Claassen, Dick

Dick began putting his ideas to paper as a young child, but it wasn't until 1975 that he finally had his first major piece published. The feature magazine article written for The Iowan titled, Build Your Own Dulcimer, launched his free-lance career. In 1975 Dick wrote another feature story for The Iowan titled, World's Biggest Little Carnival. In 1977 he wrote, How to Use the Pocket Calculator In the Darkroom for Petersen's Photographic, a national photography magazine, The Calculator Book, an instruction book published by Houghton/Mifflin in 1976, Mathematics for Consumer Survival, a high school math text published in 1981 by Houghton/Mifflin, Unit Conversions, an educational software package published in 1988 by AWA Software, as well as a second software package in 1989 for AWA Software titled, Story Problems.It was only a few short years ago that Dick began to break away from factual writing in order to write novels. Dick wanted to accomplish two things in his novel writing. First, he wanted to write about aliens, and he wanted to write about them in a realistic way. Dick drew inspiration from authors like Whitley Strieber and Dr. John E. Mack, both men giants in the field of research in alien abduction. Second, Dick, who has been physically dis'abled with polio since five-years old, wanted his heroes to be very ABLE physically dis'abled heroes. Dick collaborated with his coauthor, Diane Drury, whose editorial experience helped craft his story ideas. One year later, ta'Sara's Gift was ready for publication. They have since gone on to write two more novels, Zeta's Child, and The Healers, which round out The Dark Ships Trilogy.Dick has gone on to write four novelettes: Plastic Dreams; Angels of Mercy; Shadow of Love and LoveSigns. Dick has also recently written a HyperStudio sign language instruction package titled, Serious Signing. Dick has studied writing at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.