How Howie (90) Changed My Life (At 81)

I was born on Martha’s Vineyard, and I come from a long line of Vineyarders.

I spent many years off-island, working as a boat captain, and then I returned to the Vineyard and came to live in West Tisbury with my mother, Dionis Coffin Riggs, a poet. She and I opened a bed and breakfast catering to poets and writers.

After her death when she was almost 99, I was kind of at loose ends, and a bed and breakfast guest suggested that I go back to school and get a degree in creative writing. So I filled out an application form, and they accepted me.

Somebody told me I ought to write murder mysteries. Two years later, when I was 70, my first murder mystery was published by St Martin’s Press. I’ve now had 10 published, and the eleventh is on Kindle, and I’m working on the twelfth right now.

Well, about six months ago, a mystery came into my life that was totally unexpected. I had thought about a guy that I’d met many years before. His name just sorta popped into my mind, and so I looked him up on Google, and I couldn’t find him, so I sorta forgot about it. Well, two weeks later, I got a package from him.

Read more at The Guardian.