An Affinity for Writing

By Anne White, M.L.S.’66

hen the rapidly growing Queensbury School District in upstate New York hired me in 1959 as the 7th-12th grade librarian, I knew I’d found the perfect job. I’d graduated from The College of Saint Rose with an English major ten years before, married and had six children. My life was busy, but books and reading had always played an important part.

I enrolled in the M.L.S. program at SUNY Albany, as it was called at the time, commuted to the downtown campus for six summers and received my master’s in 1966. I felt a sense of history each time I rushed past the statue of Minerva. My mother, Helene Shinners, was a 1917 Albany graduate. My father, Bernard Murphy, had taken courses toward his master’s there around 1940.

At Queensbury, I loved everything connected with library work – poring over book reviews; choosing, ordering and cataloging books; promoting them to students and teachers; even tackling the biggest challenge: trying to make the Dewey Decimal System exciting to high school students. When the district considered introducing a career education program in 1980, I saw its importance to youngsters making college and career choices and asked to be on the committee. I worked full time as project coordinator for two years and part time for another eight in conjunction with my library job. During that time, I wrote more than 100 articles on career topics for three student publications.

After I retired, I turned to mystery writing, aided and abetted – as mystery writers like to say – by the Lake George Arts Project’s excellent workshops. Encouraged by Saratoga Springs author Matt Witten, I finished my first Lake George Mystery, An Affinity For Murder (Oak Tree Publishing), which dealt with paintings apparently left behind by longtime summer resident Georgia O’Keeffe. Affinity won several awards, including a nomination by the Malice Domestic organization as a Best First Mystery in 2002.

I continued the series with four titles published by Hilliard and Harris: Beneath The Surface (2005; French and Indian War artifacts); Best Laid Plans (2006; tourism); Secrets Dark And Deep (2007; hibernating bats in an abandoned Adirondack mine); and this year’s Cold Winter Nights (the New Year’s Polar Plunge and a winter carnival complete with a masked murderer). All these subjects have mixed well with mystery, and I’m confident Lake George will offer many more.

All of Anne White’s books are available from bookstores and from amazon.com.