It has been a while since today’s guest has visited. So I am thrilled that he could stop by and tell us about his latest novel because he is one very active and busy gentleman. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and let’s catch up with Dr. Robert Greer!!!
ABOUT DR. ROBERT GREER
Robert Greer is a native of Columbus, Ohio, who spent his formative years in the steel mill town of Gary, Indiana. He graduated from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and subsequently earned degrees in dentistry, medicine and pathology from Howard University and Boston University. He is a professor of pathology, medicine, surgery, and dentistry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center where he specializes in head and neck pathology and cancer research. He also holds a masters degree in Creative Writing from Boston University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Miami University, his alma mater. Greer has lived in Denver for thirty years. In 1986 he founded The High Plains Literary Review and continues to serve as its editor-in-chief. He is the author or co-author of three medical textbooks and over 125 scientific articles. His short stories have appeared in dozens of national literary magazines and his short story collection, ISOLATION AND OTHER STORIES, published in 2000 by the Davies Group Publishers, is also wonderfully illustrated.
Greer has been involved in cancer research at the University of Colorado Health Science Center for more than thirty years. In 1983 his research group was the first in the world to report a synergistic link between smokeless tobacco use and human papillomaviruses in certain cancers of the mouth. That research foundation is the basis for the plot of THE DEVIL’S HATBAND.
In addition to writing, medicine, and research, Greer reviews books for a Denver National Public Radio affiliate, KUVO, and raises cattle on a ranch in Wyoming.
You can visit Dr. Greer at his website here.
GUEST POST
History fascinates me. Western history especially. I own a working cattle ranch that sits in the Laramie River valley of southeastern Wyoming. The ranch abuts the Laramie mountain range and the headquarters sit exactly seven miles from one of the hundreds of missile silo sites that were dug into the Wyoming heartland during the height of the Cold War. That missile site, Tango 11, always intrigued me, and one day after exploring its perimeter, something I suspect the U.S. Government would have frowned upon, I decided to write a novel with Tango-11 as the story’s springboard.
I have also wanted to write about people who have had something significant, even catastrophic, happen to them that has altered their lives. With that in mind, I chose two protagonists for the story, Elgin “Cozy” Coseia, a one-time college baseball star who had his professional baseball dreams shattered because of an injury he suffered on a lark; and Bernadette Cameron, who had her Air Force fighter pilot dreams come to an end when she was grounded from flying A-10 Wart Hogs, due to something as simple as hay fever.
In ASTRIDE A PINK HORSE, these two protagonists come up against a bevy of antagonists who have also had their dreams shattered, including an aging rancher with a long time distrust of, and hatred of, the U.S. Government; a Japanese internment camp survivor, who’s never been able to come to grips with her imprisonment on Wyoming soil during World War II, and a mentally unbalanced mathematician and college professor with an ax to grind.
The novel is triggered when the body of a heavily decorated Air Force sergeant is found hanging upside down by his ankles in the Tango-11 missile silo access tube. The story unfolds from there.
ASTRIDE A PINK HORSE is the first book in a new series for me. I am currently working on the second book in the series that will also feature Cozy Coseia and Bernadette Cameron.
ABOUT THE BOOK
SYNOPSIS (borrowed from Amazon):
The Cold War ended years ago, or did it? For Thurmond Giles, a decorated African American Air Force veteran found naked, dead, and dangling by his ankles inside a deactivated minuteman missile silo in desolate southeastern Wyoming, the answer is no. The labyrinthine investigation that follows his death—led by former fighter pilot Major Bernadette Cameron and ex-college baseball phenom-turned-reporter Elgin “Cozy” Coseia—reveals how the atomic era’s legacy has continued to destroy both minds and lives.
Astride a Pink Horse follows Bernadette, Cozy, and Cozy’s boss Freddie Dames match wits with a gallery of unforgettable murder suspects: a powerful, right-wing-leaning cattle rancher; a declining seventy-six-year-old WWII-era Japanese internment camp victim and her unstable math professor cousin; an idealistic lifelong nuclear arms protestor; and a civilian Air Force contractor with a twenty-year grudge against the murder victim. Do three amateur detectives stand a chance against these characters and the conspiracy that may be behind it all? Robert Greer’s trademark mix of vivid eccentrics, surprising plot twists, and political edge makes this one of his most memorable thrillers.
THANKS TO CAITLIN AT CAITLIN HAMILTON MARKETING,
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