Some interesting profiles of crime fiction authors pop up in the press from time to time. There have been several to come across my desk recently, enough to split them into two sections, with today's posting including the femmes and tomorrow's, the fellas. If you're an novelist lucky enough to draw the attention of the press, it can certainly be good PR, and if you're a mystery fan, it's often an entertaining introduction to a new or favorite author (if the journalist does his/her homework, that is, and unfortunately, some don't).
Megan Abbott (of Edgar-winner Queenpin fame) has been called the "new queen of noir" by Ken Bruen and "poised to ascend to the top rung of crime writing and quite possibly something beyond," by James Ellroy. Lofty praise, indeed. She acquired her talent by nature, with both parents being authors, but also via nurture, as mother Patricia Abbott recalls, "Whereas other kids would watch Disney or Spielberg, Megan would always choose Jean Harlow, Jeanne Crain or Barbara Stanwyck movies." A good reason why, as the reviewer points out, her stories have a cinematic quality.
Wisconsin cozy author Deb Baker uses her doll collector background as a canvas for her series with amateur sleuth Gretchen Birch, such as Dolly Departed, released this summer. Barker is fortunate to have two series simultaneously, and the other (with Murder Talks Turkey, also released this summer), features 66-year-old widow Gertie Johnson and her Trouble Buster Investigative Company, set in Barker's native area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. For more on her profile, read here.
Although Rita Mae Brown may be best known to some for her lesbian classic, Rubyfruit Jungle, to mystery fans, she's the author of the feline Sneaky Pie Brown mystery series. The latest installment, titled Hounded to Death, is due out September 30. As to why she turned from literary fiction to mysteries, she says "I was in Hollywood making money hand over fist, which is what you do in Hollywood--you starve or you hit it big. The Writers Guild went on strike, and it lasted a year. The bills came in, and the money ran out. Sneaky Pie, my cat, who’s incredibly intelligent, said, 'Why don’t you write a mystery?' I tried it, and thank God I did because it has taught me so much. All genre fiction is a sonnet."
Native Coloradan Margaret Coel is the author of a mystery series set among the Arapahos on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, with Jesuit priest Father John O'Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden. Inspired by Tony Hillerman's books, she gained access to the Arapaho while researching Chief Left Hand after being introduced by a native writer who took Coel under her wing. Her latest, Blood Memory is a standalone novel deals with the Sand Creek Massacre of the Cheyenne and the Arapaho people and was inspired by what happened in 2004 when those tribes tried to get some land out by DIA to build a casino. You can read the full article here.
Michelle Gagnon has one of the more varied backgrounds for a writer as a former modern dancer, bartender, dog walker, model, personal trainer, and Russian supper club performer. Her first manuscript was rejected by more then 50 literary agents, "even some of the shady ones." Gagnon's persistence paid off, with her first novel featuring FBI Agent Kelly Jones, The Tunnels, an IMBA best-seller, and a follow-up, Bone Yard, published just last month. Gagnon also writes on blogs such as the Kill Zone about life's quirks in general and insights on being a writer and surviving the publishing industry.
Ruth Rendell is a Labour peer who sits in the House of Lords three times a week and still has time to write books--more than 50 in 45 years. Just two years shy of 80, she works out every day and walks everywhere. As she told a Scotland Sunday journalist, she believes the world is "a terrible place, in many ways a vale of tears," and her characters can be found in the darker places of the fictional market town of Kingsmarkham in her Inspector Wexford detective series, or the London of her Barbara Vine thrillers. When people ask what she wants to be remembered for, she replies, "I don't really care. But if it's for anything, it would be the idea that people can go to my work--if it lasts--and find out exactly what it was like in 2008. I hope for that."
New Zealand author Vanda Symon isn't deterred by the fact that in real life, murder is a rare occurrence in Dunedin, her current home and the setting for her novels. "It's actually a really safe town but it's got that wonderful gothic feel to it. People can imagine things like that happening here...And crime is always on the front page of the newspaper - every city in New Zealand has its seedy underbelly." Her rookie detective girl sleuth, Sam Shepherd, will appear in two more books contracted out by Penguin, giving Symon plenty more opportunities to weave Kiwi vernacular into her stories. The interview with The New Zealand Herald can be found here.
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