Tomorrow's Guest: Margaret Coel!

Tomorrow fellow Colorado mystery author Margaret Coel will be a guest on my blog. Margaret Coel is the author of fifteen mystery novels set among the Arapahos on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation. The novels feature two sleuths: Jesuit priest Father John O’Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden. The most recent novel is The Spider's Web, to be released on September 7th. She is also the author of a suspense novel set in Denver, Blood Memory.

Margaret's novels have been on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. She is a five-time winner of the Colorado Book Award and is also winner of the Willa (Cather) Award for Best Novel of the West. In April, I was pleased to be in the audience when Margaret was presented with the Frank Waters Award for “exemplary literary achievement, as well as a canon of writing that communicates a deep understanding, celebration, and love of our human nature and peoples of all races.”

Margaret is the author of numerous short stories and many articles for such publications as American Heritage and The New York Times. She has written four non-fiction books, including Chief Left Hand, a history of the Arapahos, which won the Best Non-Fiction Book Award from the National Association of Press Women. The Colorado Historical Society lists the book among the best 100 books on Colorado history.

Margaret is a fourth-generation Coloradan who grew up in Denver. She currently resides in Boulder where she writers from a study that looks out over the Rocky Mountains. A herd of deer graze on the hill outside her window and from time to time, a mountain lion will wander past. “Everyday,” she says, “I drink in the West.”

Margaret has been such a help to me in my writing career. She blurbed my first novel, A Real Basket Case, and recently gave me a wonderful blurb for Deadly Currents, to be released in March, 2010. And her website is the one I suggested my husband use, as the best example of an author website I could find, in designing mine. I am so pleased to be able to host her visit tomorrow and help promote her latest release, The Spider's Web. Margaret answered my interview questions, and I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. Then, feel free to ask her some questions of your own. This is one guest post you won't want to miss!