|
Melinda Wells
Pseudonym: Linda Palmer.
I was born in Georgia and grew up wanting to be a writer.
Because my father and I worked together in local little
theater productions, my focus was on becoming a playwright.
Aiming for glory on Broadway, I moved to New York City, but
I couldn't interest anyone in the plays I'd written. After a
couple years of steady rejections, I was mature enough and
had leaned enough to understand why no one wanted my plays:
they weren't very good.
At the time, I was supporting myself as a photographer
specializing in children and their pets. (Photography was an
art I'd taken up at sixteen when I won a camera in an "I AM
AN AMERICAN DAY" speech writing contest).
There was a lot of creative satisfaction for me in capturing
the personality of a child on film, especially when it made
the parents and grandparents so happy. That was a thrill,
and it made me realize that perhaps I wasn't meant to be a
writer of plays.
Through a mutual friend, I met a nice, cute, and very smart
man with a wonderful sense of humor. We fell in love and a
year later we were married. Because he was an agent who
represented television producers and actors, we went out to
dinner most evenings with his clients, but one night early
in our romance, when he had no business obligation, he
suggested that we order something to be delivered. I told
him that I'd rather cook dinner myself; Beef stroganoff. He
liked it so much he raved to his friends and colleagues that
I was a terrific cook. What he didn't know was that beef
stroganoff was the only thing I knew how to make! The next
day, I enrolled in a New York City cooking school.
It's an amazing irony that learning to cook (and enjoying
cooking and creating dishes so much) eventually led me all
the way back to writing. Now I'm writing a series of
"culinary mysteries" that is published by Berkley Prime
Crime. It's a particular joy for me because my favorite form
of entertainment reading is mystery novels.
Books:
 The Proof Is in the Pudding, February 2010
Death Takes the Cake, February 2009
Killer Mousse, February 2008
|
