The Needed Killing Series: Cozy Mysteries with a Southern Flair

I don’t believe it matters how long it takes you to find your calling--as long as you find it eventually. I certainly took the long way around to becoming a writer.

The path I took--part-time jobs from the seventh grade through college, Merit Scholarship winner, Presidential Scholar, Princeton University dropout, communications technician in the U.S. Navy Reserve, Princeton University graduate, group insurance salesman, underwriter, account executive, management accountant, tax accountant, software installer, systems administrator, computer help desk employee, Unix support provider, webserver administrator, online learning systems administrator, and tornado survivor--made me a different writer than I would have been had I skipped any of the stops along the way. With the possible exception of the tornado, I’m glad to have experienced them all. The tornado did make one thing clear. If I wanted to write, I’d better get to it. In September 2011, with my wife’s encouragement, collaboration, and editorial support, that’s what I did.

Fortunately, all that time I wasn’t writing, I was reading—I started out with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, moved on to Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, and later added to my reading list such authors as Dorothy Sayers, Dick Francis, and Robert B. Parker. They and many other writers helped shape my understanding of how to construct a mystery and fueled my love of a good whodunit. Authors outside the genre, notably Robert A. Heinlein and J. R. R. Tolkien, kindled my imagination as a young reader and engendered in me a love of reading that continues to this day. I thank them all for the many wonderful hours I have spent in cloud-cuckoo-land, from the English countryside to the streets of Boston to the far reaches of outer space.

Since the tornado of April 27, 2011, my wife and I have published five murder mysteries—the first five books in the Needed Killing Series. There are lots more of them to come--I’ll never run out of people who need killing. Plus, I’ve got books in another genre waiting to be written.

Having taken a long and winding road to this calling, my wife and I are having great fun writing books. Try one of them and see if you don’t have fun too.

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