The Write Way

Influenced by the Nancy Drew mysteries, Marion Moore Hill was already thinking about writing books when she was a youngster.

But her life took some "crooks and turns" before she got started. Hill worked as a newspaper reporter, wrote ad copy, was a legal secretary, taught college-level English and journalism and owned a gourmet food store in Durant, Okla., before she turned her attention to writing full time.

"I decided I'd better get at it if I was ever going to do it," she says. "I wasn't very good at first, so it took me a while to get published."

Then Hill found her first protagonist, Juanita Wills, a "scrappy" Oklahoma librarian.

"I was thinking that people in certain professions get stereotyped, including librarians," she says. "I had known a lot of librarians, and none of them were like that stereotype" of severe, no-nonsense, bun-wearing old maids, "so decided I'd like to write a book about a nonstereotypical librarian."

The librarian solves mysteries with the help of a dog, a boyfriend who is a police lieutenant and her research skills -- one of the things Hill enjoys about writing her second series of novels, based on the American founding fathers. Research for the "Deadly Past" books has taken her to Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson's retreat home, Poplar Forest, near Lynchburg, Va., Monticello, the University of Virginia at Charlottesville and Colonial Williamsburg. Future novels in the series will have plots related to John, Abigail and Samuel Adams and George Washington.

"One of the things I enjoy about reading mysteries is that I learn something from them -- because someone has an exotic career or the book is set in an exotic location -- and I try to put that into each of my mysteries as well," Hill says.

Hill also hopes to intrigue new readers as a guest at the Northwest Arkansas Author Book Festival Saturday at the Springdale Public Library. She'll join local and regional writers, illustrators and photographers who will sign and sell their work.

Also on hand will be Sean Fitzgibbon, a local artist and graphic novelist, who will teach a workshop on altered books at 11 a.m. Smokey and The Mirror will perform at 12:30 p.m., and Tom Maringer, fantasy coinmaker for science fiction and fantasy realms including Game of Thrones, Kingkiller Chronicles and Wheel of Time, will be displaying his wares.

The event is free.

-- Becca Martin-Brown

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NAN What's Up on 09/26/2014