Mel Carnes

Mel Carnes retired from a career in the aerospace engineering environment and presently lives in the Coachella Valley of Southern California.
At his breaking out party he promised co-workers he would complete his two-item ‘bucket list' before the first anniversary of his retirement.
The first item, a parachute jump and the stark terror he sensed as he stood in the doorway of that plane ten thousand feet above the California desert... that's become just a vague memory.
But as a ‘train buff', item two had to be a solo train ride across forbidding Siberia, aboard the Trans-Siberian Express. Over five thousand seven hundred miles: a trip that in no small way provided the spark to write Tessa and the Second Icon.
Of course, he had some help. It would be impossible to sip vodka and strong coffee made fresh from the rail carriage samovar urn by Irina, and not be inspired to write.
His interests are family, fishing, and photography.