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I waited a month to write this post.

A month after I finally retired from DEA, ending a nearly thirty-year career as a federal agent.

I can still remember my first day on the job like it’s yesterday, scared shitless, carrying a badge and gun for the first time, in Los Angeles.

I loved every new minute of it then, and every minute after.

DEA has a mandatory retirement age, something I was already staring down the barrel of, so whether I left last month or next March, I was facing the end. I’ve been blessed to have a career I loved so much; it exceeded every dream, every expectation. But as I told my three daughters, loving a career so much can be a curse too. Every decision, every choice, I’ve made for the last thirty years have revolved around my career, around that badge and gun.

It’s been a tough life at times for all of us.

Often ex-cops and agents struggle with their identity, their worth, their purpose after they retire. Maybe I will too, but fortunately, I’ve been preparing for this moment for a while…I can finally pursue full-time my other great love — writing.

After six published novels and my screenwriter and consulting producer credits on Paramount’s LAWMEN: BASS REEVES, I get to wake up every day and focus only on creative work. It’s a weird and wonderful feeling, although now that I have the sort of infinite writing time that I always dreamed about, I find myself a little uncertain how to wrangle it. I want all these new unfettered days to be productive (obviously, I want to write a lot), but I also don’t want to burn myself out, something I never had to worry about before, since I could never grab enough hours as it was.

It’s truly a nice problem to have.

But the short term my plan is to keep churning out novels and short stories, as well as screenplays. I’m also going to continue to pursue some TV and film work. I’m no longer a federal agent who also writes, I’m only a writer now, who was once a federal agent.

And my first event as a “full-time author” is ThrillerFest in New York later this summer. My last novel, Call the Dark, made the cut for an ITW award, and I couldn’t be happier. I’ll be the guy at the bar both BEFORE and AFTER the awards ceremony, drinking beer and bourbon, and looking for some career advice…

…for the first time in thirty years…