Through no fault of his own, Tom Navratil grew up in Illinois and Wisconsin. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service after graduating from Haverford College, and served in American embassies around the world. Not all the way around, admittedly, you’ve got him there, but he did serve in Santo Domingo, Havana, Tokyo, Moscow, and Skopje.

Over the course of his foreign service career, he won several awards, just to name a few. More importantly, the topsy-turvy world of international diplomacy taught him to keep his friends close and his close friends closer. And to keep his closer friends closest. He is still trying to figure out where to keep his closest friends.

Along the way he learned Japanese, Macedonian, Russian, and Spanish, but don’t test him on the finer points of any of them. Or even the blunter points.

Is this bio still droning on? Sheeesh. Anyway, so then he wrote novels, which never got published until one finally did. Dog’s Breakfast, released by a small press in January, 2025, makes a mockery of ambition and international intrigue. But by that time, he had already lapsed into the shadowy demi-monde of humor writing. His pieces have appeared in MuddyUm and various other sites on and not on Medium, including Slackjaw, Points in Case, and Weekly Humorist.

He lives in a deer-infested suburb of Washington, DC, where his handcrafted ten-foot-tall enclosure allows him to eke out a few handfuls of tomatoes every year.

If you are the type of person who likes to click on links, please feel free:

https://www.tomnavratil.com/

https://btwnthelines.com/product/dogs_breakfast/

https://www.pointsincase.com/author/tom-navratil