J.W. Bonner

Jay Bonner spent most of career as a periodontist. He wrote novels in the margins of that life — early mornings, late nights, weekends — because the stories wouldn’t leave him alone.

In 2014 he published his first book under the pen name Walt Browning. Fellow writers urged the precaution: the novel took on ISIS as its subject, and a real name on the cover could have made my family a target. The pseudonym carried him through a successful run of science fiction and dystopian thrillers — including The Darwin Contagion series — and into medical thrillers with The Forever Club. Walt Browning still rides below his name on the covers; this site is for the name above.

Being a surgeon shaped how Jay works on the page because surgery doesn’t tolerate wasted motion, and neither does good prose. He tries to keep the sentences out of the way so the story can do its work.

Now that he has retired, writing gets the hours it always deserved — finishing the series readers have been patient enough to wait on and bringing new books out at a pace that he couldn’t manage before. Thank you for joining him on that ride.