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📚🔎 Words To Live By Speaker Series: Have Passport, Will Murder! From Travel Writer to Mystery Novelist — An Evening with Ann Shepphird

Friday, February 19, 2027
5:30 PM 7:00 PM

Clemetine Carter Wines 388 Bell Street Los Alamos, California, 93440 United States (map)

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✈️🔍 Beautiful destinations. Interesting characters. And a little murder.

What do a travel magazine editor, a private investigator, and a murder mystery novelist have in common?

Ann Shepphird has been all three!

Well, technically, she worked for a private investigator—but that experience, combined with more than two decades of writing and editing, helped inspire a deliciously entertaining new chapter in her career.

Join us for an evening with Ann Shepphird, author of the Destination Murder Mystery series, as she shares how her adventures in journalism, travel, and the world of private investigation became the ingredients for a series of mysteries set in some of America's most appealing destinations.

From the beaches of Maui to the shores of Lake Tahoe, the streets of New York City, and even our own Santa Barbara, Ann has discovered that sometimes the perfect setting for a getaway is also the perfect setting for a murder mystery.

Pack your curiosity. Leave the detective work to Ann. 🍷🕵️‍♀️

✍️ Meet Ann Shepphird

For more than 20 years, Ann has written and edited stories on just about everything: travel, sports, gardening, food, design, and transportation.

But two particularly interesting experiences helped shape her fiction: editing a travel-industry magazine and working for a private investigator.

Those worlds eventually came together in her Destination Murder Mystery novels, published by 4 Horsemen Publications.

Her series takes readers to:

🌺 Destination Maui
🌊 Destination Monterey
🏔️ Destination Lake Tahoe
🗽 Destination New York City
🌴 Destination Santa Barbara — published December 9, 2026

Ann also writes romantic comedies, bringing her storytelling talents to more than one genre.

📚🍷 What will we explore with Ann?

✈️ From Travel Writing to Crime Fiction — How years of exploring destinations and telling real-world stories inspired Ann's mystery novels.
🕵️‍♀️ A Peek Inside Private Investigation — What she learned while working for a private investigator and how that experience influenced her writing.
✍️ Where Do Mystery Ideas Come From? — How an author transforms observations, experiences, and imagination into a fictional crime.
🌎 Why Setting Matters — How places like Maui, Monterey, Lake Tahoe, and New York City become more than backdrops for a story.
🌴 Destination Santa Barbara — Bringing her mystery series to a place we know and love.
🧩 Building a Good Mystery — Characters, clues, suspense, red herrings, and the challenge of keeping readers guessing.
📖 The Life of a Published Author — The journey from an idea to a manuscript, working with a publisher, and developing a book series.
💡 Reinventing Yourself Creatively — Why a lifetime of seemingly unrelated professional experiences can become the foundation for something entirely new.
❓ Ask the Author! — Bring your questions about writing, publishing, travel, mysteries, and the stories behind the stories.

🍷 A good mystery pairs beautifully with a glass of wine.

You don't need to be an aspiring novelist to enjoy this evening.

Maybe you're a devoted mystery reader. Maybe you love to travel. Maybe you've always wondered how authors invent the people, places, and plots that keep us turning pages long past bedtime.

Or maybe you're simply curious about how someone goes from editing travel stories to writing about fictional murders in beautiful vacation destinations.

Whatever brings you in, we promise a fascinating conversation—with absolutely no actual crime required. 😂

Come enjoy a glass of Clementine Carter wine, meet a local-area author, and discover how a life full of experiences can become a whole new world of stories.