CAN YOU GUESS THIS MYSTERY AUTHOR??

Do you have what it takes to be an amatuer detective? Every Wednesday, we will give you a chance to figure out the identity of our Heartsong Mystery Author. All correct guesses will be entered into a drawing for a signed copy of their latest Heartsong Presents: Mysteries! novel. To enter, leave a comment with your e-mail address.

Are you ready? Here is our very first Mystery Author!

Welcome, Mystery Author.

Mystery Author, what city do you call home?
Wow, that’s really hard to choose. I was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, but moved to Fajardo, Puerto Rico when I was six months old. We lived there until I was almost 3, when we moved to Pocomoke City, Maryland. Then when I was 15, we transplanted to Westfield, Mass. And now for almost 17 years I’ve lived in Copperas Cove, Texas, about an hour from Austin.

Tell us how you met your husband.
We met at church, but the first time I ever saw him was my first day here in town and I was driving around looking for an apartment to rent. I saw him sitting out front of his apartment with his neighbors. They were talking and laughing, and the place looked clean and nice. I remember thinking, “If I ever have to rent an apartment, I wouldn’t mind a place like that and neighbors like that.” (I’m a natural hermit and don’t like the idea of people living so close.) Ironic that just over three years later, I’d be walking down the aisle to become his wife and I’d move all my stuff into that same apartment and become “mom” to his two young children.

When you were 11 years old, you read some books that made an impact on your life. What were they? Why were they so special to you?
The Chronicles of Narnia. I still have the first set that my parents bought me for Christmas almost 30 years ago, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve read them. C.S. Lewis brought such a sense of wonder to his stories. I found myself looking for flickers of wonder hidden in the corners of ordinary. His series is simple, yet has deeply spiritual themes.

What were your first stories about?
Horses, horses, horses. And in fourth grade I copied the Nancy Drew style and wrote a short film called “The Mystery of the Uranium Cave.” Two girls explored and found uranium…in a cave. Of course there were secret passages and I have no idea why uranium sounded so mysteries to me, but it did. I was fourteen when I read Janette Oke and copied her too, by writing a Christian love story, set during the Great Depression.

The first Christian love story you ever wrote wasn’t typed on a computer. What instrument did you use?
I typed on my mother’s aqua blue Smith Corona manual typewriter. The thing wasn’t even electric. I used a lot of white out back then, before we had the all-powerful delete button.

What was the name of that first story?
Home For Christmas.

What is the name of the main character in your Heartsong mystery series? Tell us a little about her.
Andromeda “Andi” Clark Hartley is the oldest of two daughters, and she’s over thirty and perpetually dating her long-haul trucker boyfriend. She has a hard time sticking to a career plan and likes home-based businesses. Finally when she discovers soapmaking, she opens a shop and success is in her reach. But a prominent Greenburg citizen, bride-to-be Charla Rae Thacker, keels over and dies of anaphylactic shock from Andi’s cherries jubilee facial scrub. Turns out, Charla’s deathly allergy to strawberries was no secret in Greenburg, Tennessee. Andi has to find out who put strawberries in her scrub before her business goes down the drain.
Now, tell us something about yourself that no one would suspect.
I won a beauty pageant when I was four years old, a blonde-haired, brown-eyed microphone hog.

Thanks, Mystery Author! Let’s see if readers can figure out who you are!