leisure time creating new Powerpoint files for his math lectures, looking for cheap Dodger tickets on StubHub, and going for two-mile walks each morning.
His latest novel is "Love in a Distant Land," the debut story in a ten-book series of love stories all set in David's childhood home of Bangkok, newly released by Waldo Publishing. He and his brother Dan have also just released "Behold, He Comes" and "Simon & Mary."
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