Lee's first professional writing experience was with newspapers. After graduating from Texas Tech, he went to work with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal as a sports writer, sports photographer and sports cartoonist. He worked there until he was invited to join the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, working for city-side. Lee worked in Fort Worth for five years, then went to Spain as a freelancer, to try his hand at a first novel. After a year in Europe, he went to work for the Denver Post, where he stayed for five years, until an international PR firm (Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.) hired him to work in Akron, Ohio, where he stayed for two years. He then went to Mexico for another year of freelancing. When he returned to the states, he worked on two new novels. He was offered a job as editor-in-chief of the Tehran Journal, an English-language newspaper in Iran, but chose to return to graduate school. While studying for his master's in West Virginia, he served as stringer for the Associated Press and taught a photography class for the WVU School of Journalism. Once he finished his master's degree and started teaching at American University in Washington, D.C., he was asked to handle magazine-article classes. He knew little about magazines, so he started writing articles for a broad range of magazines, from top consumer markets to lower specialized markets while teaching at the University of Arizona, New York University, Cal State Long Beach, University of Idaho, and University of Memphis. He published materials in some thirty different magazines during this period. Later, after he quit teaching, he added several hundred magazine articles when he began reviewing computer games for four different computer magazines. His list of writing credits is extensive, and you will find partial lists in several categories on his web site, www.johnlee-ninthman.com, including art, photography, magazine writing, academic writing, and books.
