Miss Doris Markham was born on September 21, 1912. So part of the story starts here.
Decades later, her daughter promised Doris that someday she would write a book filled with all of the adventures of Doris’s life. After her mother passed away, the daughter kept that promise, writing not one, but two books about her mother’s life.
As the second book was being published, the coronavirus pandemic started. To keep in touch during the restrictions, the author and one of her friends decided to schedule a weekly phone call, where they watched cozy mystery shows while talking with each other.
So another part of the story starts on May 12, 2021, when these two friends saw each other in person for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic had started. The friend asked the author (who was working on another non-fiction book) if the author would mind if she used Doris as the inspiration for fictional detective for a cozy mystery series set in 1930s Kansas City.
The author loved the idea of Doris as a detective, but wanted to co-write the mystery series. The friends agreed that writing a mystery would be just as much fun as watching a mystery during their weekly phone calls.
In order to separate the real Doris from the fictional character, the new detective was christened Miss Deloris Markham, since Deloris was a name originally considered by Doris’s parents.
The weekly calls continued, and in addition to watching mysteries, the friends now discussed their own plots and emailed chapters back and forth. The non-fiction book that the author was planning on working on had been put on hold, indefinitely.
Less than three years later, Murder Among Friends, Book One of the Miss Markham Mysteries series, will be available to order in January 2024.
Book Two, Peculiarities at the Jameson Picnic, is currently undergoing revisions. The friends have already started discussing the plot for Book Three, and they have a handful of other book ideas waiting to be written.
The story continues…