Biography
As a child, Mary Ann Mitchell wrote short stories, essays, and poetry. When she was twelve she sent her short stories to the night editor of The Journal American, who encouraged her to send more. Her mother intercepted the letters and forbade her from writing. Seems some of the family’s dark secrets were oozing onto Mary Ann’s written pages. Her writing became secret and sporadic. Once she completed graduate school, she became a civil servant. Years later her husband asked her what her dream career would be. She quickly answered that she always wanted to be a novelist.
She began her writing career by taking writing classes at The University of California, Los Angeles and writing several short stories, which her husband encouraged her to submit for publication. Mary Ann Mitchell’s short stories have been published in a number of magazines. The short story The Hyacinth Girl appeared in the anthology The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XXI, edited by Karl Edward Wagner. A modified version became the first chapter of Drawn To The Grave, which won The International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. She has published five books in her Marquis de Sade vampire series and has a stand-alone book titled Ambrosial Flesh.
Before writing the Marquis de Sade series Mary Ann read many of Sade’s works and a number of Sade biographies. She also read Marquis de Sade, Letters from Prison translated by Richard Seaver. This helped to form in her mind an image of the real Sade.
She has always enjoyed crime novels and thrillers, especially the noir writers such as Jim Thompson and the brutal street novels of David Goines. Now Mary Ann has written a crime fiction novel of female vengeance titled Siren’s Call, and is hard at work writing her next crime novel.
Mary Ann Mitchell has served as Secretary, Vice-President, and President of the Northern California Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Secretary of the Horror Writers of America. She is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Inc., Science Fiction Fantasy Writers of America, and Romance Writers of America.