Featured Author: Donna Huston Murray

Donna Huston Murray writes character-driven mystery and suspense novels from the perspective of a woman who doesn’t take herself too seriously. While male counterparts tackle plots with the brain and brawn of an NFL linebacker, Murray’s heroines use their own life experience and an instinctive understanding of human nature. An interviewer once remarked that he read a Murray mystery, “to find out how a woman thinks.” She wished him good luck with that.

In addition to the seven Ginger Barnes Main Line mysteries originally published by St. Martin’s Press, Donna Huston Murray has written for MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE, READER’S DIGEST, ECHELON, and REDBOOK. Her work can also be found in the Edgar-award winning companion book, THE FINE ART OF MURDER, and the LETHAL LADIES I and II anthologies by Berkley. CURED (…but not out of danger) is her first novel of suspense.

Donna and her husband live in the Philadelphia area and have two adult children. Continue reading “Featured Author: Donna Huston Murray”

Declaring My Independence

Donna Huston Murray

by Donna Huston Murray

Going independent–lots of authors are doing it, and now I have, too.

It was not an easy decision, complicated by the lucky fact that my track record–seven cozy mysteries put out by a major NY publisher–still garnered interest from agents and editors. But since my series character is pretty much a smarter, braver me, when my contracts were fulfilled, I welcomed the chance to live in somebody else’s head for a while. Shunning the “Write what you know” advice teachers hand out with your first yellow pencil, I chose the less-heard and infinitely trickier “Write what you fear” route. I wanted a heroic woman this time, and to my mind nobody is more heroic than a person who has endured cancer. Let’s make her a cop before she got sick so she has skills, even if she doesn’t expect to need them again. Now remove her resources one by one for no apparent reason, and the plot for CURED is in motion. I just didn’t figure on Lauren Beck’s second major life challenge taking up so much of mine. Yet we both toughed it out, and I’m happy to report that CURED is finally finished. Continue reading “Declaring My Independence”