John Hiller Zobel was an author, recovering attorney, and accomplished athlete. John practiced law for twenty years in Seattle before becoming a full-time writer and parent in 2007. His first book, A Slight Change of Plans, published in 1998, was a P.G. Wodehouse-style romantic comedy. He earned a B.A. in English from Harvard College in 1981 and received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1985. He died unexpectedly on the summit of Aconcagua in Argentina in January 2017.