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During his junior year at the University of Arizona, Cross was awarded the opportunity to work at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow due to his Russian language training. He worked in the U.S. Foreign Service, has traveled the world and now he and his wife have retired in Janesville.

“I was considering what to do when I retired, and my wife and I really wished to live near at least one of our sons,” Cross said. “Our youngest was still in college, so we didn’t know where he would end up. Our eldest was living in Janesville, so that’s what brought us here. After living in nothing but capital cities for all of our lives, it sure was an adjustment. We’re happy there are three large cities relatively nearby. We love the neighborhood we live in and there is a nice chess club at the library.”

Cross (self-described as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none) said he took a crack at fiction writing in 2006 while living in Beijing.

”I had always been good at writing, at least academically, but I never imagined I would ever write a novel,” he said. “I had vague thoughts in my head from my youth playing Dungeons & Dragons in the 80’s. I wanted to read D&D stories that treated the game seriously, like real history, but instead every book I tried was cartoonish or like reading about superheroes.”

”It was when I read ‘A Game of Thrones’ by George R.R. Martin that it all clicked for me. Here was a brilliant author writing in the exact style I had always craved. It wasn’t quite set in the type of world I wanted, so I decided why not try to write one chapter and just see how it goes? I enjoyed it, and I ended up being a slow writer. It takes me four to six years for each book. I’ve now published three novels and a related book of short stories.” George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series may have inspired Cross to write later in life, but he also grew up with J.R.R. Tolkien. His love for history naturally combined with the fantasy genre.

“I remember when I was five years old asking my mother for ‘The Illustrated History of the World’ for Christmas. History is a good match for loving certain types of fantasy. When I tried out Tolkien, first ‘The Hobbit’ and then the ‘Lord of the Rings,’ followed by ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ by Ursula Le Guin, I fell in love with the genre.”

“It felt like history, just one that took place elsewhere. And then of course, there was the huge D&D craze of the 80’s when I was a teen. That pretty much sealed my fate.”

Cross’ best selling series is his technothriller “The Immortality Game,” however. Set in Moscow, where he spent four years in the Foreign Service posting from 1993-97, explores the world beginning to recover from a complete societal collapse.

“The reality of Russia, especially during that insane period of massive change, was so interesting that it was natural that I should want to explore it more in one of my books,” Cross said. “In each of my stories, I’ve inserted small things from other places where I have lived, such as having characters from Iceland or Azerbaijan or Hungary, and I’ve used place names influenced by my travels. For example, I lived in a suburb of Reykjavik called Hafnarfjordur, so there is a town called Hafnar’s Ford in my fantasy series.”

He said he is currently working on three novels. One is a sequel to “The Immortality Game.” Another is a supernatural autobiography and the third is a sword and sorcery book. After that, he’ll likely try his hands at thrillers.

“I have thought of doing a series of thrillers where the main character is a diplomat, and set each of them in cities that I know well,” he said. “I just need to complete what I’m working on now before I can get there.”

Dungeons and Dragons, J.R.R. Tolkien or “Game of Thrones” fans can check out his work on or .