Growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mary Louisa Locke had two goals: to teach history and to write novels that would bring others the joy that Georgette Heyer’s historical romances and Mary Stewart’s suspense novels brought her. Degrees in history from Oberlin College and Kent State University got her started on the first goal, preparing her to teach high school history; but the arrival of the women’s movement taught her to dream higher, and Locke headed west with her husband to obtain a doctorate in history from U.C. San Diego. Throughout those years she continued to read both historical fiction and the growing work of women writing mysteries, and daydreamed about writing someday.

In 1979, while working on her doctoral dissertation on late nineteenth century western working women, she was inspired by a passage in a diary by a domestic servant that suggested a perfect setting for a cozy “locked room” mystery, and the germ of the plot of her first historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, was born. (You will have to read the book to find out what role that servant and that locked door ended up playing!)

Locke spent the next ten years finishing her doctorate, producing a daughter, and teaching at a series of colleges in the southwest, and, when she had time, working on the first draft of Maids of Misfortune. In 1989, just as she completed the first draft, she got a full-time job teaching at San Diego Mesa Community College, where she taught U.S. and women’s history for over twenty years. Her first goal to teach history had been satisfactorily achieved, but the fiction writing had been put on hold.

Four years ago, semi-retired from teaching, Locke finally returned to her second childhood goal, to write light, romantic, suspenseful fiction. She rewrote, Maids of Misfortune, which is the first in a planned series of mysteries set in late 19th century San Francisco, featuring Annie Fuller, a widowed boardinghouse keeper who works as a clairvoyant, and Nate Dawson, a local lawyer. After researching the new opportunities in independent publishing and ebook publishing, Locke published Maids of Misfortune in December 2009 as both an ebook and print book.

Maids of Misfortune was a finalist in the historical fiction category of the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and in July 2010 rose to the top of the historical mystery best seller list on Kindle, where the book has remained ever since.

M. Louisa Locke (her pen name) is still living in San Diego, with her husband and assorted animals, and Maids of Misfortune has been successful enough so that she was able to retire completely from teaching in January 2011, completing the sequel, Uneasy Spirits, which came out in the fall of 2011. She is currently working on the third book in the series, which will feature the teaching profession, entitled Bloody Lessons.

M. Louisa Locke is a founding member of AIA (Association of Independent Authors) and in March 2010 she won Publetariat’s First Anniversary Contest for most read blog post and she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Historical Fiction Authors Coop.