LA Chapter of Sisters In Crime

 Authors and Editors of LAndmarked for Murder

Gay Degani (“Leaving Slackerland”) teaches English Composition at Pasadena City College, Pasadena, California. She is currently working on a mystery novel.

Gayle Bartos-Pool (“Just Like Old Times”) was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Her father was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and the family lived in various countries from Okinawa to France, as well as on military bases in the States. The family settled in Memphis where she attended college. G.B. took a year off from college and worked on a small-town paper as a reporter and then as a private detective with a local Memphis firm, taking assignments in Atlanta, Chicago, and Little Rock. Upon graduation from Rhodes College in Memphis, she worked a year as a draftsman and then moved to California where she started her writing career and then launched her own publishing company, SPYGAME Press. Married to a Texan similar to the “Fred” character in her Ginger Caulfield Mysteries, G.B. writes mysteries, spy novels, and Christmas stories.

Darrell James (“Making It With Gammy”) lives in Pasadena with his wife and manager, Diana. His short stories have appeared in a number of mystery magazines to include: Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Armchair Aesthete, and (upcoming in) Hardboiled. He is the 2004 winner of the "Fire to Fly” competition, and a prior year finalist in "Fire To Fly". His screenplay First Hostage was a semi-finalist in the prestigious 2003 Slam Dance Screenplay Competition. He is currently working on a novel.

Dee Ann Palmer (“Marathon Madness”) is a native Texan transplanted to Southern California. She has a bachelor of science in nursing and a master of arts in health education and administration. Her latest book, Cry of the Bells, is an historical romantic suspense. She credits tips from a panel in SinC/LA’s 2003 No Crime Unpublished conference with finding a publisher for it. She’s sold over sixty shorter pieces, and contributed to Mean Girls Grown Up, a 2005 book about female relational aggression by Cheryl Dellasega, Ph.D. A runner, Dee Ann has competed in six marathons and a hundred shorter races.

Paul D. Marks (“Sleepy Lagoon Nocturn”) is the stealth screenwriter, making his living from optioning screenplays of his own and rewriting (script doctoring) other people's scripts and developing their ideas. White Heat, his unpublished noir novel, recently took 2nd place in the prestigious SouthWest Writers competition. And his short story “Netiquette” won first place in the Futures Short Story Contest. “Dem Bones” was a finalist in the Southern Writers Association contest. His story, “The Good Old Days” will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Murder Across the Map. He has also had short stories appear in the anthologies Dime, Murder on Sunset Boulevard, Murder by Thirteen and Fiction on the Run anthologies, as well as in such magazines as Crimestalker Casebook, Penny-A-Liner and Futures. A Los Angeles native, Paul loves the city that L.A. was. Dodging bullets, he's not so sure about the city it is today. You can find him at www.PaulDMarks.com.

Kate Thornton (“It Doesn’t Take a Genius”) has worked at such diverse jobs as selling bear tags in Alaska and dressing dancers for performances at CalTech. After retiring from a 22-year career as an instructor in the US Army, she now devotes her days to national defense work and her sleepless nights to writing stories. With over 50 short stories in print, her writing career began with a vignette of the revenge murder of someone who irritated her and has grown into an insatiable need to restore the moral order of the world through fiction. She may be found at the usual Los Angeles landmarks, just looking for trouble.

Jinx Beers (“‘The Best Laid Schemes…’”) wrote her first complete poem at age seven. In junior college she won a blue ribbon for a mystery in the school’s short story contest. She spent eighteen years writing research and technical papers at UCLA School of Engineering. For fourteen years she was publisher and editor of The Lesbian News, a community newspaper which recently celebrated its 30th birthday. She also edited five volumes of Lesbian Short Fiction. Jinx was delighted to be included in SinC/LA’s first anthology, Murder X Thirteen, and thrilled to have another of her short stories published in this anthology.

A native of Compton, California, Pamela Samuels-Young (“Setup”) is the author of Every Reasonable Doubt, a fast-paced legal drama set in L.A. She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from USC and her master’s in broadcasting from Northwestern University. After spending several years as a television news writer, Pamela earned her law degree from University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. She served as legal consultant to the Showtime television series, Soul Food; works full-time as an employment attorney for large corporation in Southern California, and teaches Employment Law at the University of Phoenix. Pamela is married and is working on her third novel. Setup is her first published short story.

A.H. Ream (“Running Venice”) got her first job at a newspaper when she was 16. After working at papers in Missouri, Florida and Texas as a reporter, copy editor, page designer and graphic artist, she gave up the deadlines to pursue fiction full-time. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and is at work on a novel. You can find her website and blog online at www.ahream.com.

Arthur Coburn (“Some Creature I Care About”) graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, and survived a one year law career in Seattle before bailing out to direct commercials, industrials and documentaries; and to write educational films. He later worked there as a freelance writer and still photographer. After moving to Hollywood, he has been a film editor on more than two dozen films, including Spiderman, A Simple Plan and The Cooler. In June 2005 he won the Novel Prize at the Southern California Writer’s Conference for his thriller, Rough Cut. He is a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of America and IWOSC.

Susan Kosar Beery (“100 Suburbs in Search of a City” and linking introductions) is a freelance writer/producer in television advertising and promotion. She has produced national campaigns for CBS and FOX, and marketing videos for The Discovery Channel. While on staff as CBS, she wrote and produced the national on-air campaign for the original premiere of Murder, She Wrote. In addition, Susan has dabbled as a segment director on Hard Copy, and wrote and directed Barbie home videos for Mattel. She is part of the Sisters in Crime/L.A. team who originated this new anthology, LAndmarked for Murder, and is currently writing her first mystery novel, The Rosary Maya.

Taylor Smith (Foreword) is a bestselling author whose novels include Common Passions, The Best of Enemies and Random Acts. A native of Canada, she became a diplomat for that country, covering the former Soviet bloc, and for a time was a senior aide to Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Advisor. Taylor has also been a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and she spent three years posted to East Africa. During a leave of absence in 1990, she relocated to Orange County, California, and took up fiction writing. Her well-reviewed novels have been released in more than two-dozen countries, and have sold over two million copies

 Authors and Editors of Murder on Sunset Boulevard

DANA KOUBA is the pseudonym of S. Dana Stiebel, a Los Angeles attorney, real estate executive, and former rough carpenter engaged in a thirty-year love affair with old buildings, historic urban neighborhoods and the unlikely mix of characters they attract. She is currently circulating her supernatural mystery novel, The Water Strider, among agents and editors.

RICHARD PARTLOW's stories have appeared in Rod Serling's Twilight Zone magazine. He has worked as a librarian with the Los Angeles Public Library, as manager of several Central Library subject departments, including the Central/Southern region of 13 branches. He is currently working on a mystery novel.

GAYLE McGARY is a painter and sculptor as well as a writer. Her previous short stories were published in Sisters in Crime/L.A.'s anthologies, Murder by Thirteen and A Deadly Dozen. Gayle teaches art in Los Angeles and lives in nearby Altadena with her husband, writer Richard Partlow.

DALE FURUTANI has been called "a master craftsman" by Publishers Weekly and "the best known of Japanese American authors" by Nikkei View. He has won an Anthony and a Macavity award, and has been nominated for an Agatha. He has also earned honors outside the mystery field, including speaking at the Library of Congress and being named one of the "44 Faces of Diversity" for the City of Los Angeles. He has written modern and historical mysteries, including the L.A. Times bestseller Kill the Shogun, Death in Little Tokyo, The Toyotomi Blades, Death at the Crossroads and Jade Palace Vendetta. Dale and his wife currently live in Tokyo, Japan, where he is working on a new book.

JOAN WAITES has a degree in Chemistry with a focus in Forensic Science. She was recently awarded first prize for fiction in the San Diego Writer's Cooperative Contest, and her work has appeared, under a pseudonym, in the San Diego Writer's Journal.

KATE THORNTON has published short stories in a variety of magazines, including Blue Murder, Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine, Woman’s World, The Cozy Detective, as well as in the anthologies A Deadly Dozen and The Best of Blue Murder. Twice nominated for a Derringer Award by the Short Mystery Fiction Society, she has also published extensively in the science-fiction genre.

GAY TOLTL KINMAN has published over 100 magazine articles. Her story, "Miss Parker and the Cutter-Sanborn Tables," which appeared in A Deadly Dozen, was nominated for an Agatha Award at Malice Domestic. Her middle reader title, The Mystery of the Missing Miniature Books, was a finalist for the Independent E-Book Awards and has been reprinted in a trilogy with The Mystery of the Octagon House and The Mystery of the Missing Arabian. She co-edited Desserticide II aka Just Desserts and Deathly Advice. Her play, The Wicked Well, was produced in Cambria, a town that lays in the shadow of Hearst Castle, which is the setting for the gothic novel, Castle Reiner.

MAE WOODS is a writer-producer whose screenplay credits include three episodes of HBO's offbeat series Tales from the Crypt. She produced the TV movie When Danger Follows You Home for USA Networks. She was the development executive for Walter Hill's production company for four years and associate producer on Streets of Fire, Brewster's Millions, Crossroads, Extreme Prejudice, Red Heat and Johnny Handsome. She co-edited Murder by Thirteen, SinC/L.A.'s debut anthology. Her freelance writing credits include stints at Mysterynet and Digital City.

LINDA O. JOHNSTON’s first published story, "Different Drummers," appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and won the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for Best First Mystery Short Story of the Year. It was anthologized in The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories for 1989. Since then, Linda has had several more short stories published, plus eight romance novels, including Marriage: Classified, Alias Mommy and The Ballad of Jack O’Dair.

PAUL D. MARKS’s story "Santa Claus Blues" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Another of his stories, "Netiquette," won first place in the Futures Short Story Contest.   He has also sold stories to Dogwood Tales, Futures, Penny-A-Liner and other publications.  "Angels Flight" appeared in the anthology Murder by Thirteen.  Paul is the stealth screenwriter, making his living from optioning screenplays of his own and rewriting (script doctoring) other people's scripts or developing their ideas.  He has also lectured on writing and screenwriting at UCLA, California State University, San Bernadino, Learning Tree University and at other seminars or conferences.  A Los Angeles native, he loves the city that L.A. was.  Dodging bullets, he's not so sure about the city it is today.  He is currently at work on a mystery novel. 

ANNE RIFFENBURGH is a medical social worker who found that ten years in the field of medical social work came in handy in writing "Leap of Faith," her first short mystery story. Anne is the author of The Power of Reminiscence and Grandparents and Grandkids: A Celebration of Love, and her essay "The Race" appears in Chicken Soup for the Nurses Soul.

GABRIELLA DIAMOND is the pseudonym of Linda Lane McCall, who adopted the pen name "Gabriella Diamond" to distinguish her books that feature the game of polo along with an equal dose of romance and suspense. Her novels On the Run and Tapping at the Window have been published by Pocket Books. Her story "Lust for Life" won the Writers’ Forum Short Story Prize in the fall of 2001 and another tale, "Allies," was the Grand Prize Winner in the 2001-2002 short story contest sponsored by SunnySide Up Publications. In the words of her editor at greatUNpublished.com: "What [Dick] Francis has done for horseracing, Gabriella Diamond is doing for polo."

EDITOR BIOGRAPHIES

ROCHELLE KRICH has been noted by former L.A. Times reviewer Charles Champlin for her "superior crime fiction." Rochelle won the Anthony for Where's Mommy Now?, filmed as Perfect Alibi. In addition to her suspense novels (Speak No Evil, Fertile Ground), she writes the Agatha Award-nominated series starring Jessica Drake, "one of the more intriguing detectives in the field" (Publishers Weekly). The series (Fair Game, Angel of Death, Blood Money, Dead Air, and Shadows of Sin) has been optioned for film. Romantic Times has nominated Dead Air for Best Novel, and the author herself for Career Achievement in suspense. Blues in the Night, introducing true crime writer and freelance reporter Mollie Blume, will be published by Ballantine in October, 2002. Her Agatha-nominated short story, "Widow's Peak" (Unholy Orders, Intrigue Press) has been nominated for an Anthony.

MICHAEL MALLORY has published some seventy short stories in such magazines and anthologies as Murderous Intent, Crimestalker Casebook, The Strand, Over My Dead Body!, Blue Murder, Mysterynet.com, The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers and the upcoming Our Sherlock Holmes, from St. Martin’s. His story "Curiosity Kills" won a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. He is the author of The Adventures of the Second Mrs. Watson, a collection of interconnected stories; Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, which was selected by People Magazine as a 1998 "Holiday Pick;" and Marvel: The Characters and Their Universe. A former show writer for Disneyland, Michael is also a freelance journalist, covering film and animation for the Los Angeles Times and Animation Magazine.

LISA SEIDMAN was a co-editor on the first Sisters in Crime/L.A. mystery anthology, Murder by Thirteen.  On television, she's written for Cagney & Lacey, Dallas, Knots Landing, Murder, She Wrote and currently writes for the daytime soap, Guiding Light.  Her short story, "Over My Shoulder," was published in the second SinC/L.A. anthology, A Deadly Dozen.  She also teaches screenwriting at UCLA Extension where she was honored as Teacher of the Year in 2000.