John M. Floyd

Major Works

• The Barrons  (2018)
• Fifty Mysteries: The Angela Files (2013)
• Deception (2012)
• Clockwork (2010)
• Midnight (2008)
• Rainbow’s End and Other Stories (2006)

Biography of John M. Floyd

John M. Floyd, author of more than 1000 published short stories, articles, poems, and essays, was born near  Kosciusko, Mississippi,  on November 25, 1947, to Edward Coleman Floyd and Carolyn Farrell Floyd. The family lived in the small town of Sallis, Mississippi, while he and his sister Ann were growing up. After graduating from Kosciusko High School, Floyd earned a degree in Electrical Engineering from Mississippi State University and was hired by IBM in Jackson, Mississippi.  He took a four-year military leave-of-absence to serve in the U.S. Air Force and  was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, where he met his wife Carolyn. Today they live in Brandon, Mississippi, and have three children: Michael, David, and Karen.

When his Air Force service ended, Floyd and his wife Carolyn returned to Jackson where he went back to IBM and his job as a marketing representative and systems engineer. He traveled a great deal during his thirty years with IBM, and says that “time alone in hotels and airplanes and airports is probably what started my writing career.” He wrote many, many short stories, and in late 1993 his wife talked him into sending some of them in to several editors. Since then his stories have appeared in more than 200 different publications.

Floyd’s publishing credits include The Strand Magazine, Woman’s World, Pleiades, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He won the 2007 Derringer Award for short mystery fiction, has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize, and has a number of stories available on Amazon Shorts. Several of his stories have also been distributed worldwide in Braille and on audiotape and CD, and for the past two years he has written a weekly column for the mystery site criminalbrief.com.

In 2006 Dogwood Press published a hardcover collection of thirty of Floyd’s mystery/suspense short stories called Rainbow’s End. That book was followed in 2008 by a second collection of short stories called Midnight.

Floyd also served as editor in 2009 for The Gift of Murder, an annual anthology of Christmas mystery short stories published by Wolfmont Press, to benefit the charity Toys for Tots. Nineteen authors from the U.S. and Canada volunteered their talents for the project, whose profits go the Toys for Tots Foundation.

Floyd’s stories have appeared in more than a dozen other regional and national anthologies, including Seven By Seven (2006), in which seven authors from seven different states were chosen to write seven stories each about the Seven Deadly Sins.

In addition to writing short stories, Floyd has for many years taught writing courses in the Community Enrichment program at Millsaps College. He has also been a guest speaker at writers’ conferences and workshops throughout the U.S.

Over the years John M. Floyd has tried many different kinds of writing, and enjoys them all—but short fiction is the one he loves the most.  In all, he has published six books of short stories.   His most recent books include  Deception in 2012,  Clockwork in 2010,  Fifty Mysteries: The Angela Files in 2013, and The Barrons in 2018.

A short story by Floyd entitled 200 Feet has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story.  It appeared in The Strand Magazine in 2014. In addition, his story Molly’s Plan has been selected by James Patterson and Otto Penzler for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2015. It also appeared in the Strand Magazine  in the June-Sept 2014 issue.  Floyd also has stories printed in Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. He says there is also a movie of one of his stories in the works.

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Related Websites

• Southern Scribe interviews John Floyd in 2002.
• Dogwood Press’s page for John Floyd.
• John M. Floyd web site.
• Link to PDF file of Survival, a short story by Floyd with questions and vocabulary for teachers.
• Three short stories posted on The Saturday Evening Post by John M. Floyd

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Bibliography

• Floyd, John. Presentation at Bryan Library, West Point, MS. December, 2009.
• Floyd, John. Presentation at Starkville Public Library, January 8, 2020.

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