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Elizabeth Tilley
By John Hernandez
Elizabeth H. Tilley has lived in Oracle for 11 years. She works as a waitress at the Patio Café and at Adventure Rope Gear as project coordinator, bookkeeper, and sales representative. She recently received her Ph.D. in Family Studies from the University of Arizona. Elizabeth is an avid runner including marathons and coaches track at Mt. Vista Junior High. She has three kids with the oldest 18 and out of the home.
As busy as she is, Elizabeth found some time to write a mystery story.
Elizabeth has had academic papers and “psychological stuff” as she calls it published. She likes to write poetry as well as short stories. Her favorite poets are Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson and Charles Bukowski. She likes reading mysteries especially the works of Walter Mosley, James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell.
But she gets her inspiration from what is around her.
“There are lots of things that make me think of a story,” she said. For instance, one of the ideas for Trouble in Hope Junction came to her while driving through Oracle. She saw a yellow rubber glove hanging on a mile marker sign. “Rubber gloves play an important part” in her book, she explained.
Her mystery was written in 2007 and she has just had a Kindle edition published.
“It is good for summer reading, a quick read,” she explained.
Trouble in Hope Junction is written under her maiden name Elizabeth Russell. The story takes place in a mountain town in the Catalina Mountains of Arizona. The Kindle edition is available at Amazon.com.
Amazon’s introduction reads: “Teri Nagel is a young, recently hired detective in the Hope Junction Police Department (HJPD). She has left a better paying, more prestigious job in the big city of Austin, Texas to join the police force in a small mountain town outside of Tucson, Arizona. Teri is determined to start her life over and never expects to work on a murder case again. Shortly after she is hired, a series of murders occurs in this small town. While investigating the murders, she is able to form a friendship with her less than appealing boss. Together, Teri and John are able to solve the crime, but Teri soon realizes that the murderer had an accomplice, and it may be too late to unravel the trouble in Hope Junction.”
The character of Teri Nagel is loosely based on Elizabeth. Elizabeth lived in Austin, Texas. Instead of being a runner, Teri hikes. As for the mountain towns of Oracle and Hope Junction, there may be a similarity although any resemblance to the characters in the book and people of Oracle is purely a coincidence, Elizabeth explained.
Trouble in Hope Junction is the first of what Elizabeth hopes is a series of Teri Nagel stories. It introduces the town and the characters. She has already started writing a sequel.
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