Former Brentsville District High School principal Dr. Robert Scott may no longer be working in Nokesville but he won't be far away.

Scott, 43, is set to teach English at Osbourn Park High School in Manassas this fall while also continuing work on two novels.

One of them is the third book in his "Sailor Doyle" series, which focus on fictional crime and horror tales. His other book is about a college cross country runner "who reads about herself in one of her history books," according to Scott.

He and his late father-in-law previously authored a trilogy of science fiction books that came out between 205 and 2007.

The amount of work dedicated to his upcoming novels is the main reason he decided in April to leave his position at the helm of Brentsville, which he led from the 2007-08 school year through this past June. His former assistant Katherine Meints took over as principal in July.

"She's a talented classroom teacher first, a critical requirement for principals at BDHS. And she's had quite an array of leadership training and prior work experience," said Scott in an e-mail interview. "I think Brentsville's getting the better end of the deal, trading me for her."

Scott revealed that business interests and the amount of time he put into writing began conflicting with his life away from school in which he often worked through the night and into the early morning.

"I met with my editor and my agent last November regarding plans for my next installments in the Sailor Doyle series of novels. Over the course of the winter, I drafted several synopses for books I'm planning to write, while completing work on 'Asbury Park' the story I have coming out this fall," Scott wrote.

The educator-turned-writer explained that once he knew he would be writing "through the next several years," he approached the associate superintendent for high schools Michael Mulgrew with a request to leave his position as principal.

As for balancing being principal while writing internationally distributed novels, "I'm not sure I did a terribly effective job of finding balance," wrote Scott. "I did a great deal of writing over the past 4 years in the hours between 1:00 and 4:00 am. I'm not convinced that's effective balance!"

He added, "However, as a principal who struggled with incurable insomnia (it can be a stressful job) at least I used those overnight hours to be productive."

Even now that Scott has left his administrative role at Brentsville, Scott mentioned that he still plans to attend Tiger sports games this fall.