Don Engebretson

I've lived my life in chapters, now that I think about it.

I've been a fishing guide, a bellhop, an underground miner (kids, stay in school!), a rock musician, a rock band manager, a landscape designer, a corporate VP, and a freelance writer. Always a writer. Oh, and a bartender, of course. I've been a husband, a father, a lover, and a fighter. I like growing old. Things finally add up, start making sense.

For nearly 30 years I focused on garden writing, and wrote for newspapers and magazines across the US and Canada, including a 10-year stint as a field editor and writer for Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I wrote five gardening books for major publishers (Meredith, Lone Pine Press).

During that time, I won five top writing awards from the Garden Writers Association of America. My secret? Humor. That was it. My articles were funny, an anomaly in garden writing. Yes, sit there in awe for a moment. You are reading the words of a five-time winner of the coveted “Quill and Trowel” award. I keep them in a box under my bed.

In 2019 I sat down to write a novel that for 20 years had been sliding across my brain like a box of broken glass. The manuscript attracted several publishers, and “Welcome to Kamini” was published by Guernica World Editions in the fall of 2021. It’s done well. You can order it online or from any bookstore (US, Canada, UK), including independents. Check it out here on Amazon.

My new novel is “Dr. Wong—A Cole Ember Spy Thriller.” First in a series. We had all the great Ian Fleming James Bond novels at the cabin, and I devoured them in my teens. Regurgitated decades later, naturally it was spewed across the page as a spy spoof. Too many people have told me that it’s spit-your-coffee funny for me not to tell you that it’s spit-your-coffee funny.

Take care, read books, have fun, be kind.