Troy Matthew Carnes is an author and career educator with a passion for American literature and historical fiction. He has taught Language Arts and coached sports for more than three decades. 

He is a native Mississippian and graduated from Ole Miss. He taught English, Spanish, and Journalism and coached basketball, tennis, and track in the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools for twenty years. His girls’ basketball teams won three state championships. During the 1980s, Carnes served as a Green Beret in the US Army Special Forces and later worked as a freelance journalist.

Carnes wrote his first novel while living in Colorado. He later moved to Tennessee, where he earned a Master of Educational Leadership from Lipscomb University. 

Carnes currently teaches English and coaches tennis and girls’ basketball at Liberty Creek High School in Gallatin, Tennessee. He lives in Gallatin with his wife, Courtney, and their two sons, Colt and Caleb.