Dana J. Summers

Dana Summers, Massachusetts native, grew up in the northeast, Art Institute of Boston, syndicated cartoonist for forty years. Comic strips include the Middletons and Bound & Gagged, and award winning editorial cartoons. Drawn and Buried won the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm award for best suspense novel, and Mystery Writers of America's Sleuthfest Freddie award.

Highlights of my career include Ronald Reagan talking about one of my cartoons in the Rose Garden during a cartoonists convention, and lunch at the White House with George H.W. Bush. Drawn and Buried was inspired by an event that happened while I was working for a daily newspaper in Dayton Ohio. A mentally challenged reader issued a credible death threat because of a cartoon he took issue with. The police tapped my phones, and watched my kids coming and going to and from school. Luckily the job in Orlando opened up and I escaped. Six months later the individual shot the windows out of a car driven by a columnist he didn't like. The incident drove home the point: some people don't like cartoons! Thankfully, since then I've only had to deal with irate and irrational readers, but no killers! Years later I thought back on that scary event and decided to write a novel about a cartoonist who becomes entangled with a murder investigation. I hope you enjoy it.

I live in Orlando Florida with my wife, Mary Jane, and our dog, Gracie. My daughter, Sue did the cover art for the book, and my son, Patrick put the trailer together.