Talk with historical fiction writer, Ed Protzel

Ed earned his master’s degrees in English literature/creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and his bachelor's in English at the University of Hawaii-West Oahu.

Ed had a dual career for over twenty years, working as an investments advisory manager for Fortune 100 firms, including Well Fargo Advisors, Met Life, and Merrill Lynch, while writing screenplays and novels. He was a whistleblower against a corrupt commodities futures brokerage in a case documented in the Wall Street Journal.

Ed’s expertise as a novelist and screenwriter is in the American tragicomedy movement (Faulkner, Twain, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor), science fiction, Shakespeare, and a variety of historical periods, including World War II, the American Civil War, and Fourteenth Century Europe.

The final two novels of The Lies that Bind trilogy include the same major characters as the original: Honor Among Outcasts, set in Missouri during the transition from the Civil War to a violent reconstruction, and Something in Madness, set in California as Durksen and Antoinette become the tumultuous state’s embattled first couple.

Ed’s other novel-in-progress is The Antiquities Dealer, a genre-stretching, ostensible mystery/thriller about a Jewish gallery owner drawn by his former lover into a scheme to clone the great minds of history—purportedly beginning with Jesus Christ. Millennial religion, futuristic biotechnology, and human evolution collide in a cauldron peopled by a TV evangelist, a former NFL tackle, Middle East conspiracies, and radicals of major religions.

Ed is married and lives in St. Louis, where he writes full time and teaches college English.