I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately . . . ‘lately’ being ‘the past six years’. In 2018, or maybe it was 2017, I started delving into the real history of the Gilded Age, reading old newspapers, diaries, and whatever other primary sources I could scrounge.

​The research was so captivating that it was difficult to make myself start to write. If I’d had the bankroll, I might have just researched the period forever. When I did begin to write, the words came slowly at first, but then more and more fluently—and before I knew it, in February 2023 (only a little more than a year ago), my first book (The Unsealing) appeared.

​My publisher thought I might be good for a couple more, depending (naturally) on whether the books would sell. Well, sell they did, and so I kept on motoring ahead. In April 2023, A Murder in Ashwood appeared, and then in October my first off-series book, The Buffalo Butcher.

And now the third Avenging Angel Detective Agency™ Mystery, Current of Darkness, is out. Four books in thirteen months is keeping the wheels turning, folks. Almost half-a-million words are contained in those four volumes, and that doesn’t count all the stuff that didn’t make the cut. I can’t think about it too much, or I get dizzy . . .

​Sometimes my wife will tell me—lovingly, and with earnest concern—to slow down, take a break, rest. And while I do genuinely like to do the things she requests, that is the one thing I cannot do. I guess I want to use up every available moment of my time on Earth, because the only thing I know for certain about it is that it will end—years from now, or before I finish writing this line.

(Thud.)

Just kidding. But all kidding aside, I simply want to say that it has brought me tremendous joy to work so hard for you—my readers. What a gift it is to write stories that so many of you have found entertaining, thought-provoking, even enlightening.

So . . . while I don’t know when this thing called life will end, I promise you that I consider it a rental, and I plan to drive it like I stole it!