For a variety of reasons, people the world over have a fascination with crime and criminals – and Albion alumni are no exception.
On Wednesday, crime writers and alumni Wes Browne, alumnus ‘91, and David Nelson, alumnus ‘10, returned to their alma mater to give a joint reading. This was the first event of the 2025-2026 chapter of the Albion College (AC) Reading Series. Browne read from his 2025 crime novel “They All Fall the Same,” and Nelson read from his 2021 true-crime book “Boys Enter the House: The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind.”
Their Origin Stories
When Nelson attended Albion, he double majored in English with a creative writing focus and international studies, he said in an interview before the reading. After he graduated, he said he “really did not know what to do.” A year after graduation, he enrolled in Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and moved to Chicago.
“I kind of wobbled around there, thinking I was gonna do broadcast journalism – I hated it, ‘cause I had to schlep a camera around everywhere,” Nelson said.
Nelson added that what he did like was the writing aspect of journalism, and he went on to spend several months in the Netherlands reporting on war crime trials for the Balkan conflict. After graduating from Northwestern, Nelson got a job as a content developer at a company that he still works at to this day, now as a project manager.
When Nelson was at Northwestern, he said he became “fascinated” with the case of serial killer John Wayne Gacy – but more specifically, fascinated by the lives of Gacy’s victims. Nelson learned that a lot of them lived in the neighborhood of Chicago where he lived at the time; he walked on the same streets, ate at some of the same restaurants as they did.
“They resonated with me because they were young men, they were trying to find jobs, they were trying to navigate relationships, navigate family life,” Nelson said. “It all sort of spoke to me and I just became a little bit obsessed with the whole thing, and then that led to a book.”
In Browne’s case, when he attended Albion, all he thought about was being a writer, he said. It was what he wanted to be since he was in elementary school, Browne said, when he wrote 3,000 words for creative writing assignments that only called for 200. But, when he wanted to apply to writing programs after undergrad, his parents convinced him to instead attend law school.
Over the course of his first years at law school, Browne wrote his first novel. Though he pursued getting it published, and wrote three more novels in the meantime, he was not able to find an agent until 2018.
“I started trying to write my first novel when I was 22,” Browne said. “I published it when I was 46 years old.”
That novel is “Hillbilly Hustle,” which came out March 1, 2020, and was a recommended “lockdown read” by Merriam-Webster, Browne said. The follow-up to Hillbilly Hustle and Browne’s second novel is “They All Fall the Same,” which came out in January. It has since been named one of Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025 (So Far) and one of 2025’s Biggest Mysteries or Thrillers by Goodreads.
Browne said he is currently making final revisions to what will be his third novel. It’s also crime fiction, but is “kind of a departure” from his first two in that it’s set in the Nevada desert, not rural Kentucky. Nelson is trying to get his first novel published, which he described as a “coming of age story set against a mystery.”
The Ins and Outs of Being a Writer
Neither Nelson nor Browne are solely writers: Browne has practiced law for 25 years, is an author and the executive manager of a chain of pizza shops, while Nelson is a project manager and author.
“People think because you write books you’re making a lot of money; it’s very rare,” Browne said. “I know some of the biggest writers, in crime and mystery, anywhere, hundreds of ‘em: I can count on one hand how many of them make their living solely off writing.”
With all of his other responsibilities, Browne said he writes “late at night, early in the morning” and “on trips.”
“It’s kind of like a hobby turned professional,” Browne said.
Nelson added that “it’s hard to find time.”
“Some nights you just don’t have the energy for it, so it’s hard to find that balance sometimes, but I do my best to carve out times,” Nelson said.
When it comes to writers, Browne said, there are “plotters,” and there are “pantsers.”
“Plotters are people who plot their books very exactingly, and then they write it. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants,” Browne said.
Browne said he himself is a pantser. He starts his books with a concept, and an idea of the beginning and the end, and from there he makes it up as he goes, he said.
“I take great satisfaction in the writing discovery process of writing it,” Browne said. “I like learning my characters as I go.”
Nelson and Browne both said they think about their writing projects before they fall asleep. For Browne, thinking about his writing helps him fall asleep – for Nelson, not so much.
“If I have an idea, I have to write it down,” Nelson said.
Browne added that he speaks dialogue to himself in the car. Browne said he’s talked to “some of the biggest characters in Kentucky” some of whom are “pretty criminally involved.”
“When I leave those conversations, I literally get in the car and will talk to myself back like the way they talked, and then later I’ll sort of write characters who talk in those ways,” Browne said.
Answering Audience Questions
At the reading, Nelson read a passage from “Boys Enter the House” that focused on one victim named Billy Kindred. Browne took the stage afterward and read from the first chapter of “They All Fall the Same,” plus a short story.
After the readings, Browne and Nelson answered questions from the audience. Nelson responded to an audience member asking if he had nightmares while writing “Boys Enter the House.”
“There were a couple nights where I had all the files strewn over the floor and it was like 1 a.m. and I was like, ‘What am I doing to myself? I need to take a step back,’” Nelson said.
Browne talked about how his work as a defense attorney translates to writing crime fiction where a criminal is the main character. When he’s defending clients, Browne said, most often he’s trying to convince a judge and a jury to have empathy for someone who’s broken the law.
“When you write crime fiction, you’re doing the same thing. You are trying to get people to empathize with someone who they don’t naturally maybe empathize with,” Browne said. “I also weirdly love the challenge of making people like a character that they don’t naturally think they should like.”
Holland first-year Angel Nieves Rumbaut, an attendee of the reading, said they like hearing what authors have to say about their work, and that it’s “very exciting” to hear about genres and books they aren’t familiar with.
“It’s just always fun to see the authors read their own work and seem passionate about it,” Nieves Rumbaut said. “It’s very cool to have an event like that on campus.”
The next reader in the AC Reading Series will be English professor Danit Brown on Nov. 6.
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