I’m your overnight success writer with only a decade of blood sweat and tears in learning the craft of writing. Now I can call myself…
Author
Born in Texas but raised everywhere else, I’m the gracious product of an Air Force family. Home was wherever we landed next. From the Philippines to London to Biloxi, Mississippi, I learned early that every place has its own rhythm, its own secrets, and its own cast of unforgettable characters. My nomadic childhood gave me something invaluable as a writer: the ability to observe people quickly and deeply, to catch those telling details that reveal who someone really is beneath the surface. I’m a graduate of the University of New Mexico.
I’ve spent most of my working life as an entrepreneur, tangling with the challenges and rewards of running my own businesses rather than punching a time clock. For over a decade, I built and ran an expo business. Later, I spent fifteen years as an executive recruiter. That was like getting paid to study human nature. I interviewed hundreds of people from blue-collar specialists to senior executives. I learned to read between the lines of résumés and conversations, and built what became an excellent portfolio of personalities that now populate my fiction.
My brief stint as a bureaucrat, reporting directly to a state governor, taught me how power works and how people behave when the stakes are high. Every career twist has added layers to my understanding of what drives people, what breaks them, and what keeps them going.
For more than a decade, Colorado has been home. It’s hard to imagine writing anywhere else. The landscape here—from the Front Range to the high country—provides the perfect backdrop for both my outdoor obsessions and my creative work. When I’m not at the keyboard, you’ll likely find me on a pickleball court, on the slopes, playing golf, or flyfishing in one of Colorado’s pristine waterways.
After a day outdoors or hours spent wrestling with words, I like to unwind with a good red wine and let my mind wander over plausible, (or perhaps baleful) stories to develop.
Every job, every move, every person I’ve encountered has produced raw material for my stories. The military kid who never quite belonged anywhere learned to belong everywhere. The entrepreneur who took risks learned that the most interesting stories come from the moments when everything hangs in the balance. As a recruiter who studied people for a living, I learned that everyone carries secrets worth exploring.
You’ll find that in my work, which can be dark, with gritty urban settings, cynically populated with morally ambiguous characters. My protagonists and antagonists wrestle with the same complex emotions and impossible choices that make real life so compelling. My writing explores deep character development with psychological depth, grief, social mayhem, and the dithering emotions of intimacy”.
“Like my approach to life, my writing style is spontaneous—no outlines. I play loose and casual with sentence structure, dialect, and composition. I’m merely led to write by the meanderings of my unreliable narrators.
Welcome to the stories that grew from a lifetime of paying attention.
Look for my new thriller.
NATALIE’S WAY
© 2024 Chet Baker.
