David K. Thomasson

In "The First Impression" the murder is committed in Finchburg, Virginia, which anyone from central Virginia will recognize as Lynchburg, Virginia -- which is my hometown. Like Jack Bolt, I graduated from "Finchburg" College and have spent many a happy day at the Peaks of Otter Lodge ten miles west of Bedford Virginia.

After finishing at Lynchburg College (with a degree in math, of all things), I rattled around the countryside and wondered if I would ever grow up and set my sights on a career. The former is still in doubt, but I have stuck with writing for most of my adult life.

During my rattling about, I moved to Columbia, Missouri, earned a masters degree in journalism at the University of Missouri, and hired on as editorial page editor of the local newspaper, the Columbia Daily Tribune. After a year or so at that I rattled back into academia for a doctorate (in philosophy, of all things). Halfway along that trail I transferred to Brown University and finished the doctorate there. New England has its good points, but I didn't find it much to my liking, for two reasons: 1) The winters are too long and cold, and the winter days too short. 2) I am a Southerner and New Englanders, well, aren't.

For the next several years my writing consisted mostly of editorial writing -- at the Providence Journal while attending Brown, then at the Mobile Register when it was still a daily newspaper. One day I was at my desk pecking away at an editorial when out of the blue I received a phone call from someone in Washington offering me a job at a think tank. I took it and lived in the District of Chaos for fifteen years. My apartment was on Capitol Hill, a pleasant place that allowed me to take jogging routes that wound around the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and through the Capitol grounds.

In 2004 I left the think tank and went solo as a freelance writer. Sometime late in 2010 I got the itch to have a go at fiction -- as nonfiction writers seem wont to do -- which resulted in "The First Impression." In 2013, realizing that as a freelance I wasn't tethered to Washington, I moved back to my hometown of Lynchburg where I'm working on another novel. I'm still mulling over what I want to be when I grow up.

I welcome readers' comments, criticisms, and questions. Please visit my website at dkthomasson.com.