ELIZABETH ABRAM
ELIZABETH ABRAM has been a janitor, a professional popcorn maker, a market researcher for a radio station, a caterer, an Equal Employment Specialist for the Federal Government, and a parking enforcement officer. Her eclectic life experiences, and her fear of having to maintain an actual schedule, has led her to the only logical career: fiction writing. She recently wrote and directed an episodic children’s play in her local community and is currently working on an historical mystery novel involving Jack the Ripper.
She lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, two children and two mischievous felines, and is the Membership Chair for SinC Md TN.
CARMEN AMATO
CARMEN AMATO turns lessons from a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency into crime fiction loaded with intrigue and deception. Originally from upstate New York, Carmen was educated there as well as Virginia and Paris, France, while experiences in Mexico and Central America ignited her writing career. Her award-winning Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series pits the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico's drug cartels, government corruption, and social inequality. The series was awarded the Poison Cup for Outstanding Series from CrimeMasters of America in both 2019 and 2020, and has been optioned for television.
CHRISTINA BOYS
CHRISTINA BOYS is a freelance editor with 20 years of experience with 2 of the "Big 5" book publishers. She has edited a broad spectrum of fiction and nonfiction, ranging from award-winning debut novels to New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA TODAY bestsellers. She began her career at Simon & Schuster, where she launched a new Mystery Program for Pocket Books focused on cozy mysteries which garnered multiple Independent Mystery Booksellers Association bestsellers. In 2004, she moved from New York to Nashville to become the first editor of Hachette Book Group's Center Street imprint. In 2017, she launched CEB Editorial Services and currently works with aspiring and published authors and for several major publishing houses. Christina is also the secretary for SinC Middle TN.
PHYLLIS GOBBELL
Phyllis Gobbell is the author of the Jordan Mayfair Mystery Series: Pursuit in Provence, Secrets and Shamrocks, Treachery in Tuscany (which won the 2019 Silver Falchion Award for Best Cozy Mystery at Killer Nashville), and the newest, Notorious in Nashville. She is also the co-author of two true-crime books based on high-profile murders in Nashville, Tennessee: An Unfinished Canvas and Season of Darkness. Phyllis has published and won awards for short stories and creative nonfiction, and has received Tennessee's Individual Artist Literary Award. Faculty Emeritus at Nashville State Community College, she taught composition, literature, and creative writing for twenty years. Since retirement in 2022--besides writing--she has taught creative writing in Lipscomb University's Lifelong Learning Program, worked as a writing coach, and set about reading all the books she’s been wanting to read!
ASHLEY SARGEANT HAGAN
ASHLEY SARGEANT HAGAN has the mind of Agatha Christie with the soul of Mark Twain. She writes traditional mysteries with a literary twist. Originally from Lakeland, Florida, she is a long-time resident of Nashville. She loves cats, mysteries, history, and tea, and is also a freelance editor and publishing consultant. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her involved with Historic Nashville and volunteering for the Land Trust for Tennessee’s Glen Leven Farm. She is also the current President of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of Sisters in Crime.
www.Inkwellwriters.com
JOY JORDAN-LAKE
JOY JORDAN-LAKE is a #1 Amazon bestselling author of eleven books, the last several of which are historical suspense novels. Her most recent works include A Bend of Light, set on the coast of Maine, as well as the bestselling A Tangled Mercy, a Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choice selection; Under a Gilded Moon, which is a North Carolina Reads 2023 selection; and the Christy Award-winning Blue Hole Back Home. In addition to academic books and other nonfiction for adults, Joy has published two children’s picture books, with a third picture book soon to be announced.
Having earned two masters degrees as well as a Ph.D. in English literature with an emphasis on the 19th-century, Joy currently writes full time and teaches some semesters as an adjunct professor at Belmont University. She is also a mom of young adult children, hiker, dog-lover, traveler, gardener of all things that need no coddling, and a recently-rededicated—though sometimes backsliding—runner.
ROBERT MANGEOT
ROBERT MANGEOT lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife and cats. His short fiction appears here and there, including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The Forge Literary Journal, Lowestoft Chronicle, Mystery Weekly Magazine, the MWA anthology Ice Cold, and the Anthony-winning Murder Under the Oaks. His work has been a Derringer Award finalist. When not writing, he is the current Vice President of the Southeast Chapter of MWA and a past president of Sisters in Crime Middle Tennessee. He also serves as our current treasurer. Otherwise, he can be found wandering the snack food aisles of America or France.
JOE MORRIS
JOE MORRIS is that increasingly rare breed, a working journalist. His career has taken him around the country, and he’s done everything from celebrity interviews to covering late-night county council meetings setting tax rates. On occasion he’s won awards, though sadly none came with a cash component. A lifelong fan of mysteries and mystery writers, he has a mind full of great ideas and two filing cabinets full of drafts in dire need of rewrites. He is well aware that some will see his joining SinC as a last, desperate attempt to control the narrative. Joe is currently serving as the Vice President of SinC Middle TN.
DAVE NOREM
DAVE NOREM has ridden alone over most of the Continental US on a motorcycle, walked alone in strange cities at night, in forests at night, and in foreign lands...always wondering what lay ahead, over the next hill or around the next bend. His short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies. Killing, A Real-Bad Business is his third novel.
KELLY OLIVER
KELLY OLIVER is the award-winning and bestselling author of three mystery series: the seven-book suspense series, The Jessica James Mysteries; the three-book middle grade series, Pet Detective Mysteries; and the five-book historical cozy series, The Fiona Figg Mysteries. Kelly’s books have won the Indie Publishers award for Best Mystery/Thriller, Silver Falchion award for Best Suspense, and the Mischief and Mayhem award for Best Mystery, among others.
Kelly is currently President of Sisters in Crime.
When she’s not writing novels, Kelly is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
PEGGY O'NEAL PEDEN
PEGGY O'NEAL PEDEN is a long-time Nashville resident who grew up listening to country music and remembers her father making his own steel guitar. She is an award-winning advertising copywriter, and teaches college-level English. She formerly owned a travel agency, paints and is a member of the Nashville Artist Guild, counting Maureen McCormick among her clients. Her first novel in the Nashville Mystery series, Your Killin’ Heart, won Malice Domestic's Best First Traditional Mystery and was a finalist in both the Killer Nashville and William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing competitions. The second in the series, Gone Missin', released in January 2022.
She is a member of Sisters-in-Crime, the American Association of University Professors, Authors Guild, and the Women’s National Book Association. Peden loves most everything about Nashville except the traffic.
www.peggyonealpeden.com
CAROLYN ROWLAND
Carolyn Rowland is a former lawyer turned writer. Raised in Texas, she’s a bit of a gypsy who now calls Tennessee home. She writes historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy and the Haunted City mystery novel series set in Savannah, Georgia, under her pen name C.A. Rowland. She comes by her interest in ghosts, myths and legends and the paranormal naturally, having spent hours in cemeteries with her grandmother. Her stories can be found in the Fiction River anthology series and Pulphouse Magazine as well as other publications.
NANCY SARTOR
NANCY SARTOR is an award-winning Nashville-born writer, a charter member and current president of Word Spinners Ink, a member of MWA, RWA, and SiNC, the former secretary of SEMWA, and moderator of the Kiss of Death critique workshop, Crimson Quills. She won the Daphne Du Maurier Award of Excellence for Paranormal in 2018 for her Blessed Curse. She has two other published novels: Bones Along the Hill and Christmas Across Time. She lives in Rural Hill, Tennessee, just east of Nashville with her husband, classical composer and conductor, David Sartor, and Autumn Fire, their Maine Coon cat. She is an herbalist, enjoys reading, gardening, knitting, and cooking.
CLAY STAFFORD
Award-winning author and filmmaker CLAY STAFFORD has sold more than 2 million copies of his own books and is now publishing others through his own Clay Stafford Books. A former Days of Our Lives and live theater actor, Stafford has directed, produced and written material for ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Sony Pictures, Esquire, and national cable networks. His work is in 14 languages. Recently he produced the soundtrack and documentary One of the Miracles and produced and co-wrote the pop-country album XO with The Bone Collector author Jeffery Deaver. An MFA graduate, he has taught at several universities and has co-designed the film program at Miami Dade College. He is the founder of the literary organization Killer Nashville.
JADEN TERRELL
JADEN TERRELL is a Shamus Award finalist and internationally published author of the Nashville-based Jared McKean mysteries. She is a contributor to the Killer Nashville Noir anthology, to International Thriller Writers’ The Big Thrill, and to Now Write! Mysteries, a collection of writing exercises published by Tarcher/Penguin. A recipient of the 2017 Killer Nashville Builder Award, along with the 2009 Magnolia Award and the 2017 Silver Quill Award for service to the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, this former special education teacher is now a writing coach who offers private coaching, live workshops, and online courses for writers.
ALANA WHITE
A Macavity Award finalist in the mystery short story category, ALANA WHITE sold her first historical mystery novel, The Sign of The Weeping Virgin, to an editor while attending Killer Nashville. The novel was a finalist for the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award in 2013. A member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and illustrators, she is currently revising the second book in her Renaissance Italy mystery series.
LOIS WINSTON
USA Today and Amazon bestselling author LOIS WINSTON began her award-winning writing career in 2006 with Talk Gertie to Me, a humorous novel about a small-town girl in Manhattan and the mother bent on bringing her home. That was followed by the romantic suspense Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception. Lois wrote her first mystery thanks to a conversation between her agent and an editor looking for a crafting-themed cozy series. Thus was born the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, which Kirkus Reviews dubbed, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” The series now includes ten novels and three novellas. To date, Lois has published twenty novels, five novellas, several short stories, one children’s chapter book, and one nonfiction book on writing, inspired by the twelve years she worked as an associate at a literary agency.
TOM WOOD
TOM WOOD is a journalist, author, and screenwriter who informs, inspires, and entertains. His debut novel Vendetta Stone, a Nashville-based fictional true-crime thriller, is being followed up by Turn to Stone: A Vendetta Stone Thriller. His Vendetta Stone adaptation was a Nashville Film Festival screenwriting competition semifinalist, as was Death Takes a Holliday. A longtime sports writer and copy editor at The Tennessean, he’s freelanced for the Ledger newspapers in Nashville and Knoxville, the Knoxville News Sentinel, Country Family News, and other publications. Tom has mystery, science fiction and Western short stories in several anthologies, and he was an extra on Nashville, Still the King and various movie/TV projects.
LISA WYSOCKY
LISA WYSOCKY is an award-winning fiction and non-fiction author and editor. Cat Enright popped into Lisa’s head in the middle of a sleepless night in 1994. Cat’s eclectic friends, including the (possibly) psychic horse Sally Blue, made their appearances and a cozy mystery unfolded. The Opium Equation was written, polished, rejected numerous times, and finally published by Cool Titles in 2011. Four awards later, the series has won eight awards and has been optioned for film and television. Currently, The Mane Equation is the winner of the Best Equine-related Book in the American Horse Media awards and was a finalist in the mystery category in the Indie Excellence Awards. When not writing or editing, she runs the nonprofit Colby’s Army and teaches people with disabilities to ride horses. Her latest, The Rein Equation was published in November, 2020. Lisa currently serves as the Publicity Chair for SinC Middle TN.