Joe Douglas Trent is a son of farmers, and spent his early years on and around his grandfather's, later his father's, farm in West Texas. One of his enduring memories involves hoeing weeds from the cotton crop. He figured trudging up the long rows and back again in the hot sun built character, and when he had gathered enough character he moved on. A certain girl might have had something to do with it. Joe married, and fresh out of electronics school, he started a family with the aforementioned young woman. The family added and multiplied until two were eleven, and the years numbered forty. This is his greatest accomplishment. Somewhere along the line, Joe managed to return to college and would up with an MBA degree. He thought that would be a pretty cool thing to have, and maybe he was right. He turned to writing, astonished when a short story and then a novel won awards. Life lessons happened, too, and some of them made impressions on him. He thought it was time to share a few.