Dr. Burleson holds Master's degrees both in mathematics and in English, and a Ph.D. in English literature, with a dissertation on H. P. Lovecraft. Burleson and his wife Mollie, herself a widely published fiction writer and poet, live in Roswell, New Mexico, the UFO capital of the world, where Burleson is the director of one of the computer labs at Eastern New Mexico University, and a certified UFO field investigator, research consultant, and New Mexico State Director for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network.

Aside from his professional interests in mathematics, literature and literary criticism, and the field of UFO studies in which he is increasingly immersed,his hobbies are chess, languages, diagramless crosswords, jazz drumming, and cryptography; he is a longtime member of the American Cryptogram Association and has done research in statistical cryptanalysis.

Of his wife Mollie he says, "Mollie is my best friend. If you're married, and you're not married to your very best friend in the world, you're in a lot of trouble."

Biography provided by the author's site, October 2004.