FAVORITE BOOKS:
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
The Inferno by Dante
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The “Prey” books by John Sanford
FAVORITE MOVIES:
Lonesome Dove
Open Range
The Hunt For Red October
FAVORITE MUSIC:
Songs from WWII years
Ballads from the 50’s
Fiction writing as a career first occurred to Paul Wagner in school when he won first prize in a contest held by a Denver newspaper to promote a Ronald Reagan movie. Born and raised in Colorado, he graduated from South Denver High School, then Colorado State. After college, he became a transplanted Californian when the U.S. Navy assigned him to the 12th Naval District Public Information Office in San Francisco. While there, he sold his first short story to Leatherneck Magazine.
Writing fiction took a detour following the Navy hitch. He went into radio broadcasting, gathering and reporting news on four different stations in central and northern California. Writing radio and TV commercials came next with advertising agencies in Sacramento. One of his clients recruited him away from ad agency work, and for the next 25 years he climbed the corporate ladder at American Recreation Centers, Inc. His writing there focused on company training manuals, advertising, sales letters, and annual reports. He was Vice President when he retired in l988.
Thirty-five years after his first story appeared in print, his short stories began to be published again. Magazines like Army, Boy's Life, Listen, and Young Salvationist featured his work. Also, publishers in Germany, Singapore, and Portugal included Wagner's stories in books and texts.
An early computer and internet enthusiast, he constructed several websites in the 90s, including an online magazine directed at encouraging teenaged writers. AboutTeens Magazine is still going strong, publishing new material every month. Stories and essays are submitted from all over the world (many by adult writers.) The zine also features humor in the form of jokes and funny photos.
Wagner's first Young Adult novel, The A-Club Mystery was published in 1997. A courtroom drama followed, titled, All Rise: The Criminal Trial of 4 Teens, then Just One Mo' and a short story collection Jock Jokes and Other Stories. His detective/mystery The Houseboat Murders was released in January, 2006.
Paul and his wife Nita live in Sacramento, California. They have four children, 8 grandchildren, one dog, and an RV.
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly and Lo! the Bird is on the wing.
—Omar Khayyam
Just One Mo captures the coming of age of four close friends in a small Colorado town in the early 50s. Maureen "Mo" Justice and three boys deal with intolerance, heartbreak, social pressure, and suicide, as well as first love, school sports and more. Their challenges are daunting. Their spirit indomitable.
THE HOUSEBOAT MURDERS involves Jack McBride, a reformed alcoholic ex-deputy sheriff, and his teenaged son, Troy, who are thrown into the investigation of a triple homicide on a houseboat. The McBrides unwittingly become the hunted as well as the hunters because the killer had taken a briefcase full of drug money from the houseboat.
Ruthless drug dealers including a crooked cop want the money. Sheriff’s Department investigators want the murderer. Troy’s ambition is to become an investigative journalist and, in need of a story for the school paper, he becomes interested in a mysterious new student. Law enforcement and drug dealers are hopelessly misdirected, but the teen’s investigative reporter work turns up the key needed to solve what might have been a perfect crime.
THE STOVE CREEK BUTCHER
In a thinly populated spot in northern Oregon, a self-proclaimed messiah and his flock dominate life in the hamlet of Stove Creek. It is also paradise on earth for a serial killer, whose transient victims go undiscovered, murder unsuspected. Then a Denver lawyer comes looking for one of the youthful cult members. A hometown hero (now a San Jose cop) simultaneously returns to Stove Creek, and a dismembered corpse is discovered. There are no clues. No apparent motive. As the story unfolds, more deaths occur and Rob Swift, once Stove Creek’s brightest athletic star, is drawn into the investigation, then becomes a suspect himself.
