Mystery Author of the Month: Jean Henry Mead

Jean Henry Mead

Jean Henry Mead was born in Hollywood, California, and grew up two blocks from Paramount Studios. She later served as editor-in-chief of her college newspaper and worked as a reporter/photographer and editor for three daily newspaper, two in California as well as the statewide newspaper in Wyoming. She later served as editor of In Wyoming magazine and freelanced for the Denver Post. Her magazine articles have been published domestically as well as abroad, and she has published 21 books, half of them novels.

I've asked Jean to answer three questions. Here they are: 

When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? 

I wrote my first novel at age nine, a chapter a day to entertain classmates, which was fortunately never published. I then wrote for my middle and high school newspapers, deciding that journalism was my forte. I married the same year I graduated from high school and didn’t attend college until I was divorced and the mother of four young daughters. I became editor-in-chief of my college newspaper while working as a “cub” reporter for my local Central California daily. Four years later I remarried and worked for two additional newspapers, including the statewide publication in Casper, Wyoming, where I later served as editor of In Wyoming Magazine while freelancing for the Denver Post and two foreign magazines. But I really wanted to write a novel. I spent ten years researching and writing Escape on the Wind, which was republished twice as Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel, my best selling book to date although I’ve published 21, eight of them mystery novels (The Logan and Cafferty series and Hamilton Kids’ mysteries). Somewhere along the way I decided that writing was what I really wanted to do, despite other better paying jobs I held over the years.

If, for some reason, you couldn’t be a writer, what profession would you choose?

I enjoy interior decorating but I’m also fascinated with ancient civilizations, so I would have liked to have studied anthropology. I also loved teaching in the poetry-in-the-schools program, and am a fair to middling artist and photographer, but I enjoy writing most.

Do you have a bucket list, things you still want to do and/or places you want to visit?  
Not unlike most writers, I’d like to have a breakout novel which would earn enough money to make writing as profitable as it once was.  As for places I’d like to visit, I’ve traveled to or lived in 45 of our 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, but have missed the New England states. I’d also love to visit Italy, the British Isles, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal, to name but a few.
Thank you, Pat, for honoring me as Author of the Month. I’ll be happy to draw the name of one of our visitors to award a copy of my latest novel, Murder at the Mansion. 

The Logan and Cafferty Mystery/Suspense Series features two feisty sixtyish widows, Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty, who take on the role of amateur sleuths in a California  retirement village  where their friends and Sew and So club members are murdered alphabetically. Surviving the serial killer's rampage, they sell their retirement homes and buy a motorhome together. Traveling through Colorado, Dana learns that her sister has died and her husband claims it was suicide. Dana then inherits her mystery writer sister's mansion in Wyoming, where the two women solve murders on Gray Wolf Mountain and at the mansion. They also investigate homicides while traveling in Arizona and an RV resort in Texas. Jean also writes Wyoming historical novels and has included one in her mystery lineup, No Escape, the Sweetwater Tragedy.

Mystery Novels
#1 - A Village Shattered
#2 - Diary of Murder
#3 - Murder on the Interstate
#4 - Gray Wolf Mountain
#5 - Murder in RV Paradise
#6 - Murder at the Mansion
#7 - No Escape, the Sweetwater Tragedy

Hamilton Kids' Mysteries:

1. Mystery of Spider Mountain

2. Ghost of Crimson Dawn

She has also written a number of nonfiction books.

To learn more about Jean and her books, visit  her at:

Her website: http://jeanhenrymead.com/

and the sites where she blogs:

http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/

http://writersofthewest.blogspot.com/

http://theviewfrommymountaintop.blogspot.com/

http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com/

http://makeminemystery.blogspot.com/

Her Amazon page:

http://tinyurl.com/p5jmoyy

Her books are also available at local bookstores.

The winner of a copy of "Murder at the Mansion" is Connie Arnold. Congratulations, Connie!