From the cockpit to the page

The pilot who lived it

Marty “Opus” Richard has spent his career in the cockpit — a combat veteran who flew F-15s on active duty with the 53rd Fighter Squadron before joining the 101st Fighter Squadron of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. On the morning of September 11, 2001, he was scrambled into the skies over the Northeast, and flew home carrying something he would not set down for twenty years.

Today he is a captain for United Airlines, and writing has become a calling all its own: faith-based, character-driven dramas, stories of courage, family, and redemption that trace the long shadow of PTSD, and the way mercy and grace break through even our darkest moments. For Marty, that break through came while sitting in Adoration, praying, with Him.

In 2022, after a “nudge” from his wife, he applied to the Writers Guild Foundation's prestigious Veterans Writing Project - and graduated having written Nickel on the Grass under the mentorship of Chris Roessner (Sand Castle), Adair Cole (Sheriff Country), and Nick Hawthorne (Next). He credits them with changing what he understood a writer to be, and his wife with pushing him to seek the true authenticity of the story.