That influence has diminished as I’ve groped toward evolving my own narrative style.įiona: How did you come up with the title? In fact, I think that the style of my first book was influenced by Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series. Some people have told me that my style bears some similarity to Sue Grafton’s. I keep a tight lid on foul language, and I avoid gratuitous blood and gore. The first book was written entirely in the first person the second and third switched back and forth between first and third person, as the points of view shifted between the two main characters. My mysteries are set around 1980 and evoke the style of the old-time detective fiction. It was published in January 2007 by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM Press) and is still in print.įiona: Do you have a specific writing style? It was a cross-over textbook, written in lay language but with the technical oomph of a college textbook. My second book, FOOD SAFETY: OLD HABITS, NEW PERSPECTIVES, was a more ambitious project. As you can imagine, it sold just a couple of hundred copies. My first book, a lab manual with the uninspired title of FOOD MICROBIOLOGY – THE LABORATORY, was published in 2004 by the Food Processors Institute. Ironically, I hadn’t read any of James Patterson’s books at that time.įiona: What inspired you to write your first book?

Probably when a reader of FOOD SAFETY: OLD HABITS, NEW PERSPECTIVES commented to me that the narrative read like a James Patterson novel. To reinvent myself, so to speak.įiona: When did you first consider yourself a writer? If you are wondering why I began to write fiction, I did so to exercise a different section of my brain. My activities as a microbiologist always included a fair amount of writing: technical reports, research proposals, and a lot of management reports when I worked for the Canadian government. Although I have no fixed deadline for completion of the manuscript, I am hoping to have the first draft finished by early spring.įiona: When and why did you begin writing? I have begun working on the fourth novel in my mystery series, Damien Dickens News. The writing bug, which had been incubating within my brain for decades, bit in earnest when I retired. I spent the first ~40 years of my professional life as a food safety microbiologist, working in both government and private industry. We now are the proud Momsy and Popsy of a one-year old Australian Cobberdog named Shalom. We lost our 13-year old Australian Labradoodle, Quintzy, to cancer one year ago. My husband (also a Montrealer) and I have been married for more than 40 years. I studied Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal and Mycology at University of Toronto. I was born and grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (yes, I speak both French and English).

THE GREEN PEARL CAPER by Phyllis Entis