About Jan
Birders and murders.
Welcome to my world.
To be honest, I didn’t start out wanting to write murder mysteries. I originally wanted to be a poet. Then I wanted to be a teacher. Then I wanted to be an astronomer. Then I wanted to be a priest. Finally, I thought becoming an ornithologist would be cool. I even collected little bird models that you snapped together and painted. They cost about twenty cents each and some had wings that, instead of laying flat against the tiny plastic body, stuck out like the bird was flying. Realism – what a wonderful thing! Then I started first grade and the next thing I knew, I had graduated from college in Denver, gotten married in California, moved to Minnesota and given birth to five kids. At that point, all I wanted was to get some sleep.
But life, I’ve found, has a funny way of unearthing the embers of old passions and fanning them into new flames. Especially when you’re rested enough to notice. Back in the 1990s, I spent five years writing a weekly newspaper humor column called “Trust Me” about raising my family, a few columns of which turned out to be rather poetic. (And now you can catch new installments of “Trust Me” by clicking on the link at the left.) I went to graduate school and got a master’s degree in theology, which resulted in my first published book, Purpose, Passion and God: Awakening to the deepest meaning of life. After six years of working in a high school career center, I went to graduate school again to get my master’s degree in English and discovered my own passion for teaching composition. One night a few summers ago I lay on a beach on Minnesota’s North Shore with my family and watched a meteor shower (astronomy is still very cool!). And ever since my kids were little, I’ve been pointing out to them the birds that visit our yard or fly overhead.
And then one day it hit me. I should write a murder mystery series about this really nice Minnesota guy who has a passion for birding, but keeps finding bodies along with the birds. Yes, I confess: the fact that my son and husband had been birding for years influenced me a teeny, weeny bit. But they hadn’t been plotting murders – that was all my idea. (You know how long our Minnesota winters can get…) So I took my concept and started writing. Except that a concept is a long way from finishing a novel, let alone finding a publisher. But if nothing else, I can be stubborn, and so, four years after conception (talk about a long gestation!) – my first Bob White Birder Murder adventure appeared, titled The Boreal Owl Murder. It introduced readers to the wonderful world of birding (sans sunburns and ticks) and me to the crazy world of being an author of fiction. Now it’s three years and three more books later, and I’m working on the fifth novel in the series, slated for publication in September 2012. Here’s hoping you like the newest installment of the Bob White Birder Murders. Actually, I hope you love it and that Bob and his friends become a part of your world, too.
