I quit my job to write. That’s how much love writing. It’s also an indication of how utterly frustrated I was with my life as a middle manager in a national corporation. Mid-life crisis? No, I don’t think so. It’s more that I saw the finish line approaching more rapidly than I expected thirty years before.

What I am is what I write.

The characters in the St. Isidore Collection, the people who live in this town I have created in my mind, all contain some thread of me. Let’s be honest. I write what I know. And I know the frustration of listening to the millennials at work talk about their plans for the next thirty years, and suddenly realizing I don’t have thirty years left.

For Henry Branson, the protagonist in the short story, Revenge is Best Served Bloody, you’ll see that thread taken to its extreme.

Adam King, a central player in Wicked Revenge: Book 2 From the St.Isidore Collection is a middle-aged guy who quit his job to follow his dream and open a bookstore.

Bree, the protagonist in A Wicked Plan: Book 1 From the St. Isidore Collection is not a middle-aged woman. She’s a teenager. But Bree already feels the frustration that people more than twice her age experience. She feels like others are holding her back and Bree is willing to do whatever it takes to get them out of her way.

There are others in St. Isidore, who only want to love and be loved. They believe the fantasy and are willing whatever they have to do to make it come true.

Beth is the perfect example of that. She is a supporting player in A Wicked Plan, but a central character in Wicked Revenge. Beth loves Bree. She wants Bree. All Beth wants is for Bree to want and adore her. Then Beth finds out Bree is cheating on her with Melinda. What do you think Beth does?

What would you do?

And then there is Tim. Destined to become St. Isidore's most celebrated criminal, all he wants is to be loved. Does he have to kill all the women who reject him?

I see myself in all of my friends in St. Isidore. Well, maybe not Tim, but most of them. Hopefully, you will too.

Welcome to the St. Isidore Collection. It's more than a series of dark, realistic and sometimes supernatural, paranormal, noir fiction.

The St. Isidore Collection is a community. Want to be our neighbor?

Rod