Sharon Short, also known under her pen name Jess Montgomery, will be in Mount Airy on April 2 to discuss her Kinship Historical Mystery Series and her career as a writer at the Mount Airy Public Library.
Folks often enjoy hiking wilderness trails — a chance for some exercise while getting away from the modern world, clearing their head, simply communing with nature.
Sharon Short uses such sojourns to plan murders. Or at least germinate a few deathly ideas she might put into practice.
No, Short is not a serial killer. She’s better known to many people as Jess Montgomery, author of The Kinship murder mystery series.
For Yadkin County residents, a short drive north on Saturday could mean a chance to meet the writer. Short is scheduled to be in Mount Airy on April 2 for an author meet and greet at Mount Airy Public Library, where she’ll be discussing her latest novel — The Echoes — which is the fourth novel in The Kinship series.
The series is not her first foray into the world of novel writing and publishing.
“My first published novel came out 30 years ago,” she said. It was a three-part series known as The Patricia Delaney eGumshoe Electronic mystery series.
“She (Patricia Delaney) was a woman who used computers to solve crime. It was very high tech at the time, now it would read historical,” she said with a laugh.
She has since penned the six-part Josie Toadfern Stain-Busting humorous mystery series about a laundromat owner and stain-removal expert who happens to solve crimes, along with stand-alone novels, poetry, and a collection of her columns.
Even before her first novel, Short was a writer and journalist and, she said, one in a long line of story tellers, having grown up with parents, grandparents, and extended family who all loved to weave tales for whoever would listen.
“I’ve been a writer essentially my whole life, since I could write as a little girl,” she recalled recently when talking about her career and her impending visit to Mount Airy.
After earning a bachelor of arts degree in English from Wright State University and a master of arts degree from Bowling Green State University, she spent ten years writing a weekly humor and lifestyle column for The Dayton Daily News. She still writes for the paper as a literary life columnist, and pens a regular column for Writer’s Digest called Level Up Your Writing.
But it is storytelling that she loves, though she struggled early on to find her place in the literary world.
“In my 20s, I tried my hand at writing a romance novel.” At the time, the romance genre was hot, filling the best-seller lists, but she said she struggled. Then came what she calls her “light bulb moment.”
She was sitting with a collection of mystery novels she was getting from the local library when her husband shared an observation.
“You’re writing a romance novel, but the only thing you’re reading is mystery novels. That seems to be what you are most drawn to as a reader.”
That, Short said, changed her life. She set to work penning a mystery novel. Once completed, she attended the Antioch Writers Workshop in Yellowstone, Ohio. There, a young Sue Grafton — just before she hit the best seller list with her Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Series, gave Short a detailed critique of the first few chapters of her work.
“She was great, she was just such a good teacher, she reviewed the book I had worked on, the opening pages. She told me it had a good plot, the characters were interesting, but she said ‘You haven’t really done as much research as you need to in police procedure and your dialogue is a bit stilted.’”
Getting encouragement, as well as detailed pointers on where she needed improvement, from someone already with a few publishing credits under her belt was the final push for Short. While that first novel was never published — she said it was more of a learning experience — she soon published her first Patricia Delaney novel, and has been publishing ever since.
Her latest work, The Kinship Series, had its genesis when she and her husband were getting ready to go on a hike with her youngest daughter.
“She majored in outdoor education. She likes to do outdoor things, so we were going to visit her, do some hiking. I started doing some research on that part of the state, hikes that would be interesting to her and doable for us.”
In doing that research, she stumbled across the real-life accounts of a woman named Maude Collins, who in 1925 became the first female sheriff in Ohio history. She inherited the post when her husband, Fletcher, was killed in the line of duty. A year later, however, she ran for re-election and won.
“There have only been five female sheriffs in the state’s history,” she said, with the next one not winning the office until 1976. It wasn’t until after the turn of the 21st century that another would take the office in one of the state’s 88 counties.
“I found that really remarkable, that she was able to win election. My imagination was inspired. I wondered what if Maude didn’t know who killed her husband?” While the killer of the real-life Fletcher Collins was well-known at the time, Short said the idea of the mystery of solving such a crime took root and grew in her imagination into the Kinship series.
She said during her library visit she will be making a more detailed presentation on the series, with particular emphasis on the fourth installment, which is set to be released March 29. She said she would be glad to take questions from the audience, both on the series and about writing in general.
“I’m very much looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to chatting with readers and meeting the good folks of Mount Airy.”
More information on Short and her Kinship series can be found at https://jessmontgomeryauthor.com/ Her talk at the local library is scheduled for April 2 at 11 a.m.