Retired insurance agent becomes novelist

When 75-year-old Kalispell-based author Randy Keel set out to write his first novel five years ago, he had no idea he would be working on a sequel in a new home nearly 2,000 miles away.

A retired insurance agent, Keel was living in Friendship, Tennessee, with his wife Donna when the idea for his first novel, “An Unintended Consequence,” came to him.

Keel was watching conservative television host Laura Ingraham covering the topic of illegal immigration on her Fox New Channel show when the first threads of the plot of his first political thriller started forming in his head.

During the episode, Ingraham interviewed a number of women who had lost loved ones in incidents involving illegal immigrants, a situation which he wove into the plot of his book.

“I knew what it was like to lose folks, so I was extremely sympathetic when I heard the people on that show talking about losing their loved ones to the border crisis,” Keel said. “It would sometimes bring me to tears.”

Self-published through Xlibris and released in May 2021, the plot of “An Unintended Consequence” follows retired attorney Sam Riley as he seeks revenge for the deaths of his wife, daughter and granddaughter after they are killed in a car accident involving a drug-running illegal immigrant.

Instead of blaming the driver of the other vehicle, Riley decides to turn his ire against the politicians that allowed the man to be in the country in the first place.

The story follows Riley as he becomes an assassin and serial killer and, eventually, a politician himself.

“Sam figures the only way he can get people’s attention is by doing something drastic,” Keel explained about the plot. “Oddly enough, this book is more relevant now than when I wrote it. We have people just pouring across our southern border and we have no idea who they are.”

When it came to writing his first novel, Keel says it wasn’t easy, but it was enjoyable.

“It was a lot of fun to write fiction. Whatever came into my mind, I could make it happen on paper,” he said. “It took me about a year to write. I would get off on these tangents and all I could think about was getting them written down in the book. I had never really written much in my life. Writing a book was not easy, but it sure was fun.”

With his daughter and son-in-law already living in Kalispell, Keel and his wife (a retired school teacher) decided to pull up stakes and make the move to Montana themselves shortly after the book was published.

“We came up to visit and it was so different from what we were used to back in Tennessee. We just loved it. We decided if we ever wanted to move, this would be our best chance,” Keel said. “We sold our land, our house and everything in it – right down to the Christmas decorations. We loaded the few things we had left in our two vehicles and made the drive to Kalispell and we absolutely love it here.”

Keel says he spends his time these days enjoying his family and working on his second novel, a prequel to his first titled “Cedar Creek Chronicles.”

The new book is a semi-autobiographical story of the early life of his Sam Riley character, told from the streets of his home town of Cedar Creek, Tennessee.

“I want to do a prequel to my first book to show from childhood how this character got to the point where he is in my first book,” Keel said. “What does it take for an ordinary man to go from a quiet life to doing what Sam did in “An Unintended Consequence?”

Riley says there is currently no timeline for the release of his second novel, but he hopes to finish it soon.