Boone Mortensen

I’m not sure anyone ever truly masters the craft of writing—I certainly have not. For me, it’s a passion that lives somewhere between accomplishment and frustration. When I’m on a roll, it’s fun. When I’m struggling, I can be extremely creative at finding ways to avoid it.

Writing has been a long road for me. I was never the best high school student, but I did sharpen my social skills. Baseball and wrestling kept me grounded and, frankly, kept me in school. My real education began after I graduated. I built parking lot sweepers, learned how to weld, attended a community college, developed a crush on my English teacher, and, somewhere along the way, caught the writing bug. I don’t recall what I wrote, but at least I went to class.

Eventually, I graduated from Portland State University and went on to spend thirty years with one company—thirty-six years in the same industry. My career took me from Oregon to California and, finally, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where my wife and I currently reside.

I was fortunate to work for a company that encouraged development. I became a sales executive, wrote a couple of Wonder Years scripts (both returned unopened), finished a play (which I promptly lost), and took a shot at writing a novel—only to quickly conclude that if I couldn’t read it, nobody else could either.

When I finally decided to get serious, I wrote Managing the FUZ and Jerome’s Edge. They were painful learning experiences, but they gave me a sense of accomplishment—and the motivation to keep writing.

The next major step was the Spud Dempsey and Eddie Stump Mystery Series, set in the early sixties in the rural Oregon community where I grew up. The stories draw heavily on those formative years—a simpler time when life wasn’t so simple. Despite the youthful series title, these books are written for adults who enjoy suspenseful, action-packed, fast-paced reads. The series consists of six novels: White Oath, Scarlet Luce, King Norman, There’s Money on the Edge, Gold Hill, and The Great Pumpkin Raid.

After Spud and Eddie, I created the Clarence Blue Series, featuring FBI Special Agent Clarence Blue—a reflective, relentless investigator who tackles difficult cases and hunts America’s most dangerous criminals. The series includes: Romeo, Juliet, The Petrov Connection, and Three Rivers. The fifth book in the series, The Tin Man, is scheduled for an early 2026 release.

That’s my story in a nutshell. If you decide to read one of my novels, I genuinely appreciate it—and I hope you enjoy the experience.

Thank you for your interest.