For the past 13 years Jim Toomey has been creating the daily comic strip Sherman's Lagoon, which appears in over 250 newspapers in North America, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. It also appears in over 30 foreign countries, in French, Portugese, Spanish, Norwegian and Swedish. Jim has just completed his tenth book, entitled "A Day at the Beach," published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Sherman's Lagoon is a combination of his two life-long passions: drawing and the sea. Jim's been engaged in the former activity since he could hold a crayon, and his love affair with the sea dates back to his early childhood. The inspiration for the comic strip can be traced back to a family vacation in the Bahamas where he saw a real shark swimming in a remote lagoon. Jim became a certified diver at the age of twelve, and, as an adult, has logged dives all over the world, including Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America, and extensively in the kelp forests of California.