Three Cape-area authors always wanted to write books; retirement gave them their break.

Retirement is one of those milestones in life’s journey that simultaneously encompasses an end and a fresh beginning. It can be the gift of time, freedom from the responsibilities and demands of work. But since people are creatures of habits, it might also feel like a curse. After forty-five years on the job, what’s a person to do? The lucky ones play with grandkids or travel, or perhaps learn pickleball or fly fishing. For some, retirement means delving into creativity, making art, tuning in to the muses. In this next chapter (haha) of life, some Cape-area retirees have decided to finally write “their” books. What follows are three examples of new authors who have learned what it takes to sit down and follow stories to completion, and who are keen to write even more.

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W. Van Northcross

Throughout Van Northcross’s 45-year career in public relations and marketing, he says, “I was writing every day—but to space and to deadlines. So I always thought it would be fun to work with no word limits, no due dates.” When he retired in 2015, writing a novel sat high on his bucket list, and last year, he fulfilled this dream with the publication of his crime thriller, Never Fault a Creature. Set in the fictional Cape Cod village of Chagport, the story revolves around a murder—rooted in a conspiracy stretching to the deep South, an antebellum plantation in Mississippi. While the story is fiction, Northcross drew from his own life, especially the North-South dichotomy. From his childhood in Tennessee to attending Ole Miss to migrating here in the 1970s, he knows firsthand the ignorance around regional differences. “I used...