John Spencer Yantiss was born in Louisville, KY to parents of Anglo-Scotch-Irish, and Lithuanian descent. A musician and singer, he started piano lessons at age 5, and began writing poems and songs 8 years old. While still in high school he began playing guitar professionally. Over the years he shared the stage with such notable Southern Rock figures as Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley, and an evening of coffee and conversation with "Uncle Miltie.

His love of writing poems and lyrics continued on over the years, branched out into fiction, beginning with not a few attempts at fantasy, in a style not unlike Tolkien and Lewis. In 1993 he began writing classic detective mysteries, based on the character Sherrod Reynard Colsne, in the transatlantic and cumulative tradition of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. Murder by Bequest, his inaugural effort, first appeared in publication in 2012 through and on Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book, and soon thereafter in paperback via Amazon's CreateSpace vehicle.

For fans of modern and classic mystery alike, the first recorded tale in the casebook of Sherrod Reynard Colsne, Murder by Bequest, is a marriage of two eras, and considering the leaps in applications of technology since 2000, perhaps even three. For "friends" of both Sherlock Holmes, and Nero Wolfe who, according to Rex Stout, Archie Goodwin's agent, are father and son, it is the long-sought continuation of "the family saga." Combining the seemingly opposing elements of fast-paced action, methodical interrogation, and abstruse but exact deduction, Murder by Bequest introduces an all-new, old-fashioned gentlemen's and ladies' detective whose heart and passions reside in Victorian England, but who utilizes the Internet and related tools in tracking down criminals.

Colsne is tall and slender like Holmes; like Wolfe, he is a gourmet; again, in common with Holmes, he loves and plays music (piano in his case). His temperament and wonts eerily drawing from the disparate personas of each, he is sometimes sedentary (as Wolfe is always in danger of a "relapse," Colsne is just as likely to "go Greek," as Monty Weston terms it, escaping to his fifth-floor retreat, his "little corner of Achaia"), and, like Holmes, when a case is on, can be driven almost mad by inaction, must see the scene of the crime, and examine it carefully. Unlike either, Colsne likes and appreciates women, one in particular, but whom we do not meet in this introductory tale.

There are several more in what is a growing series, with "Code Name, Erelim," a novella, "The Golden Dart" and "The Weerwolf Problem," both short stories filled with subtile horror and the grotesque, and all Kindle books. Coming are "Sa Kainitan," based in The Philippines, and "The Seiðr Affair," a bone chiller about a doomsday computer weapon.

In the grand tradition of Tolkien and Lewis, Yantiss is also finishing the first third of a classical fantasy trilogy, Rylie Rabet Goes on an Adventure  - A Tale of Magic and Thaumaturgy Amongst the Wee Forest Folk.