MISSISSIPPI WRITERS: Carolyn Haines

Carolyn Haines

Major Works

as Caroline Burnes

A Deadly Breed - 1988
Measure Of Deceit-1989
Phantom Filly- 1989
The Jaguar's Eye- 1991
Deadly Currents- 1992
Fatal Ingredients- 1992
Hoodwinked- 1993
Flesh and Blood- 1994
Cutting Edge- 1995
A Christmas Kiss- 1996
Midnight Prey- 1997
Fear Familiar- 1990
Too Familiar- 1993
Thrice Familiar- 1994
Shades of Familiar- 1994
Familiar Remedy- 1994
Familiar Tale- 1995
Bewitching Familiar- 1995
Familiar Heart- 1997
The Deadly Breed- 1994 HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

Carolyn Haines holds her book Buried Bones at Starkville Reads' fall 2007 Mystery in Mississippi. Photo by Nancy Jacobs.

as Lizzie Hart

Shop Talk

as Carolyn Haines Touche by Carolyn Haines

Summer Of Fear- 1993
Summer Of the Redeemers- 1994
Touched- 1996
Judas Burning 2005 (published as third in series taking place in mythical Jexville, MS)
Season of Innocents -1994
Them Bones (1999)
Buried Bones (2000)
Splintered Bones (2003)
Crossed Bones (2004)
Hallowed Bones 2005
Ham Bones 2007
Bones To Pick 2007
Wishbones 2008
My Mother's Witness: The Peggy Morgan Story (2003)
Fever Moon 2007
Revenant 2007
Note: Carolyn Haines has written more than 54 books under her own name and several different pseudonyms. See LibraryThing.com for a list of all of her books.

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Carolyn Haines : A Biography
By Monica Conger (SHS)

Carolina Haines was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on May 12, 1953, to Roy and Hilda Haines. She went to high school in George County and graduated in 1971. She got her B.S. (Bachelor's Degree) in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1974; and in 1985, she got her Master's Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Alabama.

Hilda Haines, Carolyn's mother, was born in 1926 and at the age of nine, diagnosed with polio. She was sent to Warm Springs (founded by Franklin Roosevelt) and stayed there for treatment on and off for nine years. Hilda Haines, a native of Lucedale, Mississippi, met Roy Haines, a native of Kingston, Mississippi, at Carolyn Haines, photo courtesy of the author Fort Benning, Georgia. They both were reporters for a newspaper in Lucedale. Even though Carolyn's novel titled Touched was not autobiographical, it was representative of two people in her life. The relationship in the novel between JoHanna McVay and her nine-year-old daughter, Duncan McVay, symbolizes Carolyn's grandmother's love for Carolyn's mother, Hilda. For example, in the book little Duncan McVay is struck by lightning and temporarily paralyzed just as Carolyn's mother was struck by polio at the age of nine.

Haines has loved to read and write ever since she was a little girl. She didn't particularly like school, but she was always a good student who loved to learn and made very good grades. When she grew up, she became a journalist but wanted to become a novelist. Writing for southern newspapers (the George County Times, the Mobile Register, and the Hattiesburg America ) has given her ten years of experience which she draws on in her books. In a recent telephone interview, Carolyn stated that her favorite authors are Flannery O' Conner ( whom Carolyn likes for her black humor and observations of humanity), Eudora Welty, Thomas Williams, John Irving, and James Lee Burke. She has been influenced the most by authors Harper Lee (author of To Kill A Mockingbird) and Flannery O' Conner.

Summer of the Redeemers by Carolyn Haines Today Haines works at the University of South Alabama in the public relations office, writes novels, and manages a five-acre farm with three horses, four cats, and three dogs. To date she has published twenty-four books, some under the pseudonym Caroline Burnes, a name she uses for her twenty mysteries with Harlequin Intrigue. These novels feature a black cat named Familiar, who is a very clever detective. Haines chose the name because of a dear friend whom she said in a recent interview needs a name with murmur diphthongs for good luck and money. She chose the last name of Burnes "because it has a nice Scottish ring and it's higher up on the shelf." She also knew she would write other things and wanted to keep her Romantic intrigue novels separate from her general fiction and keep her readers satisfied. She traveled to the western coast of Ireland and wrote a book while there. She has also been the the Mayan ruins in Mexico, the setting for another of her novels. When asked in 1997, she stated that In her opinion, Touched and Summer of the Redeemers are her best novels. Summer of the Redeemers, set in 1963, was selected by The Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club and has also been released in England under the title Season of Innocents as well as in France and Germany.

Monica Conger, SHS Haines got her idea for Touched (which shares the same setting as Summer of the Redeemers) while sitting at the computer daydreaming. A scene suddenly popped into her head of a nine-year-old girl with singed hair propped in a wagon in a rocking chair with a rooster on her arm. A woman was pulling them down a dirt road. There begins the story of nine-year-old Duncan McVay and her mother JoHanna McVay. Haines decided she needed Mattie Mills, a mail-order bride, to be the narrator, someone with an overview of everyone's life. The setting is fictional Jexville, Mississippi, in 1926. In an interview Haines confessed that small towns can be wonderful and contain wonderful things, but small towns can also hold dreadful gossip. Fear can make people do tragic things as she points out in her novel. Touched has received positive reviews in The New York Times Book Review, The Times of London, Publishers' Weekly, Mademoiselle and others.

Carolyn's advice for future writers is to "read everything from Edgar Allen Poe to Eudora Welty and try to figure everything out. " Haines says if she doesn't see a book, she isn't discouraged-- instead she keeps on trying. Her advice: "Just do it and mess up. Be stubborn while writing and strive to achieve." She further stated in a telephone interview, "We are a poor state (Mississippi), but through all the poverty, we are a state of literary giants. Knowing that Faulkner and Welty came from here makes me believe that I too can write."

In 1997 her most recently books published under her pen name, Caroline Burnes, were Midnight Prey and Familiar Heart. She was completing the third novel in her trilogy that takes place in fictional Jexville, Mississippi, called Judith Burning, which was eventually published under her real name, Carolyn Haines. She began her first two tales of murder in the Mississippi Delta are Them Bones and Buried Bones.

2008 UPDATE: Acclaimed author Carolyn Haines continues to live in Semmes, Alabama, but she was born and raised in southeast Mississippi and most of her works are set in rural Mississippi.

Today she manages a five acre farm that includes twenty-one (more or less) animals. Her career as a novelist began under the pseudonym of Caroline Burnes. Writing as Caroline Burnes, Haines has written more than twenty mysteries with Harlequin Intrigue.

Writing under her own name, she has written numerous books of various types of general fiction and one non-fiction work (My Mother’s Witness: the Peggy Morgan Story, which is about one woman’s testimony against Bryan de la Beckwith in the Medgar Evers murder. Her trilogy set in Mississippi now includes Summer of the Redeemer, Touched, which was a Literary Guild selection, and Judas Burning. The books deal with the theme of hypocrisy: religious, gender, and ethics and have been published in several languages. Her novel Penumbra was named one of the best mysteries of 2006. She is probably best known for her Mississippi Delta Bones series with protagonist Sarah Booth Delaney. The eighth book in that series, Ham Bones, was published in 2007. Another novel Revenant (paperback original) was also published in 2007. In this thriller set along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Carson Lynch, a troubled journalist, is pursuing a serial killer who murders young brides.

Haines is teaching writing classes at the University of Southern Alabama. In addition to writing and teaching, she has other causes. In her fall 2008 newsletter she states,

"I’ve been fighting a battle with animal abuse in Mobile County. It’s been a very upsetting story about starving horses. My friends and I are trying to figure a way to help the county come up with more effective methods of investigating and prosecuting animal abusers. I’ve made some terrific friends in this fight—everyone from a senior cruelty investigator at PETA to local animal lovers who are determined to speak out for creatures who have no voice.

My university classes have started, and I have high expectations for my students. One of them, Jeannie Holmes, has signed with a New York agent for her book, THE CRIMSON SWAN, which is the first book in a trilogy. Jeannie is a wonderful writer, and I’m sure before long you’ll have a chance to sample her story-telling abilities in a published book.

I’ve been working on a TV pilot for the Bones series, and it’s been picked up by a production company in Los Angeles and is currently being read at several networks and cable channels. I wrote the pilot with two co-writers. One of them, Sarah Bewley, and I also wrote an original horror script, THE NESTER, which just placed in the top 100 in the Slamdance competition."

In all, Haines has written more than fifty-six books in her career under her own name and several pen names. She was the first speaker for Starkville Reads' Mystery in Mississippi fall 2007 program.