As T.J. MacGregor, I’m an Edgar-award winning author of 43 novels. As Trish MacGregor I’m the author of dozens of non-fiction books on synchronicity, astrology, the tarot, spirit contact, and the kind of mysterious phenomena you’ll find here in The Mystical Underground blog and on our podcast of the same name.
I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, where my dad worked for Standard Oil, known in those days as Creole and Esso. He went to Venezuela in 1937, when he was 24 years old, to escape Oklahoma and the depression. Initially, he worked as an accountant in an oil camp on the western edge of Lake Maracaibo, which in those days was pretty much a frontier town. When WWII broke out, he returned to the U.S. and enlisted. Home on leave in Tulsa, he met my mother on a blind date and they were married six months later. When the war was over, he returned to work for Creole and he and my mother settled in Caracas. The city and the country were much different than they are now.
Caracas was an idyllic place to grow up. At 3,000 feet above sea level, located in a valley, there are just two seasons – the rainy season and the dry season, and the weather is perpetually spring. Until around 1963, thousands of Americans lived in Caracas. They weren’t really expatriates – most of them worked for American companies – but they lived like expats. My sister and I attended both local and American schools during our years there, grew up bilingual, and experienced quite a bit of political turmoil over the years. The Venezuelan government was constantly in flux, with revolts and revolutions always just around the corner. Whereas kids in the U.S. have snow days, we had “revolution days,” when school was cancelled because of bomb scares and the threats of revolt.
In 1963, the dictator, Perez Jimenez, was overthrown and fled the country with $13 million he embezzled. The situation became so politically unstable that Americans began leaving the country in droves. The American community went from 8,000 to about 800. My dad took early retirement from Creole and we moved to Florida. I sometimes suspect that I never quite got over that move. My love affair with South America continues.
Rob, my co-author on many of the non-fiction books, and I have been married 39 years and have a 33-year-old daughter, an artist and writer. Pre-pandemic, the three of us traveled to South America whenever the fares were seductive!
The idea for my novel Esperanza was born during a trip to Ecuador when we visited a town called Esperanza. The word means hope. I borrowed the name and created a fictional version of Esperanza high in the Andes, Here, the border between the living and the dead is thin, shape shifters and hungry ghosts have existed for centuries, and good and evil battle for the ultimate prize: the human soul.
I initially published the three books in the series – Esperanza, Ghost Key, and Apparition – as Trish J MacGregor. When the books entered their second incarnation, I used T.J. MacGregor, the name I use for most of my fiction. I’ve also been Trish Janeshutz and Alison Drake. Name karma!
Tango Key is a fictional island west of Key West, the setting for six novels featuring psychic and bookstore owner Mira Morales, her FBI agent husband, Wayne Sheppard, and her daughter, Annie. The sixth book in the series, White Crows was published in 2022.
There are also stand alone paranormal thrillers, including Out of Sight, winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award.
Here’s a sample of our non-fiction. These topics are found on our blog here in The Mystical Underground.
All books can be found on Amazon.
