Lori Robbins: Armchair Detective and Serial Late-Bloomer

It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot

I’m delighted to join the accomplished, inspiring, creative group that is the Miss Demeanors! As a dedicated armchair detective and fanatic puzzle-solver, I look forward to blogging about how crime fiction feeds all those appetites for fellow readers and writers.

Central to my identity as a writer is that I’m a serial late-bloomer. This pattern began when I was a teenager and ignored conventional wisdom that insisted dancers had to begin training at a very young age. The result of my impractical effort was a ten-year career onstage with Ballet Hispanico, the St. Louis Ballet, and the Des Moines Ballet. Commercial work for Pavlova perfume and Macy’s paid the bills, along with occasional gigs at the Village Gate as a magician’s assistant. (Think Roseanna Arquettte in Desperately Seeking Susan, though no one was trying to kill me.) Success as a dancer, of course, meant that I didn’t attend college until long after my peers got their degrees and began their grown-up lives. Luckily, the New York City public university system continues to welcome nontraditional students like me.

The habit of late starts didn’t end there. I was the oldest beginning teacher at my first job and didn’t publish my first book until the youngest of my six kids graduated high school. This personal history may explain why I love stories about people who reinvent themselves. There are many examples of writers who find their voice later in life, but my favorite is Frank McCourt, who published Angela’s Ashes at 66, after spending many years as a high school English teacher.

Reinvention is a central theme in my books as well as my life. My On Pointe series is set in a New York City ballet company and features a ballerina on the wrong side of thirty, with two surgically reconstructed knees and an uncertain future. The Master Class mysteries leap across the Hudson River to suburban New Jersey and follow the adventures of an English teacher who also is at a crossroads in her life. The competitive world of professional dance and New Jersey’s public education system might not appear to have much in common, but they’re rich sources of homicidal inspiration.

My fictional characters are passionate about the work they do but rebel against the stereotypes attached to their professions. Instead, they forge identities filled with the possibilities of what might be next.

Me too.

Lori Robbins

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Lori Robbins is the Amazon bestselling author of the On Pointe and Master Class mystery series and a contributor to The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers Cookbook. She won two Silver Falchions, the Indie Award for Best Mystery, and second place in the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mystery and Suspense. Her short stories include “Leading Ladies” which received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. A former dancer, Lori performed with Ballet Hispanico and the St. Louis Ballet, but it was her commercial work, for Pavlova Perfume and Macy’s, that paid the bills. After ten very lean years onstage she became an English teacher and now writes full-time. Lori is a co-president of the New York/ Tristate Sisters in Crime and an active member of MWA.
Her experiences as a dancer, teacher, writer, and mother of six have made her an expert in the homicidal tendencies everyday life inspires.

You can find her at lorirobbins.com

26 comments

  1. From one late bloomer to another, welcome to the fold! And Frank McCourt taught at my high school, though maybe ten years or so before I went there. I didn’t even begin thinking of a writing career until my son was in fourth grade, and then had to start from scratch. I didn’t even know how to properly tag dialogue! Welcome aboard!

    1. Thanks, Emilya! I attended Midwood HS in Brooklyn, as did Woody Allen, although he graduated years before I arrived. Sadly, that name no longer carries the same cachet. At the time, though, we’d all go to his movies and cheer every time he gave a shoutout to Midwood.

  2. I, too, bloomed late. And I often wonder why I’m the oldest person in the room.
    Actually, it doesn’t matter. Just being there and doing what you love, like you, is what counts.

  3. From a fellow late bloomer (first fiction book published on my 57th birthday), I applaud your determination to follow your dreams, no matter what your age. I have always been an admirer of your work and look forward to reading your insights on all things crime fiction.

  4. Lori, I get late bloomers since I didn’t even write my first word of fiction until I was sixty-five and while I worked on that first mystery for thirteen years, I wrote and published my first book , a romance.

    Welcome to Miss Demeanors.

  5. Fellow late bloomer here, after 30 yrs of nursing and finally being able to write full time.i tell myself we bring rich pre-writing experiences to our writing.

    You are such a grand addition to Miss Demeanors—Welcome!

    1. Marni, I agree that we bring a lot of lived experience to our writing. I also think it gives us more perspective on how other people think and feel. For sure, that must have been a huge part of your job as a nurse.
      And thanks for the warm welcome! I’m proud to be a member of the Miss Demeanors!

  6. Thanks so much for your wise words, Lori. Sometimes I find myself wishing I was 20 years younger, but then I think I couldn’t write what I do. Thank heavens for reinvention!

    1. I’m wondering if fiction writers are more open to real-life reinvention. That leap of imagination is kind of what we do! Your characters, Maggie Dove in particular, are so finely drawn. They were worth the wait-

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