avg_rating: 3.73
name: Dana Cameron
about: [From the author's own website]I was born and raised in New England and I live in Massachusetts now, with my husband and benevolent feline overlords. Mine is a quiet, fairly ordinary life. I love that because it's what saves me from an overdeveloped sense of paranoia and a tendency to expect the worst. Combined with an eye for detail and a quirky take on life, these traits give me a vivid internal life, one that's sometimes a little nerve-wracking, but very useful for writing mystery and suspense.My interest in archaeology stems from childhood, where my interest in books and the opportunities I had to travel made me begin to think about cultural differences. The thing I like best about this work is that it is a real opportunity to try and r [From the author's own website]I was born and raised in New England and I live in Massachusetts now, with my husband and benevolent feline overlords. Mine is a quiet, fairly ordinary life. I love that because it's what saves me from an overdeveloped sense of paranoia and a tendency to expect the worst. Combined with an eye for detail and a quirky take on life, these traits give me a vivid internal life, one that's sometimes a little nerve-wracking, but very useful for writing mystery and suspense.My interest in archaeology stems from childhood, where my interest in books and the opportunities I had to travel made me begin to think about cultural differences. The thing I like best about this work is that it is a real opportunity to try and resurrect individuals from the monolith of history. I've worked on prehistoric and historical sites in the U.S. and in Europe, and like to teach, in the field, in museums, in the classroom, and through writing.In my first book, Site Unseen, my protagonist Emma Fielding discovers that archaeologists are trained to ask the same questions that detectives ask: who, what, where, when, how, and why. When I started on these books, I realized that archaeology is also good training for writing because research, logic, and persistence are so important to both endeavors. Naturally, that training worked with the archaeology mysteries--and it also helped with my first short story, "The Lords of Misrule," a historical mystery which appeared in the anthology, Sugarplums and Scandal. But how has it worked when I've tackled subjects as seemingly diverse as werewolves ("The Night Things Changed" in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe and "Swing Shift" in Crimes By Moonlight) and noir ("Femme Sole," in Boston Noir)? Easy: it's all about getting into someone else's shoes and walking around for a while. Preferably, getting into (fictional) trouble while you do it. Asking "what if?" and thinking about how culture and subcultures--in addition to personality--shape behavior. ...more