I was an actor for the better part of the past forty years, eighteen of them walking the same streets as Eddie Collins does in Murder Unscripted, Red Desert, Velvet on a Tuesday Afternoon and Martini Shot.
I’m a South Dakota native. I received a BA from Augustana University in Sioux Falls, and an MA from North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota.
After a 13-month stint with the U.S. 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.
Los Angeles credits include the movies ED WOOD, COBB, SOAPDISH, 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 person to throw Sam Malone out of his own bar.
Murder Unscripted was my first attempt at a novel, but I have written several screenplays, one of which, “Remington Rangers,” was a 2000 semi-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship Screenwriting competition, administered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
I currently live in southern Oregon, amidst a 1,000+ title movie collection and an extensive crime fiction library. I’m quite content to let the Internet and Google Maps escort me around Hollywood.
I am a Coast Guard veteran from the Vietnam era currently a patient at the VA facility in White City working on my PTSD. I found one of you library collections (A Thin Dark Line by Tami Hoag, signed, in our tv room. Thank you for what I assume that you donated to the VA. I read your “bio” and found it interesting that you are a Shakespearean actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. My 90 yr. old mother, Marilyn Strauss, founded the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival 25 yrs ago in Kansas City and still opens the season on stage at 90 ! She is a Tony award winning producer and when she retired in 1990, her friend, Joe Papp, founder of New York Shakespeare in the Park, told her to go back to her hometown in Kansas City and start a festival outside and keep it free to the community. It had expanded from the plays to school programs & summer camps for children ages 8 to 16. She has a high regard for the Oregon festival, having attended it numerous times. Again, thanks for the book from one veteran to another ! If you change your mind & want it back for any reason other than what I assume happened to have it end up here & in my hands, text me (816) 401 0345. PS – Great thriller it is and now I want to check out your books ! Sincerely, Jon McCall (my email address is temporarily out of order)
No, John, I don’t need the book back. I donate boxes of them from time to time. Glad you enjoyed it. Yes, I am a former actor, now writing private eye novels. My third one, “Velvet on a Tuesday Afternoon” will be published by Coffeetown Press on November 1. The first two in the series, “Murder Unscripted” and “Red Desert” will be reprinted on October 1 from the same publisher. Check ’em out! Thanks for your service, and I hope your treatment goes well. I’m a vet as well and served with the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea in 68 and 69. And good for your mother!