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Keith Pyeatt
became a mechanical engineer in 1980
and set off on a technical career path that took him from the Texas
Panhandle to Massachusetts and then to Vermont. In the mid-nineties, he
designed and built a simple log cabin on the side of a mountain in the
rural woods of northeastern Vermont. That's when his career path veered.
 After
two years in his isolated cabin, Keith began writing horror novels in
his spare time. After ten years in his cabin, he left his engineering
career behind and moved to Albuquerque to focus on writing and freelance
editing. Keith recently moved to Tucson, Arizona, and he looks forward
to seeing what new angles and edges this change of environment will
bring to his next novels.
Keith writes his own style of paranormal thrillers he calls Horror
with Heart. His method is to create characters that are just as real
as he can make them, drop in a paranormal threat they can't ignore, and
add a psychological twist. Keith forces his characters to look inside
themselves to find their very best before they can save the day, putting
the heart in Horror with Heart.
Keith is a proud member of
SouthWest Writers and served on the
board for four years, three years as an officer. He enjoys speaking to
writers and readers at conferences and programs |
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Tracy Kiely is
a self-proclaimed Anglophile (a fact
which distresses certain members of her Irish Catholic family). She grew
up reading Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, and watching Hitchcock movies.
She fell in love with Austen’s wit, Christie’s clever plots, and
Hitchcock’s recurrent theme of “the average man caught in extraordinary
circumstances.”After spending years of trying to find a proper job that would enable
her to use her skills garnered as an English major, she decided to write
a book. It would, of course, have to be a mystery; it would have to be
 funny;
and it would have to feature an average person caught up in
extraordinary circumstances. She began to wonder how the characters in
Pride and Prejudice might fit into a mystery. What, if after years
of living with unbearably rude and condescending behavior, old Mrs.
Jenkins up and strangled Lady Catherine? What if Charlotte snapped one
day and poisoned Mr. Collins’ toast and jam? Skip ahead several years,
and several different plot ideas, and you have Tracy's first mystery
MURDER AT
LONGOURN.
While she does not claim to be Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, or
Hitchcock (one big reason being that they’re all dead), she has tried to
combine the elements of all three in her books.
Tracy's third mystery novel in her Elizabeth Parker series, MURDER
MOST PERSUASIVE is releasing in September 2011.
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Karen Walker
doesn't wish
to be defined by what she does. Instead, she wishes to be known for who
she is. For more than 30 years, she had a successful career in marketing
and public relations.
Since 1999, she's been writing full-time. Even with all that writing
experience, Karen went back to college to complete a Bachelor's degree
and graduated summa
cum laude in 2005 from the University of New Mexico's University Studies
program with a major emphasis in Creative Writing. Her first book, a
memoir, Following the Whispers, was published in 2009 and is now
available as an e-book. It was a finalist for the 2009 New Mexico Book
Awards.
Karen has published essays and articles in newspapers, magazines, and
an anthology series. She's now working on a novel.
In addition to writing, Karen finds time for folk dancing, singing,
hiking, and playing the guitar.
She lives in New Mexico.
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Mark Okrant is an author and
professor of tourism
management at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. He has
conducted tourism research in South Dakota, New Hampshire, Maine,
Alaska, Canada, and Romania, and is
 past
president of a leading global organization for tourism researchers, the
Travel and Tourism Research Association.
A few years ago, when the University cut back on his class field trips,
Mark wrote a murder mystery set in a resort community. Now he and other
universities use
 his
novel as a textbook."My niche in the world of mystery writing is to place my lead
character, Kary Turnell, in a position to work crime scenes at historic
resort hotels. As an author, having the
 opportunity
to be a guest in two grand old ladies, The Balsams and the Mount
Washington, has been a wonderful experience for me—and a terrific way to
kick off this new series."
The Kary Turnell character prefers his well-known Fedora. Mark's
chapeau of choice is a pageboy cap, except when he’s writing. Mark has
maintained the tradition of wearing a baseball cap from each subject
 resort
while he is creating a new Kary Turnell Mystery. He wears each cap until
the novel has been completed and published.
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THE
WRITER'S CHATROOM