E.C. (Gene) Ayres has a B.A. from Syracuse University. Ayres has been a producer, writer and director of film and television documentaries for over twenty years. Ayres moved to Florida's Gulf Coast in 1989 to write mysteries with a Florida setting, and his first effort, Hour of the Manatee, won the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First P.I. Novel competition in 1992. With his ensuing Tony Lowell Mysteries, Ayres was one of the originators of the eco-thriller genre, and in Tony Lowell, he invented the first "hip" private detective. He recently spent three years working and teaching in Harbin, China where he wrote and has now published a new memoir, A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China (World Audience 2009).