An obituary writer turned reporter discovered an unsolved murder while researching a newspaper column, then interviewed the victim's family. That real case became her debut mystery novel, 25 Years Ago Today, where a character uncovers the same kind of cold case.
Um, so I started out as an obit writer and then eventually became a reporter. I met my husband there. He was a sports writer. And I got an idea for my first mystery novel there. Because when I started, one of my responsibilities was looking through the microfilm, and I had to find sort of interesting lifting anecdotes, like, from 25 and 50 years ago today. There's this daily column, like, 25 years ago today, like, you know, on this date or 50 years ago today. And I came across an unsolved murder, which I wound up writing an article about it and interviewing the family. And then that just gave me the idea for a fiction story. Has nothing to do with that original article I wrote or anything, but it gave me the idea for a novel about what if there was, like, a editorial assistant who one of her responsibilities was doing the 25 years ago today column, and then she came across this unsolved murder, and what if she was driven to solve it because she had some, like, demons in her own past? And so that Inspired my book 25 years ago today.
