Fort Wayne residents might be intrigued to know that their mostly law-abiding town boasts two, um, somewhat unsavory sisters who, although pious (they live in the City of Churches, after all), also enjoy plotting gruesome murders and vicariously commingling with torturers who harbor kinky underwear fetishes. They sweetly concoct various poisons, arrange spectacular car explosions and shatter hapless victims with .38 Special hollow-point bullets — and yet never serve a day in prison for the collateral damage resulting from their fertile imaginations.
Meet Johnine Brown and Margaret Yoder, two talented murder mystery authors, who together total one: Margarite St. John. The nom de plume is a composite of their names, which, according to Brown, “sounds more sophisticated than our real names.”
The Iowa-born siblings, who received straight As in English, have been collaborating on their evil plots for three years and currently have published five murder mysteries digitally and in paper form, either of which can be purchased through Amazon. They are nearly finished with the sixth mystery — a Christmas novella — and have also printed a non-fiction work. Their books feature not only various Fort Wayne landmarks throughout but also those from their travels, particularly in the deep south.
Brown, who is 16 years older than Yoder, is a retired lawyer and former assistant professor of Chicago State University’s English Department; she possesses several degrees including a bachelor of arts in psychology, master of science in English lit, Ph.D. in English language and lit, and Juris Doctor in Law. She has two children and five grandchildren and enjoys jewelry-making and reading. Yoder, with a bachelor of arts in education degree from Indiana University at Fort Wayne, taught school and worked in the pulmonary department at the Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis. She and her surgeon husband have three children, and in her spare time she leads a Bible study group, does crossword puzzles and reads.
“When our first mystery novel was published on Kindle, we were, respectively, 55 and 71 years old,” said Yoder. “We’re not getting any younger, but we’re still partnering, and it takes us about four months of writing plus one or two of writing text copy, designing the cover, editing the text, and proofreading the final manuscript, plus overseeing the transfer to other software platforms for publication.”
Christening themselves The Scribe (Brown) and The Storyteller (Yoder), the duo regularly meets for coffee to strategize new, darkly witty plots and to create more novels for their hungry fan base.
Asked if they were aficionados of the CSI crime television series, Brown said no; their preferences lean toward true crime shows dealing with forensics, police procedure, investigative techniques, FBI, profiling and trial work as well as fascination with history and military channels. Their interest is focused on domestic crimes and “some kinds of serial murderers” rather than on drug, gang, random or organized crime, according to Brown.
Last month (September), the duo proudly received the American Author Award from ReviveWorldMedia. For more information on, or to purchase their books, visit their website at www.margaritestjohn.com/.
“Our most thrilling publishing moment was seeing our first book, ‘Face Off,’ in print. We are grateful that God gave each of us half a gift — storytelling for Margaret and writing the story into a novel for me,” said Brown. “Each of us being blessed with half a gift prevents our taking excessive pride in our work.”
