ALBIA — After 40 years in business, Tony Humeston is doing what he “always wanted to do”…..write. “I always knew I was going to write. It was mostly a matter of when,” he smiled.

Author of four books and numerous short stories and magazine articles, Humeston is a disciplined writer, writing 1,800 to 2,500 words daily. A trick he uses to cut “down time” is to “always stop in the middle of a sentence.” That saves about “20 minutes of staring at a blank page before getting into the story,” the next day, he explained.

The genre varies in each of his books.

Completed about a year ago, “Fool’s Gold” is an adventure story set in the Black Hills. The year is 1874. A couple of cowboys stumble onto an illegal gold miner and two women while trying to elude some bad guys intent on stealing their new wealth, proceeds from sale of livestock at the end of a grueling cattle drive from South Texas to Dakota Territory.

The plot unwinds in an interesting mix of interaction among the five characters as they try to hang onto their assets while running from enraged Indians intent on killing, or worse, the hated whites. Most of the bad guys get killed, the good cowboy gets his girl and they live happily ever after, we assume, on his ranch in South Texas, the mortgage paid off with hard earned cash of the cattle drive.

“It is close to fact,” although the characters are fictional, Humeston said. The Black Hills were Sioux Indian Territory, quite a few illegal miners did sneak into the area to look for gold and there were cattle drives from South Texas to the Dakotas.

The reader steps right into the action in the first paragraph of “The Crowded Casket” as a big time drug lord confronts one of his subjects, a psychopathic killer. A million dollar packet of cocaine is missing. The killer is off the hook, sort of, when he convinces his boss that the drug packet, accidentally placed in the wrong coffin, is sitting in the shabby funeral home of a small Southern Iowa town instead of the intended Chicago funeral home.

His orders are to retrieve the cocaine or else, personal extermination or worse. A host of believable characters including a mostly honest county sheriff, an undertaker on the verge of bankruptcy, their fiancés and an assortment of mourners, deputies and other bit players move the story along as the killer tries to retrieve the cocaine, leaving a trail of mayhem in his wake.

His experience in the funeral industry is evident in some scenes. Humeston grew up in a funeral home. His father and grandfather were undertakers, a profession he pursued for awhile.

Sometimes, Humeston sees a book plot in a news item such as an article about a drug smuggling ring, transporting drugs in caskets. The ring leaders thought they had a fool proof method. “Searching a casket containing a dead body for drugs was unheard of,” he said.

Already in progress is the next book, “about a Civil War pay roll robbery of $55,000 in gold coin that was never recovered.” Set in modern times, the search is resumed. The plot is “in my head,” Humeston grinned. Every scene in every chapter will be outlined before starting. “Then, I can really go to town,” he said. Of course, if he thinks of something better along the way, he will change the story.

Humeston’s first book, “Shenanigans, the unofficial history of Monroe County Iowa” is a collection of mostly humorous tales of his own boyhood in Albia, plus stories handed down through generations of local families.

Humeston writes about what he knows or has thoroughly researched. He has been a soldier, trucker, mortician and furniture store owner/operator.

Unlike many modern writers, he avoids graphic sex and gutter or profane language. “I don’t write anything that I would be ashamed for my grandchildren to read,” he said. He and his wife, Donna, live in Albia.

As a teen-ager, he would rather hunt than play football, so he quit the team every year when hunting season opened. When he isn’t writing, he still likes to hunt and fish, also spend time with his grandchildren. He lives in Albia with his wife, Donna.