About M. S. Peke
M S Peke is the alter ego of Mike Klapheke. Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first, shall we? I am an engineer, writer, and entrepreneur. A subject matter expert in the areas of networking and physical security, I have worked on numerous government and military contracts involving complex, multi-faceted communication and electronic systems. Whew! If you haven’t nodded off yet, keep reading.
As early as grade school I remember sitting down with my brother at my grandmother’s farm in Kentucky to work on a James Bond novel. We were both crazy about Bond and all of his wonderful gadgets. We called our novel Iceberg, and since there were no computers back then we wrote our story on a pad of paper. Although my brother and I didn’t make it too far (about two pages), I never lost my interest in writing and storytelling.
Fast-forward a few years and I was a senior in high school. Like many seniors, I had no clue what I wanted to study in college or do after college. I still enjoyed writing, but I had taken a physics class and enjoyed that too. I considered a path in either journalism or physics. My father was a physics major in college, and my grandmother taught university math and physics. Ultimately, physics won and after I graduated I began my career working as an engineer. While I did a lot of technical writing, writing for fun went on the back burner.
A lot of time passed as my creative writing sat idle. Ideas would come that sparked my interest, and sometimes I would jot them down, but nothing much came of them. My life was busy with work, marriage, and raising two daughters—who had time for anything else?
Time moves quickly, and my two little girls have grown up to be strong, independent, intelligent women. I’m blessed that my wife of over 30 years has somehow managed to put up with me and we still enjoy being together.
As free time became more plentiful, writing ideas started seeping back into my brain. One idea in particular kept gnawing at me. I tried to ignore it, relishing my newly acquired time for frivolous pursuits such as relaxing, but the idea was patiently wearing me down. Just like a dripping faucet, you can ignore it for a while, but eventually you’ll have to deal with it.
One night I began to jot down notes—anything that came to me as I started to unleash the idea that was yearning to get out. And that was it—I was hooked. I have been writing (and rewriting), learning as much as I can, and having a great time.