Stephen Morrill

Oh, gosh. I have to talk about myself? The horror! The horror! I've been a full-time nonfiction writer since 1984. I've written several nonfiction books including travel guides to Florida, a truckload of magazine and news service articles, and done a lot of internal work for corporations. Along the way I have edited several magazines. To review my nonfiction, see www.StephenMorrill.com I then turned to fiction. To see more about those, go to my publishing company site at www.Sorcet.com I started the Mangrove Bayou / Troy Adam series of police procedural mystery novels. These are set in the fictional southwest Florida town of Mangrove Bayou. There are currently six books and I plan to write more. These are quite similar to the Jesse Stone / Paradise Massachusetts books by Robert B. Parker. I loved those and when Parker died I was bereft. Then I decided that, if I couldn't read any of his, I'd write my own. As a reporter, I had spent a lot of time around cops and judges and I live in Florida, where weird crimes are daily events. I branched out, writing several books about private investigator Cord MacIntosh. The two series interact in some books. If I am guilty of stealing the police chief/small town concept from Robert B. Parker, I'm also guilty of stealing the detective who lives on a boat concept from John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. My fantasy series, Sorcet Chronicles, came about because, while I liked to read fantasy, most books portrayed their heroes as sort of stupid. I wanted a series with smart people. Tachi, a transplanted Earth man, is now the 'taidar' to a sorcerer on the world of Tessene. A taidar is sworn to die for, or at the command of, the sorcerer. Despite his grim future, Tachi remains smart, funny and a little disobedient. Fiction, I thought as I started, will be easy. No more need to get two sources for every fact. Then I learned that I still needed to do major research. On everything. That was a major disappointment. You can read all about these three series, and some other works too, at www.Sorcet.com I remain an active nonfiction writer too. I live in Tampa, Florida, USA. When I'm not writing, I'm usually out sailing in the Gulf of Mexico or canoeing in the swamps. Here's the author bio that appears on the books themselves: Stephen Morrill was born into the Army, served there himself, and wandered the world for thirty years, living in twenty-one cities in six countries. Finally he settled, like a barnacle holding fast to a piling, in Florida. “When it came time for me to pick a place to settle down, I wanted water activities and beaches,” Morrill says. “I also decided to live and work in a place everyone else dreams of retiring to. It’s a decision I’ve never regretted.” Since then he has canoed and sailed almost every Florida waterway and SCUBA dived on almost every reef and wreck. He has been a reporter for a wire service, written several thousand magazine articles, edited several magazines, and written books including several Florida travel works. “I suppose I’m a native now,” Morrill says. “As the locals like to say, ‘I have sand in my shoes'."