San Diego Noir

summer job at the worldfamous San Diego Zoo. She currently lives in Venice, California, but is still a Padres and Chargers fan, though she’s pretty sure that if either ever wins a championship, it is a sign of the coming Apocalypse. Her debut novel was 2009’s Rock Paper Tiger, and “Don’t Feed the Bums” is her first published short story.

TAFY CANNON has lived in a San Diego beach town for over twenty years and wrote all of her thirteen published mysteries within two miles of the Pacific Ocean. Her work has been nominated for Agatha and Macavity Best Novel awards, and Blood Matters won the San Diego Book Award for Best Mystery/Thriller.

DIANE CLARK’S adopted hometown has been San Diego since 1977, and the military is a big part of it—from North Island in Coronado to Camp Pendleton. Her husband David is a second-generation San Diegan and she has drawn on deep family memories of World War II for this story. She has spent her entire working career as a writer or editor, and is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

DEBRA GINSBERG is the author of the novels The Neighbors Are Watching, The Grift, and Blind Submission, as well as three memoirs, including the best-selling Waiting. She has lived in San Diego for half her life, features it prominently in her fiction, and believes strongly that it lives up to its designation as America’s Finest City.

MARYELIZABETH HART is co-owner of Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego’s genre bookstore for readers of stories of “martians, murder, magic, and mayhem.” She works as the store’s events coordinator and newsletter editor, and is also a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.

GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD is the author of eleven crime novels, including six in the Aaron Gunner series, two in the Joe and Dottie Loudermilk series, and three stand-alone thrillers. His first Gunner short story, “And Pray Nobody Sees You,” won both a Shamus and Anthony award for Best Short Story; the story is included in Lyrics for the Blues. His latest novel is the urban crime drama Cemetery Road.

CAMERON PIERCE HUGHES is a native San Diegan who reviews books for January Magazine, Crimespree Magazine, the pop culture website CHUD.com, the Philadelphia City Paper, and other places. His first piece of fiction, “The War Zone,” can be read in Damn Near Dead 2 from Busted Flush Press. He has been an Internet journalist since 2006. And yes, he worships the sun and talks about the weather a lot. He hates rain.

MORGAN HUNT’S stint in the navy brought her to San Diego, where she lived for twenty- seven years, and where she set her Tess Camillo mystery series. She found work in the city as a technical writer, copywriter, video scriptwriter, instructional designer, and medical editor. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and she’s written for Writer’s Digest. Now a resident of Ashland, Oregon, she is finishing a mystery screenplay.

KEN KUHLKEN’S novels have won the St. Martin’s Press/ PWA Best First P.I. Novel contest and been selected as finalists for a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and a Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel. His California Century novels, featuring detective Tom Hickey and sons, are: The Loud Adios, The Venus Deal, The Angel Gang, The Do-Re- Mi, The Vagabond Virgins, and The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles.

MARTHA C. LAWRENCE grew up in a haunted house in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Inspired by her plentiful psychic experiences around San Diego County, she wrote the Elizabeth Chase mystery series, which earned nominations for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Shamus, and Nero Wolfe awards. A former acquisitions editor for Simon & Schuster and Harcourt publishers, she is also the writing partner of best-selling business author Ken Blanchard.

MARIA LIMA is a writing geek with one foot in the real world and the other in the make- believe. Though her Blood Lines series is set in the Texas Hill Country, San Diego is also a city of her heart. She loves downtown and the crazy, awesome people who hang out there. If it weren’t for that pesky thing called “needing to make a living,” she’d be in San Diego every day.

JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE lived in San Diego for twenty-four years. During his time there, he managed one bookstore, opened independent specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy with his wife and another partner, helped build two publishing companies into industry powerhouses, fathered two children, and became a professional writer. He has published dozens of novels, even more comic books, and a double handful of short stories. For more information, visit jeffmariotte.com.

T. JEFFERSON PARKER’S eighteen novels include Silent Joe and California Girl, both winners of the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Parker is midway through a four-book Border Quartet that deals with how the drug wars in Mexico are impacting the United States. The first, Iron River, was published in 2010, and the second, The Border Lords, in early 2011. He has lived in San Diego County since January of 2000.