I was born and raised in a small city, Nelsonville, in southeastern Ohio. The former coal-mining center of the USA, Nelsonville is now 5,000 folks trying to hold on to the memories of brighter days. I grew up, never worrying about safety or issues that plague our country today. Joking about growing up with my head in a bag, I was oblivious to anything but playing baseball and chasing girls. Never adept at either activity, I still had a wonderful childhood. After one tumultuous semester at Ohio University and facing the draft, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy and began a 20-year career and love affair. By no means a military addict, I loved the work and the lifestyle of changing scenery every three or four years. Believe it or not, there is great security in a military career, if you live through it and most do. Two trips on the USS Enterprise to the coast of Viet Nam, where the guilt grew from knowing that boys from my hometown were dying in-country. It's something that you don't get over, but you do learn to live with. After the Navy and obtaining my bachelor's degree, I was hired to manage various government IT contracts for the next 27 years. As an aside, during that time, I worked for the State of Virginia and five different IT companies. The last of the five companies just merged and retired the name, so technically all the companies that I have worked for no longer exist. I hope I didn't have much to do with their demise and take some consolation that the State of Virginia is still alive and kicking. Retiring in 2009, I then had lots of time to work on my family history which I had dabbled with since 1993. I kept finding information on my grandfather's half-brother Hiram, who was a 2nd LT in the First West Virginia Cavalry during the Civil War. So much information was available, and it became more apparent with each new piece that this was a story that just needed to be shared. In 2015, at the suggestion and with the aid of my sisters, I put the story together, first in a spreadsheet, then into a Powerpoint presentation and finally into words. I had so much information and after putting it in linear order, I began to imagine how Hiram got from Point A to B to C, etc. Every opportunity to utilize facts and my imagination when needed and finally I had a story. For wanna-be authors, I first tried doing my own editing and self-publishing. If you are experienced, you might pull that off. I am a novice and I failed fairly miserably at attempts to do that. When I found Gina McKnight at Monday Creek Publishing and she accepted my book, the entire process turned around. It became a professional endeavor in every sense of the word. The final product is awesome and if you give it a read, you will agree that the two main characters (who are real people, by the way) were heroic and incredible young men in a very tumultuous time in American history. I am in the process of researching and writing a second story involving Hiram and his family. It will be about my grandfather and his siblings growing up in southeastern Ohio. It includes mystery, possible murder, and hard times in 19th century America. The other project that I am involved in is a Facebook Group Page: The NEW Nelsonville Tribune. The original Nelsonville Tribune was a once-a-week Thursday newspaper in my hometown, Nelsonville, Athens County, Ohio. The NEW page is an attempt to keep the memories of our historical old town in the public's eye. I do that by using old interesting articles from the original paper, other local papers, and input from our 4,009 members. Started two years ago, our membership is from a city of 5,200 folks so we have fairly good participation thus far and it seems to continue to grow. Nelsonville was once the coal-production center of the USA. Virtually the Industrial Revolution that took place in America was fueled from southeastern Ohio, and Nelsonville was the focal point of it all. Lots of history, not all of it glorious, but very interesting. Check out The NEW Nelsonville Tribune on Facebook.Since July 2018, I have investigated a 1984 cold case murder that took place in my hometown. The project was wrapped up in September 2019 with a decision by the family not to pursue prosecution. Totally understandable as this has been going on for more than 35 years with little likelihood of a meaningful verdict. The wear and tear on the family has been and would be too great. We did identify with little remaining doubt, the killer, and how it was accomplished. The individual is in and out of a mental institute, has spent an entire lifetime on drugs, and has physically destroyed his life as well. It appears to be a matter of time and this problem will end. Perhaps our efforts had something to do with the County Sheriff's Office forming a Cold Case Unit, I hope so and wish them good fortune. My report was 333 pages, with timelines, maps, witnesses, photos, some assumptions but a whole lot of facts as well. I now intend to write a novel, based upon the above-described efforts, and have a working title "Camelot's Cold Case Murder Mystery".Additionally, working on a short book about the many humorous incidents that I experienced during my 20-year Navy career. Each duty station, the "old salts" would always complain about this not being the Navy. I eventually came to the realization that in 20 years of trying, I never found it, thus the title "This Ain't the 'Real' Navy!"https://bookviralreviews.com/book-reviews/american-civil-war-fiction/Read more about this authorRead less about this author