Austin S. Camacho is the author of seven novels in the Hannibal Jones Mystery Series (including The Troubleshooter, Blood and Bone, Collateral Damage, Damaged Goods, Russian Roulette, Pyramid Deception and The Wrong Kind) five in the Stark and O’Brien adventure series (The Payback Assignment, The Orion Assignment, The Piranha Assignment, The Ice Woman Assignment and The Lost Art Assignment) and the detective novel Beyond Blue.
His short stories have been featured in four anthologies from Wolfmont Press, including Dying in a Winter Wonderland – an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association Top Ten Bestseller for 2008 – and he is featured in the Edgar nominated African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey.
He was born in New York City but grew up in Saratoga Springs, New York. He majored in psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. After three years, he enlisted in the Army as a weapons repairman but soon moved into a more appropriate field. The Army trained him to be a broadcast journalist. Disc jockey duties alternated with news writing, video camera and editing work, public affairs assignments and news anchor duties.
During his years as a soldier, Camacho lived in Missouri, California, Maryland, Georgia and Belgium. He also spent a couple of intense weeks in Israel during Desert Storm, covering the action with the Patriot missile crews and capturing scud showers on video tape. While enlisted he finished his Bachelor’s Degree at night and started his Masters, and rose to the rank of Sergeant First Class. In his spare time, he began writing adventure and mystery stories set in some of the exotic places he’d visited.
After leaving the Army he continued to write military news for the Defense Department as a civilian until his retirement. He is still deeply involved with the writing community. He is a past president of the Maryland Writers Association, past Vice President of the Virginia Writers Club, and is an active member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. The Camacho family has settled in Upper Marlboro, MD.
