I retired in late 2015. Three days later, my wife and I were headed to Panamá City, Panamá where we intended to live as American ex-pats for the duration..... We'd visited Panamá a couple of times, driving across the country and back. We looked forward to a more active, healthier and less expensive lifestyle. That isn't the way things evolved and we returned to the States, as many American would-be ex-pats do, 13 months later.

While living in Panamá, an idea for a book series began forming in my head. I imagined an American, a former CIA officer, retiring while he was fairly young and very healthy, retiring to Panamá. The Max Springer series was born.

The first three books in the series are especially relevant today in light of the rise of nationalism around the globe and the white "supremacy" movement here at home. The entire series of six books is available from Amazon, as both e-books and large print paperbacks.

In 2021, I introduced a new series, the Stan Kolinski mysteries. Stan is a retired LAPD detective. Check out Murder on Moonstone, which takes place in Cambria, California, and Homicide in Huntington which refers to Huntington Beach, California. The third Stan Kolinski mystery is Finding the Invisible Man. There are more on the way. Stay tuned!

Originally from Ohio, I've lived in five states and two countries. I retired in December 2014; my husband retired one year later. Three days after he retired, we were on a plane headed to Panamá City, Panamá where we intended to live as expats, enjoying a more leisurely, healthier and less expensive lifestyle than the Las Vegas Valley afforded us.

We did immigrate and obtained permanent residency status. However, the reality of our lifestyle didn't come close to what we had envisioned -- ideas we had developed from watching House Hunters International and reading International Living Magazine. After 11 months, we realized that Panamá just wasn't working for me, physically, so we began to prepare for the return home. In the end, we spent 13 months living in Panamá before returning to Nevada where we had no car, no house and almost no worldly possessions having gotten rid of everything before moving to Panamá. Fortunately, I had a good support system, so the landing wasn't too horrible.

I did return to Panama in 2018 for a three-week vacation. I spent the first week by myself, giving copies of "Retire Abroad" to the Happy Ex-Pats who provided Essays for the book. Then a high school friend joined me and I spent the next two weeks showing her as much of Panama as possible in that timeframe.

It's been eight years since we returned to the States. I don't regret having moved to Panama but I regret having sold our house. We should have rented it out for a year, just in case. We should have put our furniture and other "stuff" into storage, which would have saved us tens of thousands of dollars. Live and learn, huh?