Marty & Madden

Robert Midgett grew up in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, and started writing in the third grade. He spent two years on his first novel, the science fiction book Vagabonds, and finished it at 15. It was published in 2013 while he was a student at Wilson Central High School, and he gave 10% of its profits to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

His second novel, Praxis, follows a major character from Vagabonds, now grown and working as an assassin for an intergalactic crime family. It launched in June 2015 at Hypericon, the Nashville speculative fiction convention. As a teenager Robert was a special guest at Sci Fi Summer Con in Atlanta, where he signed books and spoke on panels about writing and publishing. He headlined a Meet the Author night at the Lebanon-Wilson County Public Library and was interviewed by FOX 17 in Nashville, WAVE 3 in Louisville and The Chris Top Show. He names Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Mark Twain and Doug McKim among his influences.

His new novel, Hard Times In Holmantown, returns to the same universe and arrives November 1, 2026.

Doug McKim grew up in the small eastern Oregon towns of Baker City and Halfway, where he started writing by imitating Edgar Rice Burroughs and Dr. Seuss. He earned a history degree from Eastern Oregon University and has worked as a small-town newspaper reporter, a cemetery gravedigger and a tree cutter in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. He has also spent years working with older adults, people with disabilities and at-risk youth, and has put his writing to work for community and economic development.

His novels include the coming-of-age adventure Just Plain Old Jeremy, the first book of the Infernus Trilogy, and Harvey Madden, about a teenager’s summer trip into Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains. Doug mentored Robert as Robert wrote his first novel, and the two now publish together.