The Writing Loft has encountered writers from all walks of life, including a retired teacher who travels the country in an RV to a member of the Alaska legislature. Recently, Judy Campbell, an author in the stable of writers from Mainly Murder Press popped up. Judy is a member of the clergy . . . and she kills people, with kindness and on paper!
I thought it was unusual to be both a murder mystery writer and an ordained minister. It’s a combo that opens up a world a sacrilegious jokes I won’t engage in here. Immediately, I offered her an opportunity to be a guest blogger here to explain how her two work lives – on and off the pages of her novels and in the pulpit – blend together.
Take it away, Judy!
Ministry and murder—most unlikely bedfellows
Good Day, John. And murky blessings to all.
Ministry and murder are most unlikely bedfellows, but put them together and they make for a good story and a good teaching tool.
I am a Unitarian Universalist minister. For years I served a church on Martha’s Vineyard before returning to community ministry. Now I travel across the country and to England leading religious and spiritual retreats, writing workshops and in my spare time writing (unholy) mysteries. My books are about people who do bad things in the name of, or in the guise of religion. If you pick up any newspaper or watch the news on TV, you know there is plenty of grist for my literary mill.
My protagonist, Olympia Brown, is a lady minister. Her partner in sleuthing is a gay Roman Catholic priest. Why that combination? Because it raises eyebrows; it gets your attention. We write what we know. I’m a minister. I know how ministers think and act and the problems they confront. Why a gay priest? My sub-agenda in writing these stories is challenging cultural stereotypes.
Fr. Jim Sawicki is one of the finest most dedicated human beings you’ll ever meet—even if he is fictional. He’s also not a pedophile. He and Olympia are an owl and pussy cat combination, best friends forever, each with a secret tragedy which shapes them as characters and helps to drive the action of the plot.
The first in the series, A Deadly Mission, is about a college student who becomes entangled in a nasty and manipulative religious cult. Olympia and Father Jim risk their lives and challenge the academic and religious establishment to save her life. It’s fast moving and my readers tell me they can’t put it down.
The second, due out in June 2011, An Unspeakable Mission, is about date rape, incest, and domestic violence. Olympia Brown and Fr. Jim Sawicki must prove a suspicious death is accidental and not murder. But evidence to the contrary is mounting and the off-beat clerical twosome have little time to learn the truth and prevent the daughter that the dead man abused for years, from ending her own life.
And woven into this are several continuing sub-plots. Olympia is restoring an antique home in Southeastern Massachusetts. In that house there is a nosy and outspoken house-ghost who has a story of her own. Olympia is trying to locate a daughter she gave up for adoption over 30 years ago. And Olympia’s gentleman friend from England wants to ask her an important question, but she’s not listening.
If you think about it, all of life is a mystery and I am not the first person to have that idea. What I can do is take chapters of those human dramas I have witnessed over the years, fictionalize them, and weave them into stories that entertain as well as inform. That’s what I want when I read a book, and that’s what I give to my readers.
Welcome to my world.
Rev. Judith Campbell, a.k.a. The Sinister Minister!
http://www.judithcampbell-holymysteries.com
-30-
I’ve just begun to read “Deadly Mission” and your readers are absolutely “spot on” … it’s hard to put down. If I didn’t have to work or sleep, I’d have finished it by now. 🙂
Nice job, Judith!! It’s a great read.
This really sounds interesting…and I love the name Sinister Minister. I’ve shared the title with a few of my friends who I know will want to read this book.
Ministry and murder are not necessarily such unusual companions. One of the earliest series detectives after Sherlock Holmes was G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown. He claimed to understand crime better than most people because of all the things he had heard in the confessional.