John Spencer Yantiss

John Spencer Yantiss was born in Louisville, KY to parents of Anglo-Scotch-Irish, and Lithuanian descent. A musician and singer, he started piano lessons at age 5, and began writing poems and songs when 8 years old. While still in high school he began playing guitar professionally. Over the years he shared the stage with such notable Southern Rock figures as Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley, and an evening of coffee and conversation with "Uncle Miltie."

His love of writing poems and lyrics continued on over the years, branched out into fiction, beginning with not a few attempts at fantasy, in a style not unlike Tolkien and Lewis. In 1993 he began writing classic detective mysteries, based on the character Sherrod Reynard Colsne, in the transatlantic and cumulative tradition of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. Murder by Bequest, his inaugural effort, first appeared in publication in 2012 through and on Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book, and soon thereafter in paperback via Amazon's CreateSpace vehicle.