Marilyn's Musings

Marilyn has asked me to describe the characters in my latest mainstream mystery, RAVEN TALKS BACK . I hope I don’t leave any out, they might come after me more than they do anyway, since I’m already starting book #2 in the Raven Morressey series.  Raven Morressey : 39 years old. Alaska Native, Athabascan tribe. If you want to know how she looks, think Sandra Bullock. Very beautiful woman, she straddles two cultures because she is Athabascan and her husband is Caucasian. Raven was educated in ‘the lower forty-eight’ as Alaskans put it. Dark hair, dark eyes, medium-dark skin, around size 10. Soft spoken, kind, very trusting but self-contained person. Red Morressey . Raven’s husband, same age as Raven. Tall, medium height and build, red hair, ruddy skin. Very complicated and secretive. Sometimes harsh, sometimes nice. You just never know from day to day which Red is going to show up. Raven’s children:     Timmy . Eight years old. Long black hair, slightly stocky ...

THE FOG Almost immediately after I retired early from my 23-year position in accounting and finance, I happened to receive an unexpected invitation to work on a six-week contract with a company in Valdez, Alaska, which is at the end of the Alaska Pipeline. I would be doing some of the same work I had done over a period of years while taking care of my former company's fixedsset system. I thought, what a wonderful opportunity to see Alaska, not to mention the salary they offered, which was more three times what I had been making here. Off I went on this great adventure, thinking maybe, just maybe,I might also find something I wanted to write about, but not really counting on it because I knew I'd be working five, six days a week in an office there. Not much time left over for finding inspiration for a seventh novel. Not in a small town like that, surely, with only a little over 4,500 inhabitants. On my first day there before I started working, I stood in the back yard watching f...