is also featured on more than 12 musical theatre recordings, including cover tunes found on his 2007 album Another Side and 2008's Music Music Music. Both albums accrued places on the UK Albums Chart, as did his self-titled John Barrowman (2010), which reached No. 11, his highest chart placing to date. He has published two memoirs and autobiographies, Anything Goes (2008) and I Am What I Am (2009), with his older sister Carole as co-author. The siblings also teamed up to write a series of young-adult fantasy novels, Hollow Earth. The second book in the series, Bone Quill, was released 2013, with the third, Book of Beasts published in 2014. A second trilogy, The Orion Chronicles, followed with Conjuror published in 2016, Nephilim in 2017, and Inquisitor in 2018. Early life John Scot Barrowman was born in Mount Vernon, Glasgow, on 11 March 1967, the youngest of three children. His older sister, Carole, later became a university professor. He lived in Glasgow for the first eight years of his life. His mother was a singer who also worked in a record shop, while his father was employed by the Caterpillar heavy machinery company in nearby Uddingston. In 1975, his father's company relocated the family to the United States, where his father managed the Caterpillar tractor factory in Aurora, Illinois. The family settled in Joliet, Illinois, where Barrowman attended Joliet West High School in the heart of a "quintessentially middle-class conservative town". His high school music and English teachers changed the future course of his life, with his music tutor instilling in him a love for performing, and his English teacher encouraging him to rise to his true artistic potential. His English teacher moved him into a programme for gifted children and coached him for the school's speech team. With the support of his teacher, he competed with other schools in statewide speech competitions, where he sharpened his skills reading scenes from plays. After his classmates mocked his native Scottish accent, Barrowman learned to speak with a General American accent which also hinted at a Mid-Atlantic accent. As a freshman, he won parts in several musical productions; from 1983 to 1986, he performed in such musical productions as Oliver!, Camelot, Hello, Dolly!, Li'l Abner, and Anything Goes. Among his classmates in high school, who also participated in theater with him, were Anthony Rapp and Andy Dick. Rapp is reportedly a close