H. Mel Malton
was born in England and emigrated with her family to Canada in the 1960s.
She grew up in Bracebridge, Ontario and has resettled in the same area.
After studying at the Ontario College of Art, she moved on to theatre studies
at Ryerson Polytechnic University, followed by a year or two of English
at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. She remains diploma-free to this day.
Mel spent the next ten years touring North America in the professional theatre business as both actor and stage manager, but eventually gave up "the security of working for underfunded arts organizations" for the comfortable safety-net offered by a writing career.
Mel has worked as a government forms designer, a newspaper reporter, a waitress, a receptionist, a clerk in a candy store, a singing teacher and a church secretary. None of these jobs has harmed her. She currently lives in a log cabin in Huntsville, Ontario, on ten acres of swampland with her two dogs, Karma and Ego.
She has published short stories, poems and articles in numerous periodicals and literary journals, including the Toronto Star, Chatelaine, The Malahat Review and Grain. Her crime stories have appeared in the anthologies Menopause is Murder and Fit to Die For.
She is a member of Crime Writers of Canada and her first mystery novel, Down in the Dumps (Rendezvous Press, 1998) was short-listed for an Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel. Her second Polly Deacon novel, Cue the Dead Guy, was released in 1999 and the third, Dead Cow in Aisle Three, was published in the fall of 2001.
Contact Mel at: hmel@vianet.on.ca