It's funny the things in life that will point you in a new direction. In my case, those things were about forty years apart. When I was seventeen, my mother got tired of hearing me complain about having nothing in the house to read. We didn't have much money, so running out and buying a bunch of new books wasn't an option. E-books didn't exist in 1976, either. Mom was very tolerant of my bookworm habit, but this time she had enough. "Well then, why don't you write something?!" was her response. I never knew if she was serious, but I grabbed a pen and a notebook and uncorked my imagination. A few years later, I had finished my first book. It was a rip-off of Star Wars and Star Trek. I could never have gotten it published, but I had fun. I wrote several short stories and partial novels after that, but never seriously. One day my wife asked me to get lost for the day so she could work on her masters thesis. I hopped on my motorcycle and rode up to Kelleys Island. While exploring the island, I thought, "What a great place to set a murder mystery!" I met several of the locals, including the Police Chief. He was kind enough to answer my questions so that when I got home I started writing (by hand), my first mystery. I submitted the first draft to an agent but it never went anywhere. In my late fifties, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. As the oncologist described the treatment over the next year I realized I would have a lot of time to kill. I pulled out the old book and rewrote it, with new characters and settings. The result was my first novel, published in December 2017, 'Murder on Perrys Island'. That was supposed to be a one-time thing, but the readers were very kind and wanted to know when the next one would be released. I struggled to develop a new story that would work with those characters, but this past week the 2nd book in the Marcus Lear Mysteries was released. 'The Corundum Conundrum' involves Marcus and his lifelong friend, Jenny Gibbons, in the search for a valuable, and dangerous, collection of rubies. Now I'm deep into book#3. It's a fun journey, and I hope you will all enjoy it with me.