ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I call myself a “recovering actor,” having been one for the better part of the last forty years. For eighteen of those years, I walked the same Hollywood streets as my fictional detective Eddie Collins does over the course of six novels: Murder Unscripted, Red Desert, Velvet on a Tuesday Afternoon, Martini Shot, Frog in a Bucket, and Room Tone.

I’m a South Dakota native. I received a BA from Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and an MA from North Dakota State University in Fargo (one of the coldest cities I’ve ever lived in). After a thirteen-month stint with the US Army in South Korea, I spent ten years working as a stage and commercial actor in Minneapolis before moving to Cleveland, where I performed six seasons with the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, I spent a year at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, California.

Hollywood movie credits include Ed Wood, Cobb, Three Fugitives, Bugsy, Phantoms, and That Thing You Do! Among my television credits are Home Improvement, Seinfeld, Ellen, Providence, thirtysomething, Beauty and the Beast, and Cheers, where I played the only character to throw Sam Malone out of his own bar. (On YouTube, you can find it by typing in “Sam Malone arguing with umpire.”)

In addition to the six Eddie Collins novels, I have written several screenplays, one of which, Remington Rangers, was a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Screenwriting competition, administered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

I currently live in southwestern Oregon, surrounded by shelves containing a 1,000+ title movie collection and an extensive crime fiction library.