Chuck Logan is a war baby, born in Chicago a week after the Battle of Midway in June 1942. He knows little about his father. His parents split up when he was an infant. He knows his father’s real name was Utecht, that he was a professional boxer, trainer and promoter in Chicago and that he took Logan as a ring name. According to the family story, his mom was not real comfortable with her husband's drinking and his involvement with  “colorful” elements around the fight game.

 

Chuck’s mom encouraged him to read and draw and hoped he'd become an artist. In 1950-51 she enrolled him as a 3rd grade cadet at Georgia Military Academy in College Park, Georgia. Memories from GMA include one 8-year-old classmate crying himself to sleep when his dad was killed in Korea. He also recalls teaching himself to draw copying Joe and Willie out of Bill Mauldin's classic book of WW II cartoons, Up Front.

 

Chuck’s mother decided to move from Michigan to Arizona in July 1953. Driving during a rainstorm near Marion, Kentucky, the car swerved on slick pavement, went off the road and hit a guardrail next to a swamp. The backseat was stacked with heavy boxes of books that drove the seats forward. Sylvia Siegrist Logan hit the steering column with great force and was killed. Chuck was catapulted through the windshield into the muddy water where he fortunately landed on his back. Battered from the impact, choking on his blood and unable to move, he survived by regulating his breathing to remain afloat until help arrived. He carries the crude tattoo — 777 — on his left forearm as a reminder of that night; July 7th, 7:00 pm. Chuck spent 3 years living with an aunt and uncle in Inspiration, Bowie and Superior, Arizona. Then he was shifted to another aunt for high school in Warren, Michigan, a blue-collar suburb of Detroit. It was the first time he’d ever spent more than one year in the same school. He was not allowed to play sports because athletic ability had been his dad's downfall. Obedient to his guardian's wishes, he attended her non- denominational, fundamentalist church four times a week for four years.  The night he turned 18, he walked. 

 

Chuck attended Monteith College, part of Wayne State University in Detroit. Monteith offered an experimental curriculum funded by the Ford Foundation whose mission was to expose a random sample of Michigan students to a highly accelerated liberal arts program. Wayne State had a nationally ranked debate squad and fencing team. He was kicked off both of them for drinking.

 

He then self-matriculated into Detroit's auto factories, police rosters and bars until he volunteered for the draft in 1967. (Ethical dilemma: against the war, didn't want someone else going in his place.)

 

        

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In late 1969, Chuck migrated to Minnesota where he drew underground cartoons and helped organize V V A W.  Then he sobered up. In 1975 he was hired as a staff artist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In 1985 he started writing under the mentorship of Executive Editor Deborah Howell. His Detroit novel and his Vietnam novel didn't sell. His hunting buddy John Camp, a reporter in the St. Paul newsroom whose crime novels (written under the name John Sandford) were taking up permanent residence on the best seller list, suggested that Logan back off the ponderous literary stuff and write a thriller.

 

Chuck published his first book, Hunter's Moon in 1995. He hasn't had a drink since 1976. (Except for the cobra blood and rice whiskey during a Vietnam research trip in 1996. Long story.) He is married (for the third time; he has a son, Kelly, in Michigan from a previous marriage) and lives with his wife, photographer Jean Pieri, daughter, Sofia, and Bella the cat, in Stillwater, Minnesota. His first four novels received consecutive starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, which also called his novel, After the Rain -- the fifth featuring protagonist Phil Broker — "An unbeatable combination: a smart, well-honed plot, fascinating characters and a writer with an original voice and the prose skills to tie it all together."

 

His stand-alone South of Shiloh received a starred review in Library Journal, which called the novel "a tightly woven, low-key thriller that is fascinating for its historical theme, attention to detail, and analysis of the opposing psyches of North and South. An intensely gripping story of greed, manipulation, family dysfunction and murder; highly recommended."

 

After completing Shiloh, Chuck cooperated, with his friend John 'Sandford,' in writing Sanford's novel, Heat Lightning. (Watch Logan and Sandford in the video "tit 4 tat.")

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Chuck's last stand-alone book, Fallen Angel, involves a female army helicopter pilot, wounded in Iraq, who deals with issues from Traumatic Brain Injury. In the midst of her physical and psychological trauma highly placed people target her because of something she witnessed when she was wounded. But she can't remember what she saw. The book did not find a home in traditional publishing and Chuck was advised to set it aside and move on.  As HarperCollins and ICM showed him the door, Millennium Pictures re-optioned Homefront and green-lighted a feature film, which encouraged Chuck to self-publish Fallen Angel as an eBook in December 2013. A trade paperback edition was published by Conquill Press in Oct. 2014. Fallen Angel was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and has been optioned by producer Kevin King Templeton. 

 

Broker, a prequel to the Broker series, was published by Conquill Press, March 2017. Chuck is currently shaking out the kinks after a five year blind date with cancer. Minus some non-essential body parts, he's working on Soldiers of the Dust, a Vietnam fantasy.

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