Morgan Hunt was born and raised on an island along the Jersey shore. Her style retains a Jersey candor that punctures the pretentious or self-important. A stint in the Navy brought her to San Diego, the setting of her mystery series, where she lived for 27 years. She’s worked as technical writer, copywriter, video scriptwriter, instructional designer, and medical editor. In 1997, one of her video scripts won a Creative Excellence Award of the International Film & Video Festival. Her articles have appeared in Navy Times, Training, and Writers Digest.

Morgan sold the first two books in her Tess Camillo mystery series, in which the semi-autobiographical protagonist is a breast cancer survivor, to Alyson Publications. The publisher also optioned the third book, which she’s now writing. Her web site, www.morganhuntbooks.com, won the 2006 Writers Digest Best Writer’s Web Site award. Now a resident of Ashland, Oregon, this cancer survivor hopes her mysteries will provide laughter, distraction, and zest to others facing personal challenges.

Is writing professionally something you’ve always wanted to do?
Yes, and I’ve been involved in some aspect of writing most of my adult life. I’ve written training videos, ad copy, multimedia online courses, medical reports, etc. I don’t have the talent for anything else. I was in the Navy, and they test your vocational aptitude when you enter the service. My mechanical aptitude was one point above ‘abysmal.’ The most sophisticated thing the Navy would let me operate was the soda machine. But it took me a while to make the leap to my own creative writing. They say: Don’t quit your day job. Well, that’s exactly what I did. I quit my day job and poured my mind and heart on paper. Never been happier.

You moved from San Diego to Ashland, Oregon. What’s it like there?
Ashland’s a small town surrounded by horse ranches, vineyards, parks and rivers yet it offers a vibrant cultural life. It hosts the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It’s like Sedona with green trees instead of red rock. I meet fellow writers as well as actors, musicians, artists, and filmmakers at every coffee house. Its nickname is “Berkeley’s northernmost suburb.”

How did the idea for the Tess Camillo books come about?
In the 90’s I wrote several screenplays; got a few nibbles from producers, but nothing sold. I was working full-time, raising a child, taking care of a house, a yard and a pool, and getting my Masters, so creative writing efforts faded into the background. Then I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and had a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. My friends knew I enjoyed reading mysteries so while I was recovering, they brought many for me to read. Between my own brush with death and immersion in the genre, I got inspired to write a murder mystery.

Tell us a bit about the first in the series, Sticky Fingers.
This first book draws the protagonist into a murder-by-snake and simultaneously pulls the reader into the lead character’s experience with cancer. I came up with the story line by braiding three different strands together. A while ago I’d heard about a crime in which the body of a young woman was found on the floor of a Volkswagen. There were many odd clues, including strange articles on and near the body, and the involvement of a psychic who knew a lot but had a solid alibi. A reporter wrote a book about the murder. Although the reporter thought he knew who committed the murder, the case was never officially solved; sufficient evidence was never acquired. The story fascinated me. The second strand of the story line was I found out that snake venom is used in breast cancer research. The third strand was much lighter: I heard the term ‘trouser snake’. All three strands came together when I began to write Sticky Fingers.

How would you describe the style or tone of your mysteries?
They’ve got the sexual candor and soliloquy style of Sex and the City, off-beat wry humor, and character-driven mystery puzzles. They don’t focus on forensic evidence like CSI or Bones – TV does that better than most books, I think. The best place for a reader to get a feel for my writing is on my web site, www.morganhuntbooks.com where chapter names, quotes, and the intro of each book are posted.

Did you encounter any stumbling blocks whilst writing the book, creatively or structurally?
Not really. Both Sticky Fingers and Fool on the Hill flowed pretty easily. I think they wanted to be written.

Who are some of your favourite authors?
Kurt Vonnegut, may he rest in Valhalla. Christopher Moore. Rita Mae Brown: I’ve read Six of One five times. Barbara Kingsolver. Margaret Craven. Anne Lamott. Mary Oliver. E. L. Doctorow. And I may be the only lesbian who enjoys Kinky Friedman; his word play and off-beat philosophizing delight me.

Do you write from a structured outline, or do you prefer to tackle a story more intuitively?
I work from a storyboard outline --word-sketches of what needs to happen in a scene; who does what to whom. If I have a particular description or quip in mind, I add it to the storyboard. When I’m ready to write, I review my outline, then I let the story live me.

What are you currently working on?
I’m finishing the third mystery in the series, Blinded by the Light. I’m also writing a treatment for a new TV series. A mainstream novella is at the outline stage and I just sold an article on the use of obscenities to Writer’s Digest.

What's the most demanding part for you personally about being a writer?
Focus. My imagination runs overtime; I literally have a new idea for a book or movie every week. So I have to discipline myself not to get distracted by new concepts while I’m still working on a project.

Do you think that mainstream publishers are becoming more open to the idea of publishing fiction that centres on queer characters? It seems that genre fiction has been quite successful in this area (Clive Barker, Nicola Griffith), but traditional queer fiction less so.
I think we’re seeing more acceptance, and consequently more commercial viability, in genre fiction as well as several non-fiction areas – humour (David Sedaris, Ellen), biography/memoir, etc., but, yes, I do think traditional queer fiction lags a bit.

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?
Sometimes I used to write a chapter and think, Damn, that’s boring. And I’d get stuck. Eventually I learned to let it suck and move on. Because if I listen to the little shit-bird in my brain who tells me the chapter is boring, I’ll fixate on that chapter and the book will never get written. But if I let it suck for the moment and continue writing, I’ll polish that chapter many times before the final draft until it no longer sucks. Of course, sucking is not always a bad thing…

Why do you think the detective genre is such a popular one amongst lesbian readers?
Queer folk often have to hide who they really are, at least for a while. They become adept at hidden messages, subtle clues, at reading between the lines. These skills mesh well with mysteries.

Are there any other genres that you would like to write in at some point down the line?
I’ve already written comedy screenplays. I’m working on the pilot for a dramedy TV series. I write poetry. I’d like to try political satire; the current US administration certainly provides bountiful material.

What do you consider to be your best and worst attributes?
As a writer? My best would be my curiosity. My worst is probably laziness. I’d be a lot more productive if I didn’t prioritize like a ten-year-old: recess first, then everything else. But there’s more to life than book sales and recreation is vastly underrated.

A group of people are over at your house for dinner, and between the main course and dessert the acerbic millionaire's widow is found dead in the conservatory. What's the first thing you do?
Serve dessert: giving up Key lime pie won’t bring her back to life. And I do love dessert!

What’s the one thing you always have in your fridge?
A pink bra cup that holds the Arm & Hammer baking soda. It’s a long story.

Tell us something about Morgan Hunt no one knows…
Revealing that in a public forum would be foolhardy, and mamma didn’t raise no fool.

What does it take to be a successful writer?
If by successful you mean commercially published, it takes talent, persistence and luck. If by successful you mean earning enough from writing to buy a mountain chalet or political office, I’ll let you know when I find out.

What has been your experience thus far of the publishing industry?
On the people side, my experience has been positive. I was able to sell my mystery series to a very reputable publisher. I have an editor who not only contributes valuable insight, he’s also consistently patient and responsive. He betrays all the nasty stereotypes I had of New York editors! On the business side of it, the publishing industry is peculiar. It utilizes business methods from the 60’s and 70’s, a handful of people do an enormous amount of work, yet somehow, even though it seems no one reads any more, books sell and publishers stay in business. As Alice said, curiouser and curiouser.

Any sage word of advice to aspiring writers?
Develop an inner circle of friends and fellow writers who will support you and tell you the truth about your writing. Listen to them. Lean on them. Trust them. Because if you’re really good, you’ll need them to remind you of your talent in your darker moments. And if you’re not really good, you’ll need them to tell you that so you can learn bikini waxing or go into hedge funds.

A happy writer is…
one whose alchemy of rhetoric, eroticism, dreams, frustrations, metaphors, melodrama, and pensées, brewed over a hot keyboard, results in a story that sheds light on the human condition. Or at least earns her enough money to buy a Hitachi Magic Wand.