Murder mystery is Wick-born author’s 15th book
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A Wick-born author is celebrating her 75th birthday with the publication of her 15th book.
Loose Ends, by Dorothy Stewart (née Miller), is a murder mystery set in Somerset and is the first in a new series.
Dorothy began her professional writing career in the 1960s as a trainee reporter on the John O’Groat Journal – which she says came in handy as background to Ring of Truth, the third novel in her Mizpah Ring trilogy.
After university at Aberdeen, she went on to have a career in book publishing, first in Northern Nigeria then latterly in the UK, where she was publishing director for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales’s publishing arm, Chartac Books.
Dorothy began writing her own books in the late 1980s, at first non-fiction and a children’s book, It’s Hard to Hurry when You’re a Snail. But she always wanted to write novels and her breakthrough came with a story about the Wick fisher girls who went to the autumn fishing at Great Yarmouth in 1921 – the year of the Fishermen’s Revival.
When the Boats Come Home was well received and she was encouraged to continue. The result was the Mizpah Ring trilogy, again based in Wick and on family stories.
Loose Ends, the new book, is “a major departure”, according to Dorothy, using her experience of a period living in Somerset. A second book in the series is in progress and will be out before the end of the year.
Dorothy now lives in Suffolk.
Her books are available locally at The Gift House in Dempster Street, Wick, and at the tourist information office and other shops in John O’Groats. E-books are available for Kindle on Amazon.
