W.F. Ranew is a former newspaper editor and reporter who grew up in a small Georgia town. He is the author of Schoolhouse Man and Candyman's Sorrow, the first novels in the Brooks Sheffield Love & Crime series. It should come as no surprise to readers of both books that as a youth Ranew spent an inordinate amount of time at his hometown weekly newspaper. He first worked as a printer's devil before moving to reporter, sports writer and columnist, a position that occasionally got him into trouble with local readers. He lives in Atlanta and St. Simons Island, Georgia.