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2007
Murder Goes South Writer
Bios
Featuring
Margaret Maron
 Margaret's
books have been nominated for every major award in the American
mystery field for which they are eligible. She is know for
the Deborah Knott series and Sigrid Harald series.
Margaret
Maron's works have been translated into seven languages and
are on the reading lists of various courses in contemporary
Southern literature. They have also been nominated for every
major award in the American mystery field.
She is
a founding member of Sisters in Crime and served as its third
president. She is also a past president of the American Crime
Writers League, and current president of Mystery Writers of
America.
In 1993,
Bootlegger's Daughter won the Edgar Allan Poe Award
and the Anthony Award for Best Mystery Novel of 1992, the
Agatha Award for Best Traditional Novel, and the Macavity
for Best Novel -- the first time one novel has ever won all
four awards.
Margaret
was the Guest of Honor at Malice Domestic XIII, held May 4-6,
2001 in Arlington, VA. She won an unprecedented fourth Agatha
Award
She was
born and bred in North Carolina, dropped out of college to
marry a naval officer she met while working in the Pentagon,
then lived in Italy and New York for the next few years before
returning to her
family's home place.
Website
Special
Guests:
Sallie
Bissell
 Nashville
native Sallie Bissell is the author of three novels of suspense
featuring the half-Cherokee prosecutor, Mary Crow. Educated
in the Nashville public schools, Bissell graduated from Peabody
College and embarked on a career in advertising, where she
worked on various media campaigns, including radio spots for
the Grand Ole Opry.
Motherhood
interrupted her advertising career, and when she returned
to her typewriter after raising three children, she devoted
herself to writing fiction. An avid horsewoman, she was a
ghost writer for Bonnie
Bryant's popular Saddle Club series for young adults, penning
seven novels before launching her own adult fiction career.
Her
first two novels, In The Forest of Harm and A Darker
Justice received critical acclaim from Kirkus Review and
Publisher's Weekly, among others. People magazine called In
The Forest of Harm a "topnotch thriller" while
the Los Angeles Times dubbed A Darker Justice one of
the Ten Best Mysteries of 2002. Her third novel, Call The
Devil By His Oldest Name, was published in 2004. Sallie currently
lives near Asheville, North Carolina. Her fourth Mary Crow
novel, A Legacy of Masks arrives in bookstores March 25, 2005
. Though she no longer rides horses nearly as often as she'd
like, she enjoys tennis, sketching, and hiking the North Carolina
mountains with Chessie, her Boxer. (Photo:
Sally Bissell)
Website
Stephanie
Bond
 Stephanie
Bond was seven years deep into a systems engineering career
pursuing an MBA at night when an instructor remarked that
she had a flair for writing and suggested that she submit
to academic journals.
But Stephanie,
a voracious reader, was only interested in writing fiction.
Upon completing her master's degree and with no formal training
in writing (her undergraduate degree is in computer programming),
she started writing a novel in her spare time. In 1997, with
ten sales under her belt to two publishers, Stephanie left
her corporate job to write fiction full-time. (Photo:
Christopher Hauck)
She now
writes mystery novels for Mira Books, humorous romantic suspense
novels for Avon/HarperCollins, and romantic comedies for Harlequin
Books. Stephanie lives in midtown Atlanta. Her current book,
Body Movers, the first book in a sexy mystery series set in
Atlanta, is in stores now.
Website
Norman
Chastain
 Born
in Jesup, Georgia, he grew up in Tampa, Florida. Much of his
passion for writing evolved during his youth Norman vividly
remembers sitting on the stairs outside Plant High School
captivated as he read DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick
Forsyth.
With degrees
in Industrial Management from Georgia Tech and Civil Engineering
from University of South Florida, Norman's education prepared
him for a career that includes a brief stint with a military
contractor in Clearwater, Florida, several years with a Tampa
industrial contractor, and his current role in operations
management with a telecommunications manufacturer on the outskirts
of Atlanta.
Norman
resides in Marietta, Georgia with his wife, Ansley, and two
children, who light up his world.
AFTER
THE GAME is his first novel. Norman deeply appreciates
your support and hopes you enjoy his novel as much as he did
writing the story. (Photo: Norman Chastain)
Website
Craig
Faris
Craig
Faris is a thirteen-time award-winning author of short fiction
and plays,including four Best of Issue awards in the 1999,
2000, 2002 and 2003 editions of the South Carolina Writers
Workshop anthology. Five of his short stories have won the
South Carolina Carrie McCray Literary Award for Best Short
Fiction. He has 28 years experience as a graphic designer
and has won two national design awards for direct mail, numerous
marketing awards, the printing  industry's
PICA award, and the Scholastic Arts Gold Key Award.
He served
on the board of directors of the South Carolina Writers Workshop
from 2000 until 2005, and served as Vice President of the
southeast chapter of the Mystery Writers of America from 2000
until 2005.
Craig
completed his first novel in 1998, a 226,000-word unpublished
manuscript, which taught him how to type and finish a major
work. His second novel, a 129,000-word thriller, entitled,
The Spectrum Conspiracy, is represented by Sullivan Max Literary
Associates. He was recently commissioned to write a nonfiction
book based on the story of Janice Clark Smith, a grandmother
who murdered her seventy-year-old father after 50 years of
physical and sexual abuse. Her story has appeared twice on
Larry King Live and The Oprah Winfrey Show. The book’s
working title is, A Special Place in Hell.
Craig
lives in Rock Hill, SC with his wife, Deena, and their two
children, Katie, 14, and Charlie, 11.
Patricia
Sprinkle
 Patricia
Sprinkle knows the South. She grew up in North Carolina and
Florida and has lived primarily in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida
as an adult, so it is no surprise that her fifteen published
mysteries have deep Southern roots.
In 2007
she will release three titles: Death on the Family Tree,
the first title in her new Atlanta-based Family Tree series,
which uses genealogy to solve contemporary mysteries; Guess
Who's Coming to Die? - the ninth in her Thoroughly Southern
mysteries, which feature amateur sleuth MacLaren Yarbrough,
a magistrate in a small Middle Georgia county; and A Mystery
Bred in Buckhead, a reprint from her Sheila Travis series.
Mystery
Times declared, "Forming a triumvirate with Anne George
and Margaret Maron, Sprinkle adds her powerful voice to the
literature of mysteries featuring Southern women." .
Website
p.m.
terrell
p.m. terrell
is the author of eight books, including the internationally
acclaimed suspense/thrillers Ricochet, The China
Conspiracy and Kickback and the nonfiction book
entitled Take the Mystery out of Promoting Your Book.
 Combining
her background as a computer programmer/analyst with a writing
career has resulted in suspense/thrillers that feature female
computer programmers as the main characters in books that
reviewers say “sing like red-hot jazz” and are “fast-paced
suspense at its best”, has garnered two PBS television
specials, and has received press from as far away as India,
China and Australia.
The characters
in her books, all Southern-born women, find themselves caught
in life or death situations where they must use their knowledge
and their guts to rescue themselves. “I have always admired
strong women,” Patricia admits. “I think it came
from listening to my father tell us stories about our ancestry,
and all the strong women in our family. One ancestor was left
at home during the Civil War when her husband joined the Confederate
Army. When a group of Union soldiers tried to steal the hams
from the smokehouse, she stood in the doorway with her shotgun,
and told them those hams were all she had to feed her seven
children, and they would get to them over her dead body. Legend
has it, they left her, her children and the hams alone.”
It's the kind of guts the characters in her books would admire.
Patricia
is currently working on an historical suspense/thriller inspired
by her ancestor, Mary Neely, who was abducted by Shawnee Indians
at Fort Nashborough in 1780, at the height of the Revolutionary
War, and held in captivity for three years before she managed
to escape and make her way back home.
Website
Steven
Womack
With the
publication of his tenth novel, By Blood Written (Severn
House, May 2005), best-selling
author/screenwriter Steven Womack introduces a new suspense
series featuring New York literary agent Taylor Robinson and
FBI agent Hank Powell. His books have been nominated for the
Edgar, Anthony and Shamus awards. Womack's third book and
the debut of the series, Dead Folks' Blues, was presented
the 1994 Edgar Allan POE Award as Best Original Paperback
Novel by the Mystery Writers of America.
A native
of Nashville, Tennessee, Womack is a graduate of Western Reserve
Academy and Tulane University, where an unpublished novel
of his was the first novel ever accepted as an undergraduate
honors thesis. He also holds an M.F.A. from the Southampton
College writing program. In addition to writing, Womack is
a professor of screenwriting at the Watkins Film School in
Nashville. He has served on the Board of Directors of the
Tennessee Screenwriting Association, has been a Regional Vice
President of the Mystery Writers of America and for several
years led a fiction writing workshop at the Tennessee State
Prison. (Photo: Steven Womack)
Website
Patricia
Wynn
Patricia
Wynn was born in Houston, Texas, and earned a history degree
from Rice University in 1972. She later attended the American
Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona,
for her Masters, and gave up a respectable career in international
banking
to make an abortive attempt at entering veterinary school.
Deciding to stay at home and take care of her children instead,
she has dedicated the remainder of her life to being a starving
author with a passion for history.
The first
novel in her Blue Satan Mystery Series won an Honorable Mention
from Writers Digest, a Silver Medal from PMA, and was a finalist
for a Herodotus Award for Best First Historical Mystery. The
second title in this series, The Spider's Touch,won the Benjamin
Franklin Award for Best Genre Novel in 2003.
When Pat's
at home, she occupies an empty nest in Newport Beach, California,
with her husband and a new spoiled little puppy named Puppet.
Website
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