Niel Hancock started out from the Panhandle of Texas in 1941, and was on the ground when the Sky Riders went down outside Roswell, New Mexico. Even as a lad, that tweaked his curiosity, and then they touched off the Atom Bomb at Trinity Site, which put him on the trail of the Road to the Sacred Mountain, young as he was.

He grew up in that wilderness, always looking for clues to the Mystery, then drifted on to the University, then Europe... He was then welcomed into the ranks of the U.S. Army... in 1965. Niel was drafted, and after his basic and advanced training, was assigned to the 716th MP BN, Viet Nam in July of 1967. He served through July of 1968, and was a survivor of the Tet Offensive of that year. In the aftermath of the war, he spent time in the Virgin Islands, then California, running with the wild musicians that fueled those later years of the '60's, and finally ended up in the desert of Chihuahua.

He came off the outlaw trail there, through a small miracle of friendship and having bottomed out on alcohol and drugs, and began to do the one thing he had always wanted, which was to write yarns and tales of the things he'd seen and done.