THE LONGER BIOGRAPHY

Rodney Carpentier grew up in Albany County, NY the eldest of two children to working class parents. He graduated high school in 2000 as a two-sport Varsity athlete in football and baseball as well as a member of the Drama Club and Model Congress. Rodney’s education career continued onto college at SUNY New Paltz where he eventually majored in English with the goal of becoming a lawyer. When he graduated in 2004, however, he got married instead of going to law school and moved across the country to Los Angeles.

At this point, Rodney began to learn about life. As a newly married man, he had to learn to live with his wife, support her financially while she went to graduate school, and figure out how to accept defeat. Rodney became interested in law enforcement and began processing for the Los Angeles Police Department. However, after a year in LA, the newlyweds moved back home to New York. He proceeded to work manual labor and construction jobs for the next year as he began taking civil service exams. During this time Rodney spent long periods of time working with his father and he got to know him more deeply than during his childhood. He draws a lot of inspiration from this time of his life.

In 2006 Rodney was hired as a correction officer for the NYS Department of Correctional Services and began a 2 year career of working in prisons. As part of my career he met some high profile men such as David Berkowitz and Arthur Shawcross, but mostly he fell into the day-to-day maintenance of life for incarcerated people. During his time in corrections, Rodney began to work on creative pursuits, especially in the long days I spent as an officer in the yard tower. He began outlining and planning a novel on the backs of paper forms. But, Rodney didn’t have all the life experience he needed just yet.

The next turn in life came when Rodney was hired as a Deputy Sheriff and went to the police academy. Over the next 18 years Rodney worked patrol, served as an investigator and as a first line supervisor, before being promoted to lieutenant in the last year. He has been specialized in fraud investigations, computer forensics, advanced leadership skills, and more recently in grant coordination, record keeping and threat assessment and management (all the fun things you dream about when you become a cop).

Throughout his life, Rodney has always had creative pursuits. He has been a musician since his teenage years and played in a band while in college. After the dream of rock stardom faded, Rodney continued to play guitar and write songs as a hobby. He thought that he would pursue songwriting and do little singer/songwriter gigs, recording music independently.

And then one night, working as a sergeant on the midnight shift, Rodney came up with an idea. A new idea. A dramatic question that just wouldn’t quit:

What if you were an adopted kid who went looking for your birth parents only to find out your mother was the unknown victim of a cold case murder?

Rodney wrestled with that idea for months before he finally decided that he was going to write a novel. Then he wrote that novel. Then he decided to self-publish said novel. That’s how R.L. Carpentier’s writing career got started. It was that simple…

One of the common interests Rodney and his wife share is the love of camping and the outdoors. In 2016 they began hiking in the Catskill Mountains and began a multi year effort to complete the Catskill 3500s, a far flung collection of mountains over 3500 feet of elevation. Their subsequent trips to the area became more and more frequent to the point they spent anniversaries and winter get aways, in addition to camping. Rodney found the mountains a beautiful and mysterious place and while on these long hikes his mind would wander. The combination of time, ideas and an open setting allowed Rodney’s mind to run wild. They have completed the public 33 of the 35 mountains and hope to have an opportunity one day to complete the 2 mountains on privately owned land.

Rodney currently lives in Nyack, NY with his wife, his daughter, and two terrific pups.