About Michael Putegnat

Michael Putegnat grew up on the border in far south Texas in the 1950's and 60's and returned there after college to continue a family tradition in business, starting a computer enterprise. But his election to a local governing board in the 1980's was a perspective jarring event and led him deep into a conflict pitting radical change against old traditions and power. In a quest to understand how people choose to govern themselves, he studied public policy and administration at the Kennedy School, Harvard University in 1993 and 94, where he focused on Decision Theory and Negotiations. Following, he launched a consultancy for business, government, higher education and non-profits confronting structural change, eventually joining The University of Texas System Administration full time.

While it had been a life-long ambition, he wrote his first novel, LAGUNA, in 2005, and did not begin to write full time until 2016. He is interested in how and why people organize themselves as they do and why so many efforts fail. He has chosen the novel as his preferred medium for his exploration of these themes, partly because it provides greater subtlety and texture to the complexity humans bring to everything they do, and partly because he has long been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Patrick O'Brien, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie. He particularly enjoys writing about ordinary people who do extraordinary things.

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Books By Michael Putegnat

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Laguna Jan 2, 2017

by Michael Putegnat

( 14 )

$3.99

Winner of Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction by the Independent Publishers Book Awards.

John Magne, a powerful fourth-generation ranching patriarch, is faced with a financial crisis. Descended from a long line of masters of influence and manipulation, he deftly executes a plan that reaches deep into Washington, D.C. and state house politics and powerful New York Investment Banks.

Against his overwhelming political power, stands one unwilling and unwitting ex-government worker, with a deep aversion to conflict and a record of running from it...and five determined women, each on different missions, all converging on a shocking conclusion.

Laguna is a mystery set in our times, in a world where truth has become irrelevant, redemption impossible and murder is just business.

Or so it seems...

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

This title and over 1 million more available with Kindle Unlimited.

The Settling May 16, 2017

by Michael Putegnat

( 12 )

$8.99

A seemingly random leaf, floating on a quiet pond, Charlie Campbell is a bookkeeper of little account whose life is ordinary to the point of invisibility, but upon his death unlocks a truth that challenges reality.

A once-wunderkind, Professor Tom Campbell has procrastinated too long and is now stranded in a small backwater college and deeply resenting it.

Elly Asher is a rescuer, be it injured animals or broken people, but she cannot help herself. Now she hides from her past, tucked away in a small Texas town, afraid but ever hopeful.

Warrant Officer Bob Vardis is jaded at the end of a long career at the Pentagon as the Sherlockian devil's advocate. Rigid and doctrinaire, his life is ordered, methodical and loveless... and he is exhausted by it.

Whether the old man's life was real or imagined, his death is the catalyst that changes everything as lives of settling come to a final settlement.

Other Formats: Paperback

This title and over 1 million more available with Kindle Unlimited.

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