Sara Williams Novelist: Doe Bay Resort, Orcas Island

Doe Bay Resort, Orcas Island

Laid back, funky and fun: Doe Bay Resort is a much-loved institution on the southeastern shore of Orcas Island, offering cabins, yurts, campsites, and a hostel, allowing guests to get to get as close to nature as they wish. That’s why the Doe Bay hot tubs are a perfect venue to explore the vagaries and embarrassments of a liberated dating scene in "Out on a Limb", one of the tales in my collection, Millie McCall’s Full Moon Poker Night, which explores the nature of the rugged island psyche and the islanders’ love of spirited characters.

The Doe Bay Café offers wonderful food as well. The huevos rancheros is just one of a host of great offerings on the brunch menu, and as it happens I’ll be there Sunday, May 18 from noon to 3 p.m. for a whale of a sale, not only of books, but also art items, clothing and collectibles.

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THE COCONUT WIRELESS

I've adopted the Hawaiian term for local gossip, "The Coconut Wireless," for this blog cocowire.blogspot.com which is where I've put those meanderings down the highways and byways of thought that I used to love doing as a newspaper columnist, before I moved into fiction, that is.

ABOUT SARA WILLIAMS

Sara Williams is the author of three mystery novels, the most recent, One Big Itch set in Hawaii. The second, The Serenoa Scandal takes place in Florida. Her first novel, The Don Juan Con, is a cross-country chase from Florida to Washington State.

Ms. Williams was born in Deer Park, Washington just north of Spokane and considers schooling on both eastern and western campuses an important part of her education. She attended The George Washington University in Washington D.C. and earned her B.A. degree in English literature at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Sara was inspired to write when working as a legislative intern under the direction of a U.S. Senator in D.C. and attending classes at George Washington. While doing a paper for an American Studies class, Sara located a Walt Whitman document in the Library of Congress that many scholars had thought to be lost. This experience taught her a valuable lesson: Since a writer’s works are shelved in the world’s most formidable library, the work should be worthy of the shelf space.

Williams met and married a N.Y. magazine editor and they settled in Brooklyn Heights to write novels. Due to her husband’s untimely death, Williams bounced back to Seattle and took a job as P.R. Director of the Washington Dairy Commission. Shortly afterwards she met her current husband Bill at a regional advertising convention at Rosario Resort on Orcas Island in the American San Juans. They have been married some thirty years. They have two sons born on Maui, whose lives were much enriched by close relations with Bill’s older children, a daughter and two sons

The Williams’ now divide their time between a winter home in Fort Myers, where Sara had been a newspaper columnist and staff writer for many years. They have a summer residence on Orcas Island, while making frequent visits to Hawaii. They also spend considerable time at LTU Villas a resort in Negril, Jamaica owned by Bill Jr. “Jamaica Bill,” whose Cuban heritage inspired Sara’s Maya Menecal character in One Big Itch.

Bill and Sara were blue water sailors whose Pacific crossings include the San Juan Islands to Southern California and Hawaii. Sailing trips from the Florida Gulf include the Gulf of Mexico and Isla Mujeres; Honduras, Belize, and the Rio Dulce river in Guatemala.

ONE BIG ITCH

SARA WILLIAMS, ONE BIG ITCH: A JOHN SPYERS MYSTERY

Soft-boiled sleuth John 'Oluhana Maalaea Spyer is a conflicted "hapa haole" (half white) who is a polynesian at the core, too nice to be in the detective business, but too much of a haole to pay attention when the mercurial fire goddess Madam Pele herself warns him off the Haverhill case. "Something new under the tropical sun, a Hawaiian regional mystery of the Tony Hillerman type, which serves to explore the unique Hawaiian culture." MysteryNet.com

Sara Williams and her husband Bill landed on the Island of Maui in their own sailboat some thirty years ago, intent on visiting an old friend. They loved Hawaii so much that they opened a business in Lahaina and stayed for a decade. Sara, a magazine writer and newspaper reporter, became engrossed in the fascinating art, history and culture of Hawaii. One Big Itch, set in Honolulu during the Aloha Week Festival, is Sara's excuse to talk story about Hawaii through the voice of John Spyer, a soft-hearted sleuth who has been rattling around in her subconscious for decades.

When not sojourning in the Hawaiian Islands, the Williamses are usually to be found in their other favorite haunts, the San Juan Islands of Washington State, or in the Florida Gulf Coast city of Fort Myers, the DeLeon of Sara's first novel, The Don Juan Con, which was optioned in Hollywood by producer Robert Evans for Paramount Studios.

The Serenoa Scandal

The Serenoa Scandal by Sara Williams

The Serenoa Scandal is a fascinating blend of murder and mayhem, of love and loss, and human drama played out against a backdrop that ranges from Florida's cattle ranches to the New York Commodities Exchange. Sara Williams is a gifted writer who writes smoothly, silkily against either background. This is a book you don't want to put down and when you've finished the last page, you want more.

A prominent South Florida rancher is murdered in cold blood in his wife’s arms. The DEA raids her beloved Serenoa Ranch and seizes her property. The harassing phone calls start—again. For Maya Menecal, her idyllic life is thrust into a horrifying nightmare.

Puttnam Jorgenson, the editor of the local newspaper in the small town of Sabal Springs, Florida comes to the rescue, inviting his close friend and former DEA agent, John Spyers, from Maui, Hawaii to join him on a twisting and turning investigation into conspiracy, political corruption, and murder—all designed to conceal a deadly secret that could tear a community and an entire state apart.

This strongly character-driven page-turner is sure to delight all true Mystery-Suspense aficionados. Sara Williams’ characters leap off the page and into your hearts. Her intricate story is woven from the threads of the true-crimes and scandals she investigated and reported as a journalist

The Don Juan Con

The Don Juan Con by Sara Williams

This complex and ever-twisting thriller is torn from the headlines of actual events, an all-too-common crime that often goes unreported and unpunished. In The Don Juan Con a flamboyant swindler calling himself Anthony Abruzzi wines and dines unsuspecting women from one end of the country to the other, seducing them into marrying him within days of meeting him. Yet just before the lavish whirlwind weddings are to take place, he disappears, absconding with whatever assets, meager or mighty, his victims possessed.

Yet when he makes the mistake of jilting and bankrupting Angie Reynolds, a designer living in DeLeon, FL, his fortunes are about to be reversed. With the help of police detective Joe Vensure, Angie meticulously hunts Anthony down, following his trail of broken-hearted and devastated victims. She is further shocked to discover that not all of his marks were merely jilted -- some are dead. It becomes a race against time itself when she discovers that her own mother may be his next victim. And nothing can prepare her for learning the mysterious secret of her own past that started it all. The Don Juan Con

Millie McCall's Full Moon Poker Night

Millie McCall's Full Moon Poker Night: Tales from the San Juan Islands and the Pacific Northwest

Millie McCall is an exuberant, Harley-riding character who hosts scandalous poker parties for the local fellows wearing her red negligee. Young Jim Halprin is a stand-in at the party, forewarned to flee the moment the last card slaps the table. A swaggering Harley rider himself, Jim bonds with Mrs. McCall instead, as she absorbs lunar energy, shedding her disheveled appearance, becoming a tantalizing beauty. Jim rescues Millie’s flashy Harley from destruction by juvenile predators but Millie laughs off the pranksters and leads Jim off on a wild chase in the wrong direction over the twisting roads of Orcas, the most rugged and dangerous of the San Juan Islands. Millie is evading her keepers and tormenting her husband, or so Jim soon learns. He finds himself on a mad ride on the night of the full moon, terrified to learn that Mrs. McCall’s freedom ride is meant to last forever. Millie McCall's Full Moon Poker Night