About Randall Gregg

STORIES THAT STICK WITH YOU.

I write about people trying, failing, forgiving, and doing what they can to survive. I look for the small things that make them real. The stubborn habit. The bad timing. The quiet kindness nobody else saw.

I do not want the shiny version of a life.

I want the part that stays with you.

IT STARTED IN A CREEK

When I was twelve, my grandmother took me to a local creek to pan for gold. She showed me how to scrape dried moss from rocks above the waterline because fine gold could hide beneath it.

I dug. She told stories.

The one I never forgot was about her brother, who went to war and never came home. I did not know it then, but that was probably where writing started for me.

I used to roam and pan for gold along the South Yuba River near the old covered bridge at Bridgeport, California. Even now, I think of writing the same way. You move a lot of dirt. Most of it washes away. Then something catches in the bottom of the pan and refuses to leave.

That is the story worth keeping.

THE PART THAT MAKES A PERSON REAL

I can lose hours over the smallest detail. A name on the back of a photograph. A letter in handwriting I can barely read. A wedding announcement from sixty years ago that sends me searching for one small clue about who those people were when nobody was posing for a camera.

Accuracy matters to me. So does the truth beneath it.

When I write, I think about people I have known—their humor, stubbornness, bad choices, and quiet kindness. I picture myself standing where they stood. That is how I begin.

HISTORY WITHOUT THE SHINE

I am a retired park ranger and have spent much of my life hunting, camping, riding horses, and traveling through Colorado’s backcountry. The outdoors teaches its lessons plainly. Weather turns. Gear fails. Cold gets into your hands. A poor decision can become expensive before you understand what happened.

History fascinates me. Especially the Civil War and Gold Rush eras.

Not because either time was clean or noble. They were not. I care about the people caught inside them and the choices they made when every choice cost something.

Those are the lives I want to put back on the page.