Author Spotlight no.5 – article writer turned mystery novelist Anne White

To compliment my daily blog interviews I recently started a series of Author Spotlights and today’s, number five, is of Anne White. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate the author further. You can read the others here.

Anne White, author of the Lake George Mystery series had written more than 100 articles on career and book-related topics before switching to mystery writing. Her first book, An Affinity For Murder, was awarded a Malice Domestic Unpublished Writers’ Grant in 1999, an award from publisher, Oak Tree Press in 2000, and a nomination as a Malice Best First Mystery in 2002.

Lake George, the beautiful, 32-mile long, upstate New York lake near White’s Queensbury home, provides a perfect setting and White has found ways to mix murder, area history and lake-related events, real and imaginary, in four more Lake George Mysteries published by Hilliard and Harris – Beneath The Surface, c2005; Best Laid Plans, c2006; Secrets Dark and Deep, c2007 and Cold Winter Nights, c2009.

White, a former high school librarian, has a BA in English and a Masters in Library and Information Science, contributes articles to Mystery Scene, Mystery Readers Journal, Adirondack Guest Informer, area publications and mystery blogs and has appeared on BlogTalkRadio. She is the mother of six children, one of whom, Kate White, is editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine and author of this years’ thriller The Sixes, as well as career books for women, the Bailey Weggins mystery series and Hush.

Anne White is a member of Mystery Writers of America, the New York State Retired Teachers Association, the National, New York and New England Sisters in Crime, Mavens of Mayhem, Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council, Lake George Arts Project and Adirondack Center for Writing.

And now from the author herself:

Lake George Mysteries: An Affinity For Murder, Oak Tree Press, c2000. Malice Domestic Grant winner, ’99, Oak Tree’s Dark Oak Award, ’00, Malice Domestic Best First Nominee, ‘02. Beneath the Surface, c’05, Best Laid Plans, c’06, Secrets Dark and Deep c’07, Cold Winter Nights, c’09, Last four from Hilliard and Harris. (Available on Kindle and Nook. Paper copies from Amazon, book stores and publishers. All 5 have been selections in Harlequin Worldwide Book Club.)

Dark Deeds in a Beautiful Setting.

Lake George, the spring-fed, 32-mile-long, upstate New York lake, has proved a terrific setting for a mystery series. In my five Lake George Mysteries, I’ve incorporated information about the lake and some of the fascinating people and exciting events associated with it

In An Affinity For Murder, my 30-something protagonist Ellen Davies comes to Lake George to research artist Georgia O’Keeffe who painted some of her best loved works during her 15 summers there. Ellen stumbles on the body of a murdered art expert, finds long-lost paintings which appear to be O’Keeffe’s work and thinks she’s lucked out with a terrific hook for her article.

Actually, I was the one who lucked out — doing interesting research on art forgery, visiting galleries and New York City’s Museum of Modern Art to see O’Keeffe’s paintings, catching a spectacular traveling exhibit of O’Keeffe’s work at the Phillipp’s Museum in Washington, D.C. Heady stuff for a longtime librarian.

Beneath The Surface involves artifacts from the French and Indian War found in the lake. The longboats used to transport British soldiers from the southern end to the French-held Fort Ticonderoga (Fort Carillon to them) can’t be raised – they’d disintegrate in the air – but they can be explored by divers. When I wrote about this for Mystery Scene, I made my research at the local dive shop so convincing, Editor Kate Stein asked for a photo of me in my scuba gear. Did I have to backpedal fast!

Best Laid Plans begins with the opening of a community center which my new protagonist, Loren Graham, Emerald Point mayor, hopes will lure tourists to the sleepy little town. The discovery of a body among life-sized statues of Lake George heroes, Rogers’ Rangers, is so not what she had in mind.

For Secrets Dark and Deep I used a setting I’d been saving until I thought I could do justice to it – an abandoned graphite mine near the lake, the winter home of thousands of hibernating bats. I learned bats were way more interesting than I’d realized and my artistic daughter-in-law, Tanya White, (tmwhite51@hotmail.com)  made me a larger-than-life bat sculpture to take to signings.

My latest Lake George Mystery, Cold Winter Nights, features the Polar Bear Plunge, a New Year’s Day extravaganza when almost 1000 people creep, dash or plunge into the ice-rimmed water and a Mardi Gras-type Carnivale on the Ice, complete with a masked murderer. Sorry – photos of me participating in these events are not available.

You can find more about Anne and her work via… www.annewhitemysteries.com

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with NaNoWriMo novelist, short story author and musician (and my first ‘red pen’ podcast guinea pig – he passed with flying colours) JD Mader – the one hundred and sixteenth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, directors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found at https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/blog-interviews. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com.