We are Kathy Waller, Laura Oles, Valerie Chandler, Francine Paino, Helen Currie Foster, Dixie Evatt, and N.M. Cedeño. AMW members are dedicated to improving and developing their own writing skills and connecting to the writing community.
M. K. Waller
M. K. (Kathy) is a former teacher, former librarian, former paralegal, and former pianist at various small churches desperate for someone who could find middle C.
She grew up in a small town (population ~ 125 in 1960) on the San Marcos River in Central Texas, where pickups were for hauling hay and kids and horses, guns were for killing the occasional rattlesnake, Miss Pedula the milk cow grazed by the roadside, and a dear old gentleman sold double-dip ice cream cones for a nickel. Old ladies played dominoes on front porches in the afternoons, and old men gossiped on benches outside the post office. There were still horned toads and lightning bugs, mosquitoes were about one-tenth the size they are now, and no one locked their doors. Life there is different today, but if she can’t have the old town back, she’ll rebuilt it in fiction.
Laura spent two decades as a photo industry journalist covering technology and trends before turning to crime fiction. She has been widely published in numerous photography magazines and served as a columnist for several publications.
Laura’s short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including MURDER ON WHEELS, which won the Silver Falchion Award in 2016. Her short story, “Island Time,” is included in Malice Domestic’s MYSTERY MOST GEOGRAPHICAL anthology. Her debut mystery, DAUGHTERS OF BAD MEN, was an Agatha nominee for Best First Novel and a Claymore Award finalist. It was also chosen as a Killer Nashville Readers’ Choice nominee; she is also a Writers’ League of Texas Award Finalist.
Laura lives in the Texas Hill Country with her family. She loves a good read, a good road trip and any excuse to be outside. She also enjoys connecting with other readers, so if there’s a book or author you’re loving right now, please let her know!Visit her at lauraoles.com
V.P. Chandler
V.P. Chandler hails from a long line of Texas law enforcement—sheriffs, a pathologist, a parole officer, and a Criminal Justice professor—immersing her in a world of crime and justice from an early age. Fueled by a love of horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and westerns, it’s no surprise that she crafts stories with genre-blending twists.
Holding a B.A. in Literature from Southwestern University, Chandler has worked as a paralegal, a teacher, and a West Texas rancher. She draws from all these experiences to bring depth and authenticity to her work. She’s received the Silver Falchion award and most recently, a short story was chosen by Otto Penzler and John Grisham to be included in the 2025 edition of The Best Mystery Stories of the Year.
A native New Yorker and a Texas transplant, Ms. Paino loves learning about her new State and enjoys melding the cultures and characteristics of two cities: New York and Austin.
Appropriately, the Live Music Capitol of the World is where she and her husband now live, under the watchful and loving direction of their cat, Miss Millie.
Ms. Paino has had a varied career in the business end of dance. She has worked for several dance notables, including Ali Pourfarrokh, and the late Kaleria Fedicheva. Her passion for ballet, opera, and history fuel much of her writing.
Her first book, a Young Adult, Paranormal murder mystery, TO LIVE AND DIE FOR DANCE, received recognition from Purple Dragonfly and The Hollywood Book Festival, and her children’s book, MAMA’S LITTLE LADY: A SPECIAL PONY, also won an award from the Purple Dragonfly Book Contest.
Her short stories, “An Unwelcome Image,” a psychological thriller was published in Over My Dead Body, an online mystery magazine, and one of her humorous tales, “A Supermarket Nightmare,” was carried in Funny Times Magazine.
In 2018, writing as F. Della Notte, she created the Housekeeper Mystery Series in the tradition of the clergy amateur sleuths, with a 21st-century twist. The housekeeper isn’t a sidekick; she is the sleuthing equal of the priest. The second book in the Housekeeper Mystery Series, CATWALK DEAD, will be released in 2019.
Helen Currie Foster is the author of the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series. She earned a BA from Wellesley College, an MA from the University of Texas, and a JD from the University of Michigan.
Author Helen Currie Foster lives north of Dripping Springs, Texas, supervised by three burros. She’s deeply curious about human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. She’s loved mysteries since age eight. Past jobs: newspaper writer, teacher, lawyer. Favorite landscape: hill country, and a tree-covered hilltop to look from.
A former political writer for the Austin American-Statesman, Dixie later taught writing at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University. While there she published a book, along with colleagues, on the communication practices of small organizations, Thinking Big. Staying Small. When she teamed up with Sue Cleveland to write fiction, they sold a screenplay treatment to a Hollywood producer. Although the movie was never made, they used the seed money to found ThirtyNineStars, their publishing company. They also produced a second screenplay based on the life of a Waco schoolteacher who was imprisoned in World War I because of his German heritage and his work with early radio broadcasting. That screenplay, Wireless, was a finalist for the Chesterfield Writer’s Film Project in 2003.
N. M. Cedeño is a Plan II graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. A native Texan, she lives in Round Rock and writes crime and mystery short stories and novels that vary from traditional to romantic suspense and from historical to science fiction. Her paranormal mystery series Bad Vibes Removal Services currently includes two novels and fifteen short stories. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, After Dinner Conversation, Black Cat Weekly, and Black Cat Mystery Magazine. Her short story entitled “A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy” tied for third place for Best Short Story in the 2013 Analog Readers Poll. Her story “Predators and Prey” is listed among the Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense Stories of 2024 in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025 anthology.
Ms. Cedeño is a member of Sisters in Crime and its Heart of Texas Chapter, where she has served as a chapter vice president and president. She is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For more information, please visit nmcedeno.com.
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