Welcome!

Welcome to Killer Hobbies, where reading and writing mysteries aren’t our only pastimes. I know I love to dabble. I own a huge dollhouse, hunt for sea shells, read, own two dogs, crochet, knit, paint, draw, tap dance, scrapbook, travel, and collect teapots. (I like music, but making it should remain a private hobby. I don’t want to scare the horses.)

My fellow bloggers are equally multi-dimensional. Let's hear from them now--

Deb Baker

I write two mystery series. My Yooper series is set in the Michigan Upper Peninsula and features Gertie Johnson, the sixty-six-year-old mother of the local sheriff. The first, Murder Passes the Buck, came out last August and Murder Grins and Bears It will be available mid-April. The Dolls To Die For series with Gretchen Birch, a doll collector and restoration artist, came out last year, too. Dolled Up For Murder was the first mystery in the series and the second, Goodbye Dolly, is coming this year. I can’t wait to share doll stories with all of you. My first post on February 27th will be about Barbies!

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Monica Ferris

A lot of people ask me if I live in Excelsior, MN, where my mystery series is set. No, I don't, though I wish I did. To look out a window and see that beautiful lake every morning would be wonderful! I do live about twenty minutes from there, and I visit it often, to have lunch at Antiquity Rose, browse at Excelsior Bay Books, shop at the gift and antique shops. It's a nice little town. I actually live in a western suburb of Minneapolis, with a spouse and two cats. I like to travel, I collect "enthusiastic" hats, I cook, I go to the theater and concerts less often than I'd like, I do many kinds of needlework with more diligence than talent, and I write, write, write! I've been writing mysteries for a long time -- so long that I now have what the police refer to as a "criminal mind;" that is, when I go into a new place, my first thought is to look around for a handy place to hide a body.

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Linda O. Johnston

I love animals! I’m a practicing real estate attorney and a writer, and am proud to be owned by two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. I live in Southern California, and have two grown sons and a husband who decided to retire early and stay underfoot. I’m the author of 18 published novels so far, including time travel romance and romantic suspense, and the Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime. The latest Kendra story Meow Is For Murder was just released. I look forward to blogging!

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Rett MacPherson

Like my fictional character, Torie O’Shea, I’m into genealogy. I’ve been involved with it for 22 years! But I also have a host of other hobbies including quilting, scrapbooking, gardening, and birding. In fact, sometimes I get accused of spending more time and money on the birds than on my family. I’m the author of ten books, and I live with my husband and three kids in rural Missouri. I’m also involved with the Alternate Historians, a group that began as unpublished writers with the goal of helping each other write and sell publishable fiction. Today there are seven of us, New York Times best-selling author Laurell K. Hamilton, Sharon Shinn, Mark Sumner, Debbie Millitello, Marella Sands, Tom Drennan and me. I can’t wait to share my love of genealogy with all of you!

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(and me!) Joanna Campbell Slan


I grew up on the banks of the Wabash River listening to ghost stories. In the summers I vacationed with my maternal grandmother, a spunky former nurse whose family roots were in Charleston, S.C., and the Low Country. Evenings were spent on the piazza listening to stories about how my ancestors slipped past the Yankee blockade in Charleston’s harbor.

I’m the author of seven books on scrapbooking and a quarterly ezine on the topic (http://www.scrapbookstorytelling.com/). My husband, son, and I live outside of St. Louis with our two Bichon Frises, one the daughter of an English Champion and the other a three-legged rescue dog. My new series of Kiki Lowenstein mysteries are craft cozies about a woman who’s only been good at two things: scrapbooking and getting pregnant. Midnight Ink is publishing them in the fall of 2008.

Our goal as bloggers is to motivate you to keep enjoying your leisure activities. We’ll also share tidbits from the world of mystery-author-dom. (Is that a word?)

So send us your questions, comments, additions and corrections. We’d love to hear about your hobbies. And if one of them is “tasteful” murder or mayhem within the pages of a good book, so much the better!

Joanna