I got my start as a writer when, as a kid of 12, my parents gave me a toy printing press for Christmas. That winter, the stories I wrote – the subjects now long forgotten – I set in rubber type which I inked and printed on paper that came with the rotary press.
I wrote for student newspapers in high school and college, then followed those experiences into the working world of public relations, writing and editing membership publications for state Farm Bureaus in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Kansas. After I left an executive position with the Colorado Farm Bureau in 1979, I became a real journalist – a reporter and columnist for the Douglas County News-Press in Castle Rock, Colorado. I followed that with reporting and editing positions with weekly, semi-weekly, and daily newspapers in West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee.
After a decade of that, I departed from daily journalism to become a graduate student at the University of Tennessee. There I began collecting stories that I’ve put into short stories and novels set in the Great Smoky Mountains. Several of my shorter works have been published in literary anthologies and popular culture journals.
I’ve benefitted greatly from studying creative writing under novelists Wilma Dykeman and Allen Wier. In addition, I’ve participated in writing workshops led by novelists Lee Smith and Robert Morgan, mystery writers Jeremiah Healy and Anne Perry, and thriller writer David Morrell. Morrell – he created the character of Rambo.
I’m a member of TWS and the Mystery Writers of America.
The Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave, in Manhattan, Kansas, fostered the creation of James Early. The Riley County sheriff is the sleuth in two short stories published in the conclave’s 2005 anthology. I grew Early and his adventures into the crime novel “Early’s Fall” that Five Star published in February of 2009. The members of TWS’s first-and-third group all had a hand in editing the manuscript. The book was nominated for Love Is Murder 2011 Lovey award for best historical novel. LIM is a mystery writers conference held annually in Chicago.
Since “Early’s Fall” was published, I’ve written and published “Early’s Winter”, the sequel to “Early’s Fall”; “A James Early Christmas & Other Stories of the Season”; and “The Watch”, the first book in my new AJ Garrison Crime Novels series.
Tuesdays with Story 