No Turning Back (The Traveler) (17 page)

Long before Omar Tyree was a
New York Times
best-selling author, he was a college student at the University of Pittsburgh, with aspirations of playing professional football. Mocked by his peers for his extreme interest in movies, storytelling and writing, Tyree was told, “Football players don’t write books.” A few decades later, Tyree still loves and watches football, boxing, basketball and track and field, but he has broken the jock mold and makes his living as a successfully published author of eighteen novels, a children’s book, a business book, and dozens of newspaper and magazine articles. More than two million copies of his books have sold worldwide. Among his most noted works is
Flyy Girl
, a novel that helped to define the genre of urban literature.

A child of the free-flowing 1970s, Tyree was born and raised in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley region by a pharmacist mother and a strong blue-collar stepfather and role model, who established the responsibility and discipline that gave Tyree the structure to succeed as a
cum laude
graduate from college. In his early adolescent years, Tyree became a fan and collector of Marvel and DC comic books and popular films, including a large collection of kung fu, science fiction and action movies. Through his love of film and stories, Tyree developed an incredible knack for memorizing dialogue and mimicking voices, which he now uses in his own stories.

After transferring to Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated from the School of Communications with a degree in Print Journalism, Tyree worked as a reporter and writer to make ends meet before deciding to borrow money from family and friends to start his own publishing company, MARS Productions. Using the bare living room of his one-bedroom apartment in Hyattsville, Maryland, as a storage facility, Tyree sold more than twenty-five thousand copies of his books on Greyhound bus trips before buying a Ford Probe hatchback where he could distribute ten boxes of books from his car to sell at book events and book stores.

While developing a cult following in the Mid-Atlantic region from Virginia Beach to New York City, Tyree continued to write a book a year and develop a mostly word-of-mouth marketing campaign that eventually led to the doors of publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster. Tyree then became—at age twenty-six—one of the youngest authors of the explosive 1990s to sign four consecutive book deals worth millions of dollars.

Tyree is currently optioning and producing several of his early titles as stage plays, television shows and feature films. But he is most excited by this long-awaited opportunity to develop
The Traveler
series with Koehler Books with
No Turning Back
in e-book form this January 2013, before releasing the first traditional title,
Welcome to Dubai
next fall.

Tyree is a popular speaker who enjoys readings and fan-friendly events at bookstores, libraries, conventions, expos and colleges nationwide. He lives with his wife and two sons in Charlotte, North Carolina. In his spare time, Tyree enjoys reading, traveling, going to movies and sports events with his sons, and advocating the importance of literacy in public, private and charter schools across the country.

STAY TUNED
for an early 2013 interview with Omar Tyree, all about his excitement, development and future plans for
The Traveler
series. Koehler Books is extremely proud to offer you this work by one of the nation’s most accomplished, talented and versatile writers.