Tell us a little about yourself.

    My name is Carl Reinhard Thien. I was born in 1918, at the end of the first World War. I grew up in New York City, and had a normal childhood in every way. But throughout my life, I always had a special passion for writing.

    When I was a young kid, I was interested in writing and photography. As a young man in the Army, I had the chance to write, and eventually edit my Corp's newspaper. Even when I went overseas I never had normal jobs. Because of my darkroom skills, I was transferred to the Counter Intelligence Corps. With my camera, I got to see places that the average soldier didn't get to go. So my wartime experiences were very unique in that way.

    When the war ended, I became a reporter and photographer for a major New York newspaper. In the city I covered mid-town Manhattan for the theater and nightclub scene. It was an exciting time to work in New York. There were many daily papers so competition was fierce. Often I was called in to cover major stories, like murders or train wrecks.

    After that, I moved out of the city and became the editor of a small newspaper. Being an editor is always a big ego trip for any writer. Then, I worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory for their paper and on headed their public relations staff. My job was to interpret and communicate scientific discoveries in terms the general public could understand.

    Throughout my career, I have always had the opportunity to look at life and the world around me from an interpretive point of view. This sets me apart from a lot of people because I have a broad general understanding about many different subjects, and in the process have interacted with all sorts of people.

    All of my professional life, I had been writing for someone else... to meet their deadline, or to their word limit. After I retired, I started writing for myself. I wrote and self-published my first book when I was seventy-five. It was a history of the first unit I served with in the Army, the 56th Signal Battalion I wrote it for the unit's fiftieth reunion in 1993.

    Next, I wrote a personal memoir about my experiences as a soldier and combat photographer in the South Pacific, called Pacific Island Odyssey

    I began writing The Search For Molly Mallone after my trip back to the South Pacific. It took two years to write and six months to edit. I think at one point I had a total of six different manuscripts! The final manuscript was submitted to a publisher, and is what you see in the finished book.