Taylor Anderson has a Master's Degree in History and has taught that subject at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. He is the author of a historical work entitled The Life and Tools of the Rocky Mountain Free Trapper and a number of short stories and articles. He also won several Inter-Collegiate Press Association awards while a student. He is a voracious consumer of literature of every description and a careful and meticulous historian.

Besides his academic accomplishments, he is a gun maker and forensic ballistic archaeologist, having collaborated with numerous museums as well as the National Parks Service and the United States Army. He is a technical and dialogue consultant for movies and documentaries and has even done some acting. A list of productions in which he has been involved is available, but it is safe to say that he has played at least an advisory role in many of the movies made in the last 15 years that involved 18th, 19th and early 20th century combat.

On USS TEXAS, BB-35, thanks to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Battleship Texas Foundation. He is a member of the National Historical Honor Society and the United States Field Artillery Association—from which he was awarded the Honorable Order of St. Barbara.

He owns a collection of 18th and 19th century artillery pieces and fires them for movie sound, documentaries, competition, and fun. His cannons (and sometimes himself) have appeared in many films including: The Alamo (2003), Palo Alto, American Outlaws, Two For Texas, Time Tracers, and Rough Riders. (He also consulted on The Patriot and Ride With The Devil.) He knows precisely what cannons are capable of and that is reflected in his writing.

As a sailor, he is conversant in the capricious vagaries of the weather and the sea and as a historian, he is trained to research what he is unable to experience first-hand. Careful research was essential to writing Destroyermen because one of the main characters is, after all, the USS Walker. Over 270 “four-stacker” destroyers were built during and after WW I, but none remain today. However, Anderson spent thousands of hours researching similarly classed ships before writing Destroyermen.

He loves old music, old trucks, old guns, and old dogs—but would give everything he has to go into space. He says he was either born a century too late or too early. He lives in Granbury, Texas, with his wife, Christine, his daughter, Rebecca, and his Golden Retriever, High-Top Brass Tacitus, or “Tass” for short.