Can you stop a serial killer before he starts? If so, should you? How far would you go?

The students at Lake Mills Community High School knew there was something wrong with Scott – but what David saw firsthand was more than they could ever imagine. He and his best (only) friend Matt were content to keep their suspicions to themselves until a simple trip to the library sets them on parallel trajectories where even the most careful plans have unexpected consequences that can rock a community and reverberate long after they're gone.

Fifteen years later, Matt loses his high-profile reporter gig and is forced to return to the town he did everything he could to leave behind. He gets a shot at redemption with the small-town weekly where he started and quickly discovers a community that has moved on from the past. Well, everybody but David. He remembers everything and doesn’t buy a thirty-something Scott’s “normal” act. There's a madman hovering inside. After all, some people never change, right?

Something the entire town is reminded of when the first dead girl turns up.

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About the Author

I got my first taste of publication in first grade, when my essay on Airplane II: The Sequel appeared on my elementary school’s Creative Courier.

Seriously.

Questionable parental movie supervision notwithstanding, seeing something I had written in print was invigorating. So after spending my formative years running around a small town in rural Iowa, I enrolled in the University of Iowa and eventually picked up degrees in Journalism and Communication Studies. During that time I also spent three years writing for the Daily Iowan.

After graduation crossed over to the media relations world in the University of Iowa Sports Information Department, where I spent nine years on the road, running stats and frantically writing post-game stories before the team bus left.

I only got left behind once.

Marriage and a baby made road trips an impossibility, so I thought the life of a stay-at-home dad would be the perfect way to finally write that novel that had been bouncing around my head for years.

How cute is that?

Needless to say, caring for a 6-month-old leaves precious little time to breathe, let alone write. I was barely able to keep up with the fake blog I decided to make for her at 3 a.m. the day she was born.

But despite being parented by me, the kid got older and my novel idea poked its head out from under an avalanche of dirty diapers. I was ready to start writing.

Just in time to find out we were having another kid.

This time I knew what I was getting into, however, and I hustled to get whatever I could down before the next avalanche arrived. It was about 14,000 words, and it wasn’t good, but it was the seed from which A Necessary Act grew.

That was six years, six drafts and a move to Minnesota ago. There were plenty of detours along the way, including a stint writing opinion pieces as a member of the Rochester Post-Bulletin’s Editorial Advisory Board, but I finally got the book done.

I can’t say if it’s good or not—that’s your job—but it’s full of the things I like. Creepy bad guys, twists and bad decisions made for good reasons.

Hope you like it.