Words - Pictures - Travel
My novels and stories blend gritty realism with a focus on characters whose pasts profoundly shape their present. They often live at the margins of society, quietly rebuilding after guilt, loss, and regret. My prose favors clarity over ornament, aiming for emotional precision rather than flourish. An undercurrent of melancholy runs through my work, reflecting a belief that solitude and suffering can reveal a person’s truest and most profound humanity.
My views have been shaped by years as a soldier and civilian police officer, experiences that revealed both the presence of damaged people among us and their deep yearning for forgiveness and meaning.
Influenced by writers such as John Straley, Michael Connelly, and Ernest Hemingway, I strive to help readers see people and places in a new light. My work seeks beauty in contrast, meaning in shadows, and dignity in endurance.
Currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, I am working on the third novel in a connected series and writing short stories exploring the moral and psychological dimensions of crime and consequence.
My work is for readers who understand that truth often hides in shadow, and that empathy sometimes begins where certainty ends.
Who is Karl Warren?
Karl is a fictional character, the lead in the series of books that started with The Stone Harvest.
What began as an attempt to use creativity as a salve for my own PTSD-related issues became a labor of love that dug deep into the trauma caused by experiences with military life and in civilian law enforcement. Karl is an extension of me. He’s sometimes better, sometimes worse, but because of our shared trauma, I’m able to craft this character and put him into realistic (but awful) situations to paint pictures for the readers and to further the story.
He and I both like coffee and chickens, and we both carry the burdens of incidents from years ago. I’m fortunate to have writing, photography, and travel as an outlet and salve. Karl, sadly, is still in the avoidance and addiction part of his healing journey. Fortunately for the good citizens of Westwood, Idaho, he still has a clear vision of moral right and wrong—most of the time.
The Stone Harvest
Karl Warren came to small-town Idaho to escape the big-city police force, to be free of the ghosts of his past. He wanted chickens instead of a life full of death, sin, and human misery.
Instead, he uncovers the dirt and ugliness of his new paradise. While sifting through a growing pile of dead bodies, Warren discovers the town has more evil hiding.
As the pieces slowly fall into place, Warren realizes he may need skills from his past if he wants to survive. Westwood's web of dangerous secrets and deception requires unraveling.
Purchase The Stone Harvest now!
Deadlined
Karl Warren wanted to be left alone in his new home to drink and wallow in his self-appointed misery. Instead, faced with the near death of a friend and, worse, the risk of a romantic entanglement, he becomes enmeshed in a world of sex traffickers and a serial killer preying on the most vulnerable members of his community.
Despite his best instincts, or maybe because of them, Warren dives deep into a dark world to root out the evil that lives and operates in the shadows.
Deadlined is Book #2 in the Karl Warren series.
Purchase Deadlined now
Karl Warren will return soon in Dig, the third novel in the series.