Writing fiction however remained an interest of Major, and fifteen years later at age 42, he published his first novel in 1896, When Knighthood Was in Flower under the pseudonym / pen name of Edwin Caskoden.

With a successful writing career thus launched, Major gradually lessened his other legal obligations, finally closing his law practice in 1899 after only a year after his first novel publication.

With the later publication of his third novel in 1902, Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, which was another historical romance, this time continuing in the royal history and biography of England, set in the later Elizabethan era and continuing the story of the later Tudor dynasty of the times of Henry VIII's younger daughter Queen Elizabeth I (the Great) (1533-1603, reigned 1558-1603), in the latter 16th to early 17th centuries.

A third film adaptation of Major's first novel When Knighthood Was In Flower , this time with more modern technology of added sound over a half-century later made in 1953 by the Walt Disney Company studios, under the changed title of The Sword and the Rose Major continued to write and publish several additional novels, to varying degrees of success, as well as a number of children's adventure stories, most set in and around his native state of Indiana.

Almost a century later, in 2006, Shelbyville, Indiana native Eric Linne wrote and copyrighted a motion picture screenplay adaptation of Major's earlier novel The Bears of Blue River.