Growing up on a South Carolina hay farm, Daniel Elton Harmon decided in 7th grade he wanted to be a short story writer. Guidance counselors steered him to journalism school, which began his 31-year career as a writer and editor for magazines, newspapers and newsletters. During the 1990s he devoted more and more of his time to writing educational books for juveniles. In 2001 he realized his childhood ambition with publication of The Chalk Town Train & Other Tales, his first collection of short stories. Chalk Town is the first volume in "The Harper Chronicles," an historical mystery series following the adventures of a crime reporter in South Carolina during the late 1800s. More than 70 subsequent tales are in the works for future volumes. Not only does Harmon write about the post-Reconstruction and Progressive eras of American history; he strives to write in the style of period authors. Influences include Arthur Conan Doyle, John Galsworthy, Amelia B. Edwards, Bram Stoker, Jerome K. Jerome, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Francois Coppee, Victor Hugo, O. Henry, Leo Tolstoy and Bret Harte. Meanwhile, Harmon is busy with more educational books while editing a newsletter, The Lawyer's PC (published by West), and serving as associate editor/art director of Sandlapper: The Magazine of South Carolina.

Besides "The Harper Chronicles," current nonfiction book projects are an historical profile of the Hudson River and a biography of Ayatollah Rhuhollah Khomeini for Chelsea House (high school readers) and country studies of Algeria and Jordan for Mason Crest (junior high).