Mystery author Mignon Ballard celebrates the release of her 20th novel, “Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble,” at her home in Calhoun, Ga.
A collection of novels by mystery author Mignon Ballard is seen on a shelf in her home in Calhoun, Ga.BIBLIOGRAPHY1978: “Aunt Matilda’s Ghost”1986: “Raven Rock”1987: “Cry at Dusk”1989: “Deadly Promise”1991: “The Widow’s Woods”1992: “Final Curtain”1993: “Minerva Cries Murder”1999: “Angel at Troublesome Creek”2000: “An Angel to Die For”2001: “The War in Sallie’s Station”2002: “Shadow of an Angel”2003: “The Angel Whispered Danger”2005: “Too Late for Angels”2006: “The Angel and The Jabberwocky Murders”2007: “The Christmas Cottage”2008: “Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed”2010: “Miss Dimple Disappears”2011: “Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause”2013: “Miss Dimple Suspects”2014: “Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble”
CALHOUN, GA. – To Mignon Ballard, a conversation without a story or two must seem as bland as a piece of boiled chicken.
A career author of mystery novels steeped in Southern swelter, Ballard has a tendency to veer off onto narrative tangents, delivered in a cheerful drawl, as if her blood is thick with the yarns she’s compelled to spin.
Ask about the Baptist church across the street from her brick bungalow and she’ll slip in an account of narrowly escaping a childhood brush with death while riding an out-of-control bicycle down a nearby hill. Bring up her origins as a writer and she’ll reminisce about a letter she sent to Adolf Hitler in second grade, expressing her hatred for the dictator and her firm belief in his inevitable defeat. Der Führer, she confides, declined to reply, but her older sister burst into tears at the thought that he would respond with munitions instead of words.
Ballard is fully conscious of her tendency to tell tales. Writing and storytelling, she says, aren’t just her job; they define her.