Don Corace has a lot in common with his larger-than-life characters in OFFSHORE. For a span of 25 years, this entrepreneur pursued ventures that led him from the oil fields of West Texas to Southern California to Florida, where he and his family now reside.

Born and raised in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Pittsburgh) in 1957, Don was the youngest of five sons of a successful building contractor / developer. He played high school football and basketball, but excelled as a baseball pitcher with a fastball clocked at 90 miles per hour. Don compiled a total of record of 16 wins and 4 losses during his high school junior year and summer while playing for an All-Star team sponsored by the Los Angeles Dodgers. A back injury during his senior year sidelined him most of the year and forced him to reassess his dream to play professionally.

Don attended Denison University and majored in English Literature, with the intent to study law. He decided instead to leave school to travel throughout the United States and Europe with only a backpack. Soon after his return to Pittsburgh, Don read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the West Texas oil boom and he headed west to Midland.

Don worked as a roughneck in the oil fields, and eventually began buying and selling oil and gas leases throughout Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. When the oil industry went into a severe slump in 1983, he moved to Houston where he met his wife Ammi, a native of Sweden. He worked briefly with a real estate developer and then struck out on his own to speculate in land. When the real estate market softened in 1986, he once again headed west.

Don and Ammi relocated their young family to Southern California, where Don became a successful real estate investor. He also served as a bank director, owned an environmental contracting company, and became an influential lobbyist.

It was in early 1995 that Don found his passion for writing. As an avid reader of espionage and other genres, he analyzed the styles of several different authors and made a New Year’s resolution to write his first novel. Soon thereafter, the Corace family moved to Florida.

While continuing his pre-dawn writing routine, Don became associated with Signature Communities, a major real estate development company. Presently, Don oversees all construction and governmental permitting activity for the company's waterfront high-rise condominium projects valued at over $1.5 billion.

Over the years, Don has also found time to coach his children's sports teams. His daughter, Natalie, is a student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. His teenage sons, Brandon and Erik, are highly ranked state and national tennis players.