J.W. Collier was born in Portland, Oregon in the early 1970's. The community where he grew up was, literally, a one-store town. His graduating class consisted of just 10 bright, ready-to-conquer-the-world individuals. While J.W. was very active in sports such as football, basketball and track, academics were by no means his strong suit. While he does remember enjoying English, back then, J.W. never would have suspected that he would one day aspire to write a full-length novel. J.W. joined the Navy almost immediately after graduating from high school. He spent nearly four years aboard a U.S. Navy Fast Attack submarine. At first, he was assigned to administrative work, but later he became a… scuba diver, and to this day that is what he remembers most from his service in the Navy. While he was serving in the Navy, J.W.'s first son was born. That son is now nineteen, serving in the United States Marines. After the end of his service in the military, J.W. spent a couple of years in Hawaii, working in underwater construction. One of his best memories involves crawling through a submerged pipeline that fed the power plants of Pearl Harbor. J.W. and his team were assigned the task of vacuuming up oil that had spilled into the harbor, and it proved to be very challenging.During these years, J.W. worked at a number of different jobs, trying to decide just what it was that he was really meant to do. He moved to Seattle back in 2005, and the answers slowly became clear when J.W. met his wife, who became a source of tremendous inspiration and support to him. Together with his wife, her son, and their new baby, J.W. and his family grew into a wonderful team. Due to a significant loss that his wife's family had suffered, J.W. and his wife currently devote much of their time to fundraising for Cancer research. For this reason, J.W. has decided to donate a percentage of the proceeds from sale of his book to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Although there are many worthy charities, J.W. wishes to donate to a good cause in his local community. J.W.'s first book, Opposing Energies, was inspired by the birth of his second son. J.W. felt that while so much negative energy appears to surround all of us on a day-to-day basis, witnessing the joy of his son's birth filled him with hope and inspiration. It is his hope that you will enjoy reading Opposing Energies, and use it to help you realize that in fact, positive energy surrounds you every day.One thing J.W. feels that he has learned during his time here is that an enormous amount of strength, courage and energy is required to maintain a positive attitude; it requires no energy at all to maintain a negative one.