The Nature of Fact

   Gregory McNamee is the author or editor of twenty-six books of non-fiction and more than three thousand periodical publications, including articles, essays, reviews, interviews, editorials, poems, and short stories. As a local example, he has 85 articles in the Tucson Weekly. He is a consultant, contributor, and contributing editor to the Encyclopedia Britannica and its blog; he is the literary critic for the Hollywood Reporter and a contributing editor to Kirkus Reviews and The Bloomsbury Review. He edits the book series Desert Places, published by the University of Arizona Press. He is also a correspondent for TravelIntelligence.net, a London-based travel syndicate.

   McNamee is a research associate at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, and adjunct curator of literature at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona. He is a member of the Speakers Bureau of the Arizona Humanities Council, and he also gives courses and talks on writing, publishing, journalism, and cultural and environmental issues.

   McNamee operates Sonora Wordworks, an editorial and publishing service based in Tucson, Arizona. His website is at www.gregorymcnamee.com. His Britannia blog is at blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/author/gmcnamee and covers such recent topics as the Swiss invasion of Lichtenstein to the return of the coyote to New York's Central Park.

   As Edmund Burke, 18th Century British philosopher and statesman reminds us, "Facts are to the mind what food is to the body." We hope you join us at our April 15th meeting to meet the author of Moveable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food, Gregory McNamee.

Sothwest Crime Ink
Tucson Authors of Mystery, History and More

   We'll be talking about the different paths we each took to publication - agent, large and small publisher, nom de plume, promotion? And what we want to try next.

   Elizabeth Gunn was an innkeeper, travel writer, blue-water sailor, and SCUBA diver before embarking on a career as a novelist. Crazy Eights is her newest title in the Jake Hines mystery series, set in a police station in a mid-size town in Southeast Minnesota that greatly resembles (but isn't) her home town of Rochester.

   The series features a mixed-race protagonist, a foundling raised by the state of Minnesota who's never met his parents. "He feels like my alter ego," Gunn says, "which is odd, since my Minnesota family is so large we have to hold reunions in a park." At present she's working on a mystery set in Tucson, where she now lives. Her current passions are reading, birding, and hiking the mountain trails of Arizona.

   Prior to writing fiction, Susan Cummins Miller worked as a field geologist with the U. S. Geological Survey and taught geology and oceanography. Susan incorporates elements of history, geology, and archaeology in her Frankie Mac-Farlane mysteries, each of which is set in a unique landscape. In Death Assemblage, geosleuth MacFarlane unravels a geologic puzzle in northern Nevada.

   Detachment Fault-a finalist for this year's Mountains and Plains Book Award-explores artifact-smuggling and murder in the Arizona/Sonora borderlands. And in Quarry (2006), Frankie plays hide-and-seek with a murderer in the Mojave Desert.

   J. Carson Black is the pen name for local author Margaret Falk, whose published books are, Darkscope, Dark Horse, and The Desert Waits (as Margaret Falk); The Tombstone Rose and Superstitions (as Annie McKnight) and Darkness on the Edge of Town (J. Carson Black, Penguin, January 2005). A native Tucsonan, J. Carson Black lives with her husband and four cats. When not writing, she likes to walk in the desert. The second book in the Laura Cardinal mystery series, Dark Side of the Moon, will be out in January 2006.

   J .M. Hayes has been an anthropologist, an archaeologist, and a small business-man in the automotive and real estate fields. He has raised commercial flowers, worked theater sound and lights, and supervised camping, sports, and recreation programs. He was born and raised on the flat earth of central Kansas where his novels, Mad Dog & Englishman, Prairie Gothic, and Plains Crazy, take place. After graduating from Wichita State University (twice), he did three years of post-graduate work at the University of Arizona. He has lived in Arizona, where his first novel, The Grey Pilgrim, is set, for nearly forty years. Mike shares his central Tucson home with his wife, several computers, roughly 4000 books, and a small herd of German Shepherds.

FORUMS ARE BACK AT THE FOUR POINTS SHERATON!!! (SE Corner of Speedway and Campbell) 11:30-2 PM, third Sunday of Month Must R.S.V.P. by TUESDAY before Forum - 546-9382 $20 paid at the door includes lunch and Forum (NO CREDIT CARDS-processing fees are too high) If you R.S.V.P. please attend-SSA pays full fee if you don't!