Patricia Sprinkle

My folks are North Carolinians but lived in West Virginia just long enough to have me and my younger sister while my preacher dad served coal field churches. When I was two we moved to Loray, North Carolina, just outside of Statesville. My little sister and I did a lot of things the children do in my novels The Remember Box and  Carley's Song. Five years later we moved to Wilmington, where we played in the Atlantic and promised we’d swim to France--tomorrow. When I was twelve, Dad took a position down the coast to Jacksonville, Florida. I decided in ninth grade to become a writer, so after Robert E. Lee High, I headed to Vassar College, which had a great creative writing program.

After college I returned to my folks, by then serving a church in Miami, to work long enough to earn money for a serious test of my writing commitment. With $750, one suitcase, two coats and a portable typewriter, I headed to a Scottish Highland village where, at that time, room and board cost $14 a week. They called me "the daft American" because I had come from Miami to spend the winter in the Highlands.

Before the money ran out, I had sold one poem, one article, one short story, and a one-act play. Fortified by that major impact on British literature, I moved to Atlanta and started a series of writing-related jobs. In the next few years I wrote for religious magazines like Guideposts and also wrote a good bit of educational materials on the subject of hunger. But no matter what I was writing, what I was reading was mostly mysteries.  

One day my husband, Bob, looked over our budget and demanded, "Why don’t you write a mystery to pay for all the ones you buy?" I immediately knew what I wanted to write: the basement of a building where I’d once worked was a perfect site to stash a body. However, being over-endowed with the Protestant ethic, I wrote "important" things first and only wrote the mystery in my spare time. My first mystery, MURDER AT MARKHAM (reissued by Silver Dagger in 2001), took thirteen years to complete. It took even longer for me to learn that any writing which gives me pleasure is important, whether fiction or non-fiction.

Since 1988 I have written twenty mysteries, four novels, and five non-fiction books. I am grateful to readers and editors for letting me do what I enjoy most in the world. Bob contends that writing is not a profession, it's an obsession--my favorite vacation is to go to a place where somebody else fixes my meals and where I can write more than I do at home, without interruptions. Thanks, if you are one of the readers who keeps my fingers on the keys. I enjoy spending time with you at conferences, book clubs, and other events.

In 1998, when our older son entered graduate school, I decided to return to school myself. After all, did I want a son more educated than his mother? In 2001 I received a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from Florida International University, with a focus on religion and literature. Since FIU is truly an international university, I studied religion among people who could speak out in class from a number of religious traditions. My particular interest was to learn how novelists from varied faiths portray faith in fiction, so I studied novels from India, Japan, various African nations, the Caribbean, Latin America, and a number of other countries. I believe those years have enriched my own writing.

Bob is still my encourager and faithful patron of the arts. During our forty-one years together we have lived in Atlanta four times, Chicago twice, St. Petersburg twice, Mobile, and Miami. We have two sons who have grown into enjoyable young men. Barnabas is a pastor and an increasingly skilled woodworker (hint, hint, son—I still need a paper towel holder). He is married to Emi and they are raising two terrific little boys. If you ask, I'll be glad to tell you about my grandsons. David, lives in Brooklyn, where he is engaged to Jackie,  optimizes web sites in New York City, plays drums and a mean electric piano, and composes beautiful music.
 
Currently we live in Smyrna, GA, outside Atlanta, and have been here nine years, longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere. When I’m not writing, I enjoy working with plants and trying to better the lives of children.

The rest of what you want to know, you’ll find in my books. The people are different, but the basic stories are true. I always figure why make up anything I can remember instead?