About

C. J. Shuler is a software engineer in the aerospace industry and the author of Ravi’s Treasure, the first book in the Hidden Treasure series. He writes fast, cinematic adventures about capable people, dangerous discoveries, and plans that usually need a little adjustment.

He started writing as a hobby about eight years ago. It took time to find his voice and realize he wanted to write the kind of adventure he would enjoy reading himself.

He enjoys the mix of action, humor, and character chemistry found in many action and adventure movies of the 1990s. The danger matters, but so does the company. Part of the pleasure is watching people with different skills and personalities work together, get on each other’s nerves, and come up with something clever when the original plan falls apart.

That is the experience he aims to create in his fiction. His characters take their work seriously, enjoy a challenge, and rarely pass up an opportunity to give each other a hard time. Their humor comes from those relationships, including the considerable friction of working with family. They have reasons to care about each other, even when they would appreciate five minutes apart.

The Hidden Treasure series follows the Ramírez family, professional treasure hunters whose work leads them into lost wrecks, historical mysteries, hidden fortunes, and trouble with people who want the same things. Each adventure gives them a different problem to solve. The interest is in what they discover, how they outsmart an adversary, and what happens when their skills meet a situation they did not prepare for.

His engineering background contributes to his interest in how things work and how people solve practical problems. He wants readers to be able to picture the action and follow the decisions that make a plan succeed, or send everyone scrambling for another one.

When he isn’t writing or coding, he can usually be found researching whatever has caught his attention. Historical mysteries, strange true stories, science, and emerging technologies all have a habit of becoming research projects. Some eventually become fiction.