Former Thisweek editor makes fiction debut
Betty McMahon
Betty McMahon’s newspaper days provided plenty of fodder for her first foray into fiction.
Her debut novel, “A Rendezvous to Die For,” is a mystery that centers on the gruesome murder of a newspaper reporter.
If there’s a true-to-life feel to the novel, it’s because McMahon covered a good number of crime stories in the early 1980s as a reporter for the Dakota County Tribune, and, starting in 1983, as the first editor of Thisweek Apple Valley newspaper. (Thisweek merged with Sun Newspapers in March of this year to become Sun Thisweek.)
“I never covered a murder in Apple Valley, but I did win first prize for news writing for a story I wrote about a woman who was terrorized all night long by an intruder,” McMahon said. “It was quite terrifying and very graphic.”
McMahon left Thisweek in the mid-1980s to take a job in the corporate world, and eventually started her own business, Z Communications. A longtime Eden Prairie resident, McMahon now lives in New Mexico.
As for the genesis of her novel, “I’d been working as a journalist and corporate writer and wanted to know if I could write fiction,” McMahon said. She took an online fiction-writing course offered by Writer’s Digest, then honed her mystery-writing skills through coursework at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.
“A Rendezvous to Die For” is available through online booksellers Amazon and Lulu.
More about the author is at www.bettymcmahonwriter.com.
