Desert Sleuths

What kinds of jobs have you held and where have you worked?
BW: My background isn’t entirely fancy: in my flaming youth, I picked cotton, exercised horses and performed as a go-go dancer. On a more formal level, I worked as a graphic designer/copywriter in Los Angeles and New York City from 1964-1982. My next long-term job stint was as a journalist/book reviewer for the Tribune Newspapers in Arizona from 1989-2005. I have been a book reviewer and columnist for Mystery Scene Magazine since 2004. I have been under contract with Poisoned Pen Press in Scottsdale since 2000. I have taught creative writing at both Phoenix College and Arizona State University.

How and why did you start mystery writing?
BW: My first mystery, Desert Noir, came out in 2000. My original intent was to write books featuring the desert in the Phoenix area because no one else was doing it at the time, which I thought was nuts. But my books (seven to date) also turned out to be about human rights abuses in Arizona and other states in the U.S. They’ve covered topics as diverse as polygamy (Desert Wives), which was optioned for a TV movie by Lifetime; female genital mutilation (Desert Cut); and Southwest cancer clusters caused by A-Bomb testing in Nevada during the 1950s through the ’80s (Desert Wind).

Who are your favorite mystery writers?
BW: Because I’m a book reviewer for Mystery Scene Magazine, I’m not free to give my opinion on that right now. I have to approach each book individually, regardless of who’s written it.

Have you had mystery novels published?
BW: Eleven mysteries published so far: ten by Poisoned Pen Press, one by World Wide Library/Harlequin. Their titles are (in order of publication) Desert Noir, Desert Wives, Desert Shadows, Desert Run, Desert Cut, Desert Lost, and Desert Wind. These were all Poisoned Pen Press mysteries. Desert Deceit, a one-hundred page novella, was included in the World Wide Library anthology, Desperate Journeys. My Gunn Zoo books, all published by Poisoned Pen Press, include The Anteater of Death, The Koala of Death, and The Llama of Death.

Have you had mystery short stories published?
BW: I don’t write short stories, but I’ve written many non-fiction articles in various newspapers, magazines and anthologies.

Have you received honors and awards for your mystery writing?
BW: Desert Noir and The Anteater of Death both won top Glyph Awards in differing years for Best Mystery of the Year. Desert Wives was a Silver Medalist for the Willa Cather Literary Award (a national mainstream fiction award); Desert Lost was voted one of the Year’s Top Five Mystery Novels by Library Journal; and Desert Cut was singled out as one of the “five commendable private eye novels of the year” in the anthology Between the Dark and the Light: the Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year, edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg.

What is your current mystery writing project?
BW: I am currently working on Desert Regret, which continues the saga of Lena Jones, private investigator and details the murder of an entire family in Scottsdale. Next up will be The Puffin of Death, where I take my zookeeper, Theodora Bentley, to Iceland where she gets mixed up in the case of a murdered bird-watcher.

What are your upcoming public appearances?
BW: Quite a few, especially since I’ve been chosen as the presenting author to head up the Summer Reading Program of the Maricopa County Library Association. But before that starts in June, I’ll be one of the presenters at the Northern Arizona Book Festival, Flagstaff; will be speaking at the Moon Valley (Phoenix area) Book Club, May 23. My Maricopa County Summer Reading Program appearances start June 3 at the Mesa Red Mountain Library, continue through June and July at other libraries around the county and end July 10 at the Juniper (Phoenix) Library. The exact dates and details of all my talks and signings can be found here.

What writing tip do you have to share with members?
BW: Write every day. If you don’t, your imagination and writing skills will deteriorate. That old truism holds fast—use it or lose it. Writers who wait until they “feel like it” to write, generally don’t.

Anything else you’d like to add?
BW: For a couple of years I taught creative writing at Phoenix College, and this year and last year at ASU. Check my signings blog (above) for new workshops. Also, my blog, at http://www.bloggingwebb.blogspot.com continues to give writing tips. I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and I have two websites: www.bettywebb-mystery.com, for the Lena Jones Desert books, and www.bettywebb-zoomystery.com, for the Gunn Zoo books.

Some history
I was a Communications major at OhioStateUniversity and when Richard, my future husband was to be sent to Germany as an ROTC officer, I quit school with five credit hours to go and went with him. We spent two years in Europe and traveled whenever we could.

Professional Background and Positions
My early career was in advertising and broadcasting while my husband was in graduate school. I was On Air talent for radio and television advertising in Columbus, Ohio. Was Continuity Director for WCOL radio, Columbus, which means responsibility for writing all scripted material going out on the air. It was a different than essays and comparative lit dissertations. But I found I liked the idea of getting paid for writing.

When we moved to Phoenix, my children then were small and I left the business world and became active in other organizations. Went back to ASU and got a degree in French. I was a docent at the PhoenixArt Museum for twenty five years and ran the training program for three of those. I joined the Women’s Board of the Arizona Kidney Foundation, held offices of Treasurer and President. I still belong to the organization, though it is now called the Arizona Women’s Board. I served on the Board of Trustees for the National Kidney Foundation of Arizona until last June.

How and Why did you start writing mysteries?
After my sons left for college, I thought the idea of getting paid for writing again was a particularly fine idea and I began with the idea of being published. I’d always planned to get into fiction, and felt I was more a romance writer. I’ve always gotten excited at love stories.  I went at it, worked, sent out the queries. My first book was Kachina, [Treble Heart Books], was a romance/mystery, though I hadn’t planned to kill anybody.  But all writers know that sometimes the book does what it wants to, and lo! I knocked off somebody.  My first murder! It won the Arizona Authors Association first for fiction.

Chance Encounters was my second book, a romance set against the election for governor of Arizona. My third, Pima Road has a mystery, but no murders, about a blonde lawyer and a Navajo-Pima sculptor. Blue Turquoise, White Shell was my first foray into historicals.  It’s in two parts, one year in 1852 that tells the story of the ancestors of the story in 1992—a Wasp-y Harvard medical school graduate at the Indian Hospital and a Navajo lawyer in Fort Defiance, Arizona. It won the Independent Publishers Gold Medal at the Los Angeles Book Expo and Arizona Book Publishers Association Glyph trophies for Best Novel, Best Multi-Cultural Novel, and Best of Arizona.  The Fall From Paradise Valley [Champagne Books]ups the body count as Romantic Suspense—three women in that suburb and the foolish choices they make that jeopardize their marriages and their lives. Ring of Fire racks up one bullfighter and any number of toros. The story of a French ballerina and an American bullfighter.  It’s my only book set outside Arizona. My last book was To a Certain Degree, a romantic suspense about a drop dead gorgeous New York model with an off-the-charts I.Q, who returns to ArizonaStateUniversity to get her PhD in theoretical physics.  Her dissertation committee is headed by a surly Carl Sagan type who doesn’t think women should be in science. She’s also stalked by a creepy fellow-student.

Favorite mystery writers?
I’m not really a mystery reader, nor, oddly enough a romance reader. I pick up a mystery if I’ve heard a writer speak, or see an interesting review. Got hooked a bit on Lee Child. I’d taken him to the airport one early Sunday morning when he’d been in Phoenix speaking at the Erma Bombeck Authors Luncheon.  He was not a morning person I found out. Gave him one of my books since I’d bought one of his. He wasn’t especially thrilled. Anyway, I did get tired of his Reacher-and- the toothbrush after a bit. Took a Robert Dugoni workshop and adored him, and I like his work. Janet Evanovich is fun. But my reading is really all over the map.  I love John Updike and was sick when he died. Ian Mc Ewan, Louis Bayard, Martin Amis. Richard Russo. Pat Conroy. I’m just pulling names out, of recent authors I’m fond of.

Current Projects
White River is currently in production at Treble Heart Books. It will be out around the first of the year. It’s a sequel of sorts to Blue Turquoise, White Shell.  I say of sorts because that story had two parts: a section in 1853 and the major part in 1990. White River continues the characters in 1853 and encompasses the Long Walk of the Navajo, their incarceration in the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico,  a family’s journey from New England to Arizona in the white river of settlers heading west at the time of the Civil War.

And right now I’m working on TO A CERTAIN DEGREE, a manuscript I wrote way back when. It deals with some environmental issues and needs some updating, if I can pull it off.

My poetry has been in five anthologies and a calendar. My short stories have appeared in the Second Wind anthology and the last two Desert Sleuth anthologies, where I have also been an editor.

One writing tip?
Give yourself one day to rage at rejections: Kick the mailbox [not the dog], howl at the heavens, consume quantities of chocolate. The next day get back to work.

For more about Virginia Nosky and her books, please visit: www.virginianosky.com

Katherine Atwell Herbert  - A Writing Life
by Laurie Fagen

While Katherine Atwell Herbert of Phoenix may joke about “slaving away as some sort of writer most all of my career,” she’s made her livelihood with an impressive number of positions using the written word, most recently delving into mysteries.

After receiving a Bachelors of Arts and Masters of Arts from Arizona State University, she spent about 10 years in public relations as a publicist for, among others, Phoenix Little Theatre.

She then headed toHollywoodwhere she worked as a writer and script analyst for DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, MGM-TV, Fox Broadcasting, Viacom-Showtime (Paramount), TNT and others. She also worked on several feature film productions inLos Angeles, northernCaliforniaandN. Carolina, and was a script and novel consultant on an individual client basis.

Returning to Arizona, she spent another decade as a screenwriting instructor at Scottsdale Community College, and did freelance and stringer writing work including feature stories for regional and national magazines; book reviews for LA Daily News; features and book reviews for Arizona Republic; and wrote film reviews, features, interviews and think pieces for the Scottsdale Progress newspaper.

She also abridged books for presentation on audiotape for HarperCollins, Audio Partners and others. “This was pretty fun, whacking out passages and passages from Uris to Bombeck, to a classic, Ramona, to some awful romance writer to one of the Dummies books,” she recalls.

A foray into journalism started as a high school correspondent to the local weekly newspaper and as editor of her school newspaper, and ended after a year and a half as a high school English and journalism teacher.

Along the line she also wrote three books on scriptwriting, including The Perfect Screenplay: Writing It And Selling it; Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love, 2nd Ed; andSelling Scripts to Hollywood.

She recently spoke about screenwriting at the National Federation of Press Women’s national conference.

Favorite Authors
As an avid mystery reader, Herbert says her first Nancy Drew was “a gateway drug” to The Hardy Boys and others, adding she and her whole family loved mystery movies and books.

“Love the puzzle, the logical reasoning and the seduction of the dark side of human behavior,” she explains. “The author’s challenge is always staying ahead of the reader.”

As for favorite mystery writers, she says she’s “currently falling in love” with Benjamin Black, aka John Banville, a Booker Prize winner fromIrelandwho took up mystery writing as a past time, and says she “can’t put down Stieg Larsson.”

“I’ve loved Raymond Chandler since I picked up a copy of The Big Sleep and watched my first suspense movie,” she adds. “The same held true for Elmore Leonard – what a terrific writer he is! Oh, that I could write his characters. T. Jefferson Parker really captures aS. California feel in his writing.”

While she’s yet to have a mystery novel published, more than half of the tele- and screenplays she’s penned were mysteries, including for TV’s Hart to Hart, Murder She Wrote, Quantum Leap and Midnight Caller, Blind Desire and Dry Heat for the big screen.

Her current mystery writing project is entitled The Money Shot, about a golf pro, Ridge Warnecke, “who hunts for the killer of a young woman found on his club’s course knowing he must solve the crime before the cops pin the death on him.”

On Publishing Today
Herbert has strong thoughts about the current state of publishing.

“While it’s freeing that NYC and its publishing houses no longer have the strangle hold on who gets their work published, what’s been added to the scene isn’t particularly reassuring,” she explains. “Essentially, I don’t believe in self-publishing or POD [print-on-demand] although they may improve in the next decade or so. I believe all artists need to be vetted whether you’re a singer, sculptor, actor, composer or writer.”

She says she is a “big believer” in good editors. “Like music producers who can bring a routine studio performance to an unforgettable tune, editors can bring a piece of writing to a refinement that makes it worthy of being read,” she says. “I suspect that the self-publishers, POD and whatever else is out there will evolve into small presses eventually and even perhaps hire editors; the vanity press will return to what it was. Whatever happens, it will be good when the tidal waves, rip tides and perfect storms that are swamping publishing calm down and publishing gets a bit of stability–whatever its form.”

Writing Tip
“Honor the English language and use it well,” she advises. “If you don’t have the tools to tell the great story you’ve got in your head, it will never be realized on the page.
For more about Herbert, visit KateHerbert.com.

Laurie Fagen, a Desert Sleuths/SinC member, has her debut short story in SoWest: Desert Justice and is an Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine honorable mention winner. She is also publisher of the SanTan Sun News community newspaper, an artist, art promoter and a jazz singer. 

Merle McCann – Seeing Mystery Everywhere
by Laurie Fagen

Photographers often “see” things in life differently, and Merle McCann, who writes as M. L. McCann, is no exception. A professional scenic photographer who also spent time as a paralegal, support staff for senior banking executives and as owner of a 30-year Arabian horse business with her husband, she started writing mysteries because she kept “seeing” the whodunit in all her stories. “I couldn’t keep the mystery element from creeping into everything I wrote!” says the award-winning author who was born in the Yukon and raised in Seattle.

Her books include five middle readers in the Longjohners’ Mystery Series that fit the genre and also include life lessons for youth: The Mystery of October Island, where three children and their grandmother go camping on a private island until they have to figure out who raided the camp. In Midnight at the August Tree House, siblings see something life-threatening from high up in the tree that they weren’t meant to see. A boy is struck and injured by a snowmobile in The Search for Black January, and the mysterious driver who sped into the night must be brought to justice. In Ghosts in the September Corn Maze, the lead characters find two teens unconscious from drug overdoses in a corn maze, while apparitions romp in the field. Finally, in The Twelve Tears of April, a National Literature award winner, McCann uses her equine knowledge for a setting where her young sleuths risk their lives to help a friend, discovering Civil War treasure and learning some history along the way. McCann’s as-yet-unpublished saga, Vagabonds and Kings, also earned the top spot in all categories in the Dixie Kane Memorial contest in Louisiana.

McCann has had a number of short stories selected for DS Publishing’s Desert Sleuths anthologies, including Yule Night, The Bride Wore Black, Murder at Rocking Witches Ranch, and Murder in the Ninth. Other mystery stories she’s had published are Murder at Acadia Falls, The Annulment (Pink Potatoes and Green Gravy), Beauville Plantation, and Murder at the Bridge Table.

Among her favorite mystery writers are David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, Daniel Silva and Nelson DeMille, and when she’s not reading, McCann’s working on her current project entitled The Permanent Solution. It’s the story of an Irish immigrant, who, while ranching cattle in Oregon, “encounters and must stop a multiple killer who uses a secret potion to poison his victims in his styling salon.”

McCann says she’s been a member of Desert Sleuths even before it got its name, and acknowledges the members for helping in her writing career. “I remember well the nights we sat around the table with fewer than 10 in attendance. It was fun to watch it grow, and I thank all those early members who worked so hard and diligently to make our club the success it is today. I also credit this club for any success I might have with my writing.”

As a result of Desert Sleuths and other writing groups, she shares this writing tip: “Pay close attention to feedback provided in a group and take it seriously. I find the most painful to hear is the most important advice I receive.”

McCann lives in Scottsdale and her books can be purchased from her directly and at www.gcwriter.org/mccann.html.

Laurie Fagen, a Desert Sleuths/SinC member, has her debut short story in SoWest: Desert Justice and is an Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine honorable mention winner. She is also publisher of the SanTan Sun News community newspaper, an artist, art promoter and a jazz singer.

WriteNow! 2012 – (l-r) Roni Olson, Deborah J Ledford, Judith Starkston
Photo © Timothy Moore

This year’s Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths Chapter Member of the Year was awarded to our current President, Deborah J Ledford.

Deborah started expressing herself through artwork, starting out painting oil on canvas, scratchboard and pen and ink. In the ’90s she began a career as a professional scenic artist for films (including Raising Arizona), theatre, commercials and industrial films. Her love for movies and compelling dialogue is what interested in writing screenplays, which then led to novels and short stories.

Her latest book release, SNARE, is The Hillerman Sky Award Finalist awarded by Left Coast Crime 2011. STACCATO is book one of the Steven Hawk/Inola Walela thriller series. Both books are presented by Second Wind Publishing. CRESCENDO will wrap up the trilogy and will be released early next year.

She is a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Her award-winning short stories appear in numerous print publications, as well as mystery and literary anthologies. Deborah is most proud of the stories featured in all four of the Desert Sleuths SinC anthologies. Most recently, “Cave In” appears in the latest DS anthology, SoWest: Desert Justice.

Deborah is currently writing book one of a new mystery series set in Taos, NM, and a traditional YA mystery.

SNARE, STACCATO and several anthologies where her work appears can be found at her Amazon Author’s Page. To find out more about Deborah, visit her website.