Monthly Meeting

An animal lover since she could walk, Marilyn Victor was a volunteer at the Minnesota Zoo for many years and shares her home with a revolving menagerie of homeless pets she fosters for a local animal rescue organization. She loves reading and writing all book genres and besides co-authoring the Snake Jones mystery series, she has a short story in the Once Upon A Crime anthology and is working on a paranormal adventure story.

Michael Allan Mallory

Michael Allan Mallory works with assorted computer technologies for an architectural and engineering firm in Minneapolis. Although he enjoys all manner of fiction, he has a particular love of the classic detective novel. In his spare time, Michael has studied and taught Wing Chun kung fu. An avid animal lover, he has volunteered at the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota, He is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, a national organization which promotes mystery authors of both genders. Michael’s short fiction has appeared in several mystery anthologies and he has had pieces published in Mystery Scene Magazine and Mystery Reader’s Journal.

Marilyn Rausch and Mary Donlon 

Marilyn Rausch and Mary Donlon are both members of The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they met in a fiction writing class. Mary, a CPA in a previous life, resides in the Twin Cities area with her husband and twin daughters. Marilyn is a retired market research consultant and adult basic education teacher. She is mother of two adult children and the grandmother of four.

Michael Stanley (Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip)

Michael Sears (won’t be present for September 4 meeting)

I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in Cape Town and Nairobi, Kenya. In the worst of the apartheid era, my family emigrated to Australia, where I studied mathematics. But Africa drew me back and I accepted a position at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where I specialized in applications of mathematics in a variety of areas including image analysis and ecological modeling. One of the more adventurous projects involved radio-tracking hunting lions through the Botswana night. Another was a system model for the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. I have traveled widely in Southern and Central Africa. Botswana has always been a special favorite with its magnificent conservation areas, dramatic scenery, and varied peoples. A long-held ambition was to capture the flavor of the country as the canvass of a novel.

From 1997 until my retirement at the end of 2007, I managed remote sensing at Anglo American, a major international mining house. Its associate – the diamond giant De Beers – has extensive interests in Botswana through the Debswana joint venture with the government. The mining and exploration threads in the book draw on experiences in this context. I enjoy research, project work, and writing most when I’m working with other people. I’ve worked with researchers in several countries on varied projects, managed teams in the academic and business arenas, and co-authored two novels. All these things can be, and generally are, done by oneself. But it’s a lonely business.

Although I still live in Johannesburg, my mind is often in the African bush, and the rest of me follows as often as possible. Stan and I share a bungalow in a private game reserve close enough for a long weekend. Birds are watched, wine is drunk, and plots develop. My wife, Annette, and step-daughter, Jacky, have provided great encouragement. The family also includes two corgis, who, although intelligent, are not avid readers of crime fiction.

Stanley Trollip

I was born in Johannesburg where I did all my schooling up to and including an undergraduate degree (in Statistics). My undergraduate time was checkered, taking twice as long as usual, mainly due to participation in a variety of sports (cricket, rugby, and field hockey) and involvement in the anti-apartheid movement. In 1970, I went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where I received a PhD in Educational Psychology. For the most part, I was always a professor with an interest in how computers can facilitate teaching and learning. I’ve co-authored three editions of a widely used book, Multimedia for Learning: Methods and Development (Allyn and Bacon). Before retiring in 2003, I was as Director of Learning Strategies at Capella University – which delivers courses entirely through the World Wide Web. When I joined, Capella had about 50 learners. When I left seven years later, it had over 8,000. Today it is about 18,000.

I hold a variety of pilot’s licenses and have a strong interest in aviation safety. I lecture frequently on the topic; have co-authored one book on the subject published by Jeppesen Sandersen (Human Factors for General Aviation). I am still an active small-plane pilot and am currently learning to paraglide. Michael and I have been on a number of flying safaris to Botswana and Zimbabwe. It is always exciting to buzz a dirt airstrip to shoo the elephants off. We have had many adventures on these trips including tracking lions at night, fighting bush fires on the Savuti plains in northern Botswana, being charged by an elephant, and having our plane’s door pop open over the Kalahari, scattering our navigation maps over the desert.. These have been wonderful times which have fed my love both for the bush, as well as for Botswana. In my leisure, I golf, bike, and hike. On dark and stormy nights I play with my collection of stamps from German South West Africa/South West Africa/Namibia.

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TWIN CITIES SISTERS IN CRIME

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