Tom Lukas

Seattle, Washington

Craftsmanship in any form means a lot to me. In addition to crafting stories I love to cook, bake, to sing, sail saiboats, to laugh and make people laugh.

The rest is history:

Youngest of nine, Auburn Massachusetts. Worked at Joe Naumnik's vegetable farm, the Auburn Globe Texaco, then in my own business cutting and selling firewood during the oil crisis of the late 1970s.

Paid singer, churches in Worcester, Massachusetts 1978 - 1981. Used the money for voice lessons.

Graduated Auburn High School 1980.

Columnist, Falmouth Entgerprise. Elected editor Cape Cod Community College student newspaper 1981 - 82.

Apprentice-to-master carpenter, licensed homebuilder on Cape Cod. Bought, restored classic 32' sloop "Promise."

Destined for higher education, sailed southward along Long Island Sound, through Hell's Gate and down the East River -- then offshore and up the Delaware River to cruise throughout the Chesapeake. Lived aboard on the lower Bay, Virginia, where I worked as a constructon manager two years renovating four yachting marinas supervising a crew of twenty-five 1991-92.

Fiction workshops at the College of William & Mary 1992 and at the University of Iowa.

Left my trade to study, earned a B.A. from the University of Virginia with High Distinction, Phi Beta Kapa. My short stories won the Waggenheim Prize for Outstanding Third-year students in English Literature. And I served as project manager developing The World of Dante Literary Archive, winner of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Student editor UVA eText Center and helped develop the Mark Twain in His Times literary archive 1993-97.

Called to the New York Public Library to edit their digital literary archive of sixty texts: African American Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century under a Rockefeller Foundation grant 1998.

In NYC, worked in ePub: Wall Street Journal, Grolier Encyclopedia, dot.com startups 1997 - 2002.

Licensed contractor, Manhattan and Brooklyn after 9/11 and the recession. A time of reflection, concieved and start first novel, Special Operations.

Completed that book in Seattle, where I live with my wife and am at work on a sequel, CounterFlight, planned for release Summer 2014 as the second in the SEETHROUGH Trilogy, named for the International Spy Agency featured throughout.

  • Work
    • author
  • Education
    • University of Virginia B.A. English, American Studies 1997