Kyle grew up in Oregon but has lived all over, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, London, Wyoming. His father was an FBI agent and he says he was a Bureau Kid, which he says is similar in many ways to being an Army Brat, tending to spend time with other FBI Kids and get transferred around a lot, though he reckons he fared better on that front than many others.

One positive aspect of this lifestyle is that you can’t help but absorb an enormous amount about the FBI. Like most young boys, Kyle was endlessly fascinated with talk of chasing criminals and, of course, pictured it in the most romantic terms possible. Who would have thought that all this esoteric knowledge would end up being so useful?

Kyle came into writing from kind of a strange angle. When he graduated from college in the late eighties, he had the same dream as everyone else at that time—a corporate job, a nice car, and a house with lots of square footage.

It turns out that none of that really suited him. While he did go for the corporate job, he drove a beat up Jeep and lived in a tiny house in a so-so Baltimore neighborhood. Kyle found himself increasingly drawn to the unconventional, artistic people that lived around him and was completely enamored with anyone who could create something from nothing because he felt like it was beyond him.

Enter rock climbing. he’d read an article on climbing when in college and thought it looked like an incredible thing to do, so one weekend in the early ’90s, he packed up his car, drove to West Virginia and spent a weekend taking lessons. Unknown to him at the time, this would be the start of an obsession that still hangs with him today. he began dating a girl who liked to climb (now married to her) and they decided we wanted to live somewhere with taller rocks and more open space.

Moving to Wyoming was the best decision they ever made they reckon. The place is full of the most amazing people. You might meet someone on a bike ride and find out they were in the Olympics, or climbed Everest, or just got back from two months trekking in Nepal. In a roundabout way, it was these people who made it possible for Kyle to write a novel. They seemed to have no limitations, everything seemed possible for them and he wanted to be that type of person too.

It was Kyle’s wife who suggested he write a novel. It seemed like a dumb idea, though, since he majored in finance and had spent his entire college career avoiding English courses like the plague. Having said that, he couldn’t completely shake off the idea. Eventually, it nagged at him long enough that he felt compelled to put pen to paper. Eight months later, he finished Rising Phoenix and about a year after that managed to get it published.

The success of Rising Phoenix and subsequent books has allowed him to make a living as a writer, which isn’t bad work if you can get it. Other than that, his life hasn’t changed all that much. Thay still live in Wyoming, still climb a fair amount, and still drive that same beat up Jeep.

There are 5 books in the Mark Beamon series:

‘Rising Pheonix’, ‘Storming Heaven’, ‘Free Fall’, ‘Sphere of Influence’ and ‘Darkness Falls’

There are two books so far in the Robert Ludlum’s (TM) series:

‘The Ares Decision’ and a currently ongoing work, not yet published ‘The Utopia Experiment’

Other, non-series books include:

‘The Immortalists’, ‘Burn Factor’, ‘Fade’, ‘Smoke Screen’, The Second Horseman’ and ‘Lords of Corruption’

Find out more about Kyle and his books by clicking HERE.