Rod Summitt, Author
"You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket."
- John Adams
Rod is a retired former Junior High School social studies teacher and retail manager. He first tried a hand writing in the seventies. While still teaching, he co-authored a mystery novel with another teacher. That novel received some interest from two different publishers, but was deemed to be of insufficient length to publish. Rod and his co-author said on several occasions that someday they would dig it out and try to expand it. However, Rod left teaching for a management position in the hardware/home center field, and his co-author passed away. Still, every once in awhile, Rod would say to himself that someday he would give writing another try.
A few weeks after he retired, Rod decided that “someday” had come. He dusted off the manuscript from the mid-seventies and rewrote it. He revised and expanded it. With the blessings of the family of his co-author, Reunion with a Killer was published.After finishing that project, Rod decided to dive into another idea that had been lurking in the back of his mind for some time. He wanted to try his hand at a mystery/romance. As he started the story, he thought that he would weave a romance into a mystery story. However, as the project evolved and reached a conclusion, When Pasts Collide ended up being a romance novel with some mystery woven in. More than one person told Rod that a romance written by a male author would have no chance of acceptance by the readers of romance novels. Being something of a romantic at heart, he rejected this train of thought and forged ahead. He now divides his time between more traditional mysteries and mystery/romance stories.
Rod lives with his wife of forty plus years, Joyce, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He has three grown children and eight grandchildren. He is an avid fan of professional football, baseball, and hockey. He has been an enthusiastic reader and collector of mystery novels since his early teens. His home library contains well over four hundred and fifty novels from a variety of authors including complete or nearly complete collections of Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Emilie Loring, Margaret Truman, Dorothy Gilman, Sue Grafton, Catherine Coulter, Janet Evonovich, Jill Churchill, and Lilian Jackson Braun.
Rod spent his childhood in Muscatine, Iowa, and moved to Lafayette, Colorado at the start of high school. After a hitch in the Navy, mostly at the Submarine Base, Pearl Harbor Hawaii, Rod returned to Colorado to attend college at Colorado State College (now University of Northern Colorado) in Greeley. He has lived in Colorado Springs since graduation from college.
Rod also enjoys traveling around the United States whenever he can. He combines being a tourist with research for his fiction writing. He is the author of four novels: When Pasts Collide, Reunion with a Killer (with Richard Edgerton), The Nurse and the Deputy, and Return to Paradise. He is currently at work on three more.
New Title Coming Soon!
Synopsis of The Nurse and the Deputy
Recently retired Andrew Houston returns to Hawaii where he was stationed in the Navy during his youth partially, well maybe mostly, to search for Leilani Iokua, the Hawaiian beauty that ran away from his love those many years before. At a site they once frequented together, he sees her across the way. But, as he crosses to approach her she races away from him again.
As he sits there dismayed, Leilani’s friend Sharon comes to his table and tries to explain why Leilani dashed away when she saw him. Drew remains in Hawaii revisiting places that held meaning in his past. Confused as to whether he wants to further pursue Leilani or perhaps Sharon who he realizes he may have an interest in, he returns to his home in Colorado.
Circumstances bring both Leilani and Sharon to Colorado and a chance meeting with Drew. Events that follow force the three of them to confront the past and the present. Is there a future for Drew and Leilani; or does Drew’s future lie with Sharon?
When Pasts Collide
Reunion with a Killer
The Nurse and The Deputy - Coming Soon!
Return to Paradise - Coming Soon!
