About Me

I have no idea who that guy is in the upper left picture, giving me a hug, but he smells like a fish.
(Of course, I think everything smells like a fish.)

Oh, just remembered. He’s

Charley Pearson

Huh. There was supposed to be a drum roll in there. Or fireworks. Oh, well.

Anyway:  Charley retired from a career with the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program and now lives in a thriving metropolis of a few hundred people in the Smokies, since mountains are more fun to hike than oceans. He stays in touch with friends via online computer games, and plays ‘at’ tennis (he used to be horrible, but has improved to highly dubious).

He’s a member of NCWN and headed his local writers group for several years. Won ‘best anthology’ at the 2017 Killer Nashville writers conference for a humor collection. Won ‘best thriller’ at the same conference in 2019 for medical thriller SCOURGE. Had short stories published in a couple of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s fantasy anthologies, which have been translated into French, German, and Italian, so he can no longer read his own material.

He toured a mosque in Samarkand, snorkeled off Hawaii, and saw the midnight sun in Narvik. He took ballet with four other fathers at his daughters’ studio, and watched the ‘rooster tail’ off the stern of a high-speed aircraft carrier in phosphorescent plankton at night.

He first got the idea for medical thriller SCOURGE back in college, but had to wait for computer technology to mature enough to make the story scarier. The San Francisco Review of Books loved it.

On 15 August 2020, the 75th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, he released RIPPLE IN THE SEA, a historical novel about a Japanese-American girl who infiltrates a WWII Japanese POW camp to free victims of medical experiments. (That’s the plan, anyway.) (Includes a rare glimpse into civilian life in wartime Japan.) That one was inspired by his father’s experience as the meteorologist on Tinian during the war, giving the weather reports for all the B‑29 raids on Japan.

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OK, enough with the formal bio. I’m on Twitter & Facebook. Links at the right. Or you could contact me via email, but the link on the right may be wonky. Right click it to copy my email address, then left click the link to bring up email of your choice, but it doesn’t automatically fill in the email address for me on my computer so have to paste the address. Works fine from my phone. Hopefully it’ll work for you without the copy/paste nonsense. Sorry ’bout that.

Otherwise . . . yeah, I admit it.  This is a place for ego-dumping.  What, you think I’m actually famous?  I am in fact so non-famous, I’m a world-class unknown.  People as far away as Balikpapan have never heard of me.


Outside the fiction arena:

Oversaw chemical and radiological cleanup for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (a.k.a. Naval Reactors or “NR”)
– edited several thousand pages of environmental remediation documents for submission to the EPA, states, and general public
– oversaw radiological closure of Mare Island and Charleston Naval Shipyards, on time and within budget.  When announced this to the public Restoration Advisory Board, they clapped.  How often does the public applaud the Government?
– oversaw CERCLA (a.k.a. “Superfund”) cleanup at our prototype site in Idaho (land-based ship engine rooms for training sailors and officers).  When completed, the state and EPA reps told us we were “the poster child for CERCLA remediation.”
– oversaw chemical and radiological closure (complete removal to green grass) of another prototype site, near Windsor CT.  In a ceremony with the head of the EPA region, the head of NNSA, and the head of the state environmental office, the local mayor said we were “likely the cleanest spot in the state.”
– upon retiring, was awarded:
– the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) silver medal
– the Navy’s Superior Public Service Medal
– what we insiders jokingly refer to as “the vaunted NR plaque”

(Fun stuff.)

(Aren’t you glad I didn’t stick this on the home page and make you see it every time you visited?)

(Don’t you think I overuse parentheses?)  (And don’t feel a lick of remorse?)