Marilyn's Musings

My parents instilled in me a love of words, laughter, and nature, so perhaps it was inevitable that I became a writer of mysteries with a hint of laughter and a bias toward the environment. My first two novels (The Havoc in Hancock series) are set in Idaho, where I lived for thirty-plus years after growing up in southern California. I got the idea for my first book when our activist daughter invited me for breakfast with a friend of hers. A colorful character, Roadkill (he really calls himself that!) dressed in the skins of animals he’d found by the side of the road. With his permission, he became a character in Mustard’s Last Stand , where Roadkill convinces his screenwriter brother to help him fight a faux safari camp in North Idaho. He was such a reader favorite that I’m bringing him back in my next book, the second in my new series. When we moved to Arizona, I knew I wanted to set my next novel there. I happened to spend a month outside the town of Benson, AZ, a ...

Occasionally readers ask me where I find the weird characters that populate my novels. I think they’re wondering if I’m a little nuts myself. We can assume I have a few screws loose because I choose to write novels. That confessed, let’s move on to my characters. Several years ago, my daughter, an environmental activist, invited me to breakfast with an activist friend of hers whose “forest” name is Roadkill. Roadkill wears the skins of animals he finds beside the road and tans himself. He was (and is still) truly a character, who teaches brain tanning and friction fire starting. My daughter, by the way, is known as Frog.  That delightful meal and introduction led to my first novel, Mustard’s Last Stand, set in North Idaho. I love that part of my former home state. The lakes are deep and the forests majestic and the populace is sprinkled with plenty of loons. The human kind. In Mustard’s Last Stand, a failing screenwriter joins his oddball brother Roadkill ...