Sometimes, you have to pay for your good deeds. Steve Peretti is a prolific serial killer known as The Woodsman. For years, he's terrorized dozens of victims throughout the upper midwest, without drawing attention or suspicion to himself, keeping a low profile. He's cautious, careful, and calculated ... most of the time. But anyone can make a mistake. One night, on the way home through Hope, Wisconsin, he stops for gas and ends up foiling a robbery. He gets injured in the process, and ends up in jail over a conceal-carry violation. While in lock-up, he taunts and is attacked by another prisoner, who blinds him. Then he's given a chance to have his vision restored through an experimental, advanced eye-surgery program at UW-Madison, called EyeCU. His surgery is successful, and he returns from EyeCU ready to rebuild his life with his new eyes. And that means returning to being The Woodsman. But he begins having strange visions; vivid dreams about acts of kindness and mercy that seem foreign and terrifying to him. Worse, he finds it difficult to carry out his normal acts of evil, leaving him increasingly helpless at a time when he's at his most vulnerable. Evil can corrupt good, but is the reverse true? Can good disrupt the persistence of evil? If you've ever enjoyed movies like Eyes of Laura Mars, The Eye, or Blink, then The Woodsman is a tale that will defy your expectations, yet leave you entertained and more than a little unsettled.
Craig Hansen wrote his first SF published short story, "The S.S. Nova," when he was fourteen. It was published in the Minnesota Writers in the Schools COMPAS program's 1981 anthology of student writing, When It Grows Up, You Say Goodbye To It. That was when he decided to dedicate himself to writing. Hansen earned two degrees at Minnesota State University at Mankato under the mentorship of young adult novelist Terry Davis. In the years that followed, Hansen worked a variety of jobs, including five years in journalism in northwestern Wisconsin, where he earned several state awards for his writing and editing. His work has appeared in the Meadowbrook Press anthology, Girls to the Rescue, Book 1, as well as the true crime journal, Ripper Notes, in volume 28. His first novel, Most Likely, was released in May 2011. Shada, the first installment of the Ember Cole series of young adult paranormal suspense books, was published in September 2011. Under Contract followed in the spring of 2012. The Devohrah Initiative appeared in August 2013. Nice Girl Like You appeared in June 2014, and Spoiled in September 2014. The Woodsman is his most recent work. Hansen lives in Oregon with his wife, a dog, two cats, and his 92-year-old father, a World War II veteran. Craig's interests include the music of Johnny Cash, reading the novels of other independent authors, blogging, and the study of Messianic theology.
