I'm C. J. Mercer. I'm not much for websites, but the books needed somewhere to land. Here it is.

Over the years, like most of us, I've had a lot of stories set up shop in my mind. Can't help it when you're on a hike listening to the wind in the trees.

After long enough, I needed to get some of them down on paper. I did that. Sharing them with you is the next step, I suppose. That's how these things work.

What are they about? Mostly my part of the country — southeastern Tennessee, north Georgia hill country, the corridor between the ridgelines. It doesn't get much attention from the outside and never has. There's a lot of history in a small piece of ground out here. People who've been here a long time know things that don't get written down anywhere.

I guess that's where I come in.

Book One

Marly Dodd drives a shuttle route through the Hiwassee and Ocoee corridors. She moved to this part of Tennessee a few years back and decided to stay, which surprised her more than anyone.

Webb Sutton has been guiding and logging the same rivers for twenty years. He keeps careful notes.

Neither one of them set out to investigate anything.

The Rating That Kills opens with a body at a river take-out and a pattern of reviews that shouldn't add up the way they do. It ends somewhere further than either of them expected.

All six books are written. They release one a month, starting soon.