Tom McMullen

I was born in the North of England. Despite a sound education (and my mother's protestations), I joined the British Army when I was 18 as a Private soldier and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel 36 years later in 2001. Late into that military service I realised that my boyhood interests into all aspects of the American West had formulated into an idea for a series of books.

On the dubious pretext of research, I persuaded my wife to visit the West with me. Suitcases full of reference books accompanied us back from these trips and those volumes now form my library at home. I'm not sure why I chose the Cheyenne as the focal point for my writing but I admired their warlike stance that was linked to their precarious natural life on the Plains. But I also take off my hat to the pioneers, soldiers and settlers who carved out their own way of life in the same places as the original inhabitants.

Reading reference material is one thing but actually experiencing the terrain on horseback, on foot or in a car is another and so I have experienced the continental splendour from Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska down to Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas; the impact of marching, living and dying in such hard country was not lost on me. To those of you who live in the USA, this is your back yard; to an Englishman from a clutch of small damp islands, this is an immense and beguiling landscape. The lives of those who lived and died there deserve to be recorded.

I hope you enjoy reading my books as much as I did writing them. Reviews are always welcome.