Les Edgerton is the author of eight books, including the story collection, Monday’s Meal and the writer’s how-to, Finding Your Voice. Forthcoming in February is his latest writer’s how-to, Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go, from Writer’s Digest Books. His short story Felon recently appeared in the inaugural issue of the national crime magazine, Murdaland.
Les was born in Odessa, Texas, and grew up in a variety
of places, mostly in Freeport, Texas and in and around
South Bend, Indiana. Until he was in his forties, Les never
lived more than two-three years in one place. He’s settled
down now, having lived in Ft. Wayne, IN for the past 20
years with his wife Mary and son Mike. He has two
daughters—Britney Robinson who recently married
Ray Robinson, and Sienna, married to Jason Cox. Sienna
and Jason have given him his first grandchild, the ornery
and cute-as-hell Logan.
He’s had a fairly colorful life. After serving four years in
the Navy, Les went on a bit of a wild streak, ending when
he was sentenced to a 2-5 year sentence in Pendleton Reformatory for second-degree burglary. After being paroled, he went to school at Indiana University at South Bend, where, four years after getting out of prison he was elected Student Body President, was the sports editor of the campus newspaper, and head of the Student Athletic Association which began the school’s first basketball team.
After that, he went on another years-long odyssey during which he (not in any particular order) sold and used drugs, worked for an escort service in New Orleans servicing older, wealthy women, sold life insurance, worked as a headhunter for a firm specializing in recruiting executives for firms dealing with electronic warfare, was a sports reporter, an award-winning hairstylist (cutting hair wasn’t his dream in the third grade—he learned the trade in Pendleton) who won 16 state hairstyling championships and co-hosted a Cox Cable television show with wedding gown designer Paul Cimino on fashion in New Orleans (his first three books were on the hairstyling business and are still enjoying healthy sales), was homeless and living on the floor of a garage and eating out of a Big Boy’s dumpster in Costa Mesa, California, made a television commercial and acted in a forgettable indy movie, went through several of his five marriages, collected white chips at A.A. meetings... and began writing seriously. Did some other stuff, some legit and some not.
Today, he’s all respectable and such, and you can invite him into your home and when he leaves you don’t have to worry about counting the silverware...
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