Blending Science and Mystery

Blending Science and Mystery: There’s plenty of crossover between scientists and mystery writers. Both try to bring order out of chaos, and both use detection in their work. 

Join us for what promises to be a fascinating panel discussion. Four mystery writers discuss how they employ a variety of sciences to come up with solutions. 

Our four panelists are William Anderson (writing as A. W. Powers), Carolyn Surrisi, Julie Holmes, and Mary Seifert. 

A.W. Powers is the author of the Psychic Guardian Angel series of paranormal thrillers.  First Casualty was released in June and No Rest for the Dead will be released in July.  His short fiction was included in Dark Side of the Loon, Hook, Line, and Sinker and most recently in Land of 10,000 Nightmares.  He also writes and publishes non-fiction and poetry as wmjAnderson and William J. Anderson.  They can be reached at awpowers-writer.com or wmjanderson.com.

C. M. Surrisi is the author of 2023 JLG Gold Standard YA non-fiction, The Bones of Birka: Unraveling the Mystery of a Female Viking Warrior and 2023 middle-grade fiction, The Unofficial Lola Bay Fan Club, as well as an award-winning picture book and middle-grade mystery series. She has a JD and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has taught writing for children and young adults at the college level and for numerous SCBWI national and regional conferences. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Author’s Guild, and The National League of American Pen Women. She can be found as C. M. Surrisi on Facebook; and csurrisi on Instagram. Her website is https://cmsurrisi.com

Julie Holmes started her writing career in elementary school, where her first book starred a young girl and unicorns. She now writes a variety of mysteries, from suspense with a touch of romance to police procedurals with a brush of extrasensory, with forays into fantasy and science fiction. A former aircraft mechanic for a commuter airline, she uses her experience as fodder for the Sierra Bauer mystery series featuring a female aircraft mechanic. Since her current career as a technical writer for a software company tends to interfere with her fiction writing, she uses National Novel Writing Month (50,000 words in 30 days) to draft (or re-draft) her upcoming books. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, the national Sisters in Crime writers' organization, and is the current president of the Twin Cities SinC chapter. She hails from south-central Minnesota, where she lives on a small hobby farm with her husband and a menagerie of pets. https://julieholmesauthor.com

Mary Seifert can’t leave a brain teaser or puzzle go unchallenged. A former math teacher, she ties numbers and logic to her Katie and Maverick Cozy Mysteries. Her sixth book launches at the end of this summer. When she’s not writing, she’s making incredible memories with family and friends, walking her dog whose only speed is faster, carefully deleting references to murder from her web browser, and pretending to cook. You can often find her nibbling chocolate, which sometimes occurs WHILE writing and reading. Mary and her husband live in Willmar, Minnesota where smiles are real, the skies are blue, and the weather can turn on a dime, and she can honestly write about it all. https://maryseifertauthor.com