Jeff Egerton
Author of: The Boxcar Blues - The Brazilian Blues - The Target & Caribbean Splash
I was born and raised in Batavia, Illinois, a small
town that straddles the Fox River, about 30 miles west of Chicago. After our high school graduation, a friend and I found our
lives looking pretty bleak. He’d lost his driver’s license and girl friend; I’d lost my job and wrecked my car. We decided this
would be a good time to get out of Batavia, but we were broke. We wanted to go to Colorado, but after checking the
Greyhound fares, we determined that we had enough money to get us across the Mississippi. This meant the only way we could
get out of town was by hopping a freight train.
So we did. After talking to a friendly brakeman, who told us how to determine where the trains were going, we jumped
aboard a boxcar and settled in for the bumpiest ride of our lives. One thing we hadn’t counted on, railroad boxcars are
not built for comfort and the steel wheels are riding on steel tracks!!
This was such an adventurous journey that it's still vivid in my memory today. Many years later when I started writing I knew this was the foundation of a good story, but I couldn’t come up with a plot that suited me. It would take several years before the story gelled, but eventually this youthful adventure blossomed into THE BOXCAR BLUES.
I'm not sure when I started writing, but I do remember the first few novels I wrote. They were an adventure series featuring two protagonists, Jake Ellington and Loretta Godlberg, who were field agents for an international crime fighting bureau, and although they worked well together, they hate each other. Originally there were four novels in the series; two of them, THE TARGET and DEADLY SHOWDOWN have been rewritten umpteen times and will be published one day.
In the fall of 2002, I was stricken with a spinal nerve disorder that was caused by scoliosis. After being misdiagnosed by medical doctors for a year and a half, I found a superb chiropractor who had me on the road to recovery within a week. I spent over three years in therapy, when I couldn't do much at all, but I could write. During my recovery I wrote extensively on the history of the Southwest and continued to work on some new action/adventure novels. It was during this time that my first novel was accepted by three different publishers, but in each case before the book hit the press, the publisher went out of business. It was heartbraking, but I knew I was improving to the point where I'd soon find a reputable publisher.
During this time I still thought about a novel based on my days of riding the rails. I just didn't have enough of a a plot laid out to start writing it. Then, one day a helpful literary agent told me that by trying to get my adventure novels published, I was trying to break into a very competitive genre. She suggested trying something else. This was my indication that the time had come for me to write the novel I’d been thinking about. I began researching the Great Depression, a time when hundreds of thousands of people were riding freight trains out of desperation. I wrote THE BOXCAR BLUES, which was published in May, 2008 and THE BRAZILIAN BLUES was released in May, 2009.
My upcoming novel is CARIBBEAN SPLASH. This unique novel features Gabriel (Tibby) Thibodaux and Josie Blaine who are in the dangerous business of recovering stolen aircraft. Imagine their surprise when they recover a Piper Cheyenne and find a seven year old girl asleep in the aircraft. They also find 750 thousand dollars, and then determine that the child, plane and money belong to a well known drug smuggler. They know they have to return the child, but what do they say, "Here's your child back, but we're keeping your airplane that we lifted?" If the story isn't intriguing enough--You will not believe the conclusion of this novel.
The sequel novel is MEDITERRANEAN SPLASH. Tibby and Josie embark on a recovery in Russia. As if the job isn't dangerous enough, they find out they've been duped into helping a political assassin escape the country after she has blown up an airliner. Next, they find out that the only person on their side has been murdered, and they are subjects of a manhunt throughout Europe.
Thank you for visiting my web site. You can write to me and order my free newsletter at BoxcarBlues@cox.net.
Jeff Egerton