CAMILLE MINICHINO: R.I.P.
Camille Minichino. Such sad news. What an amazing woman- smart, witty, funny, supportive, creative! She loved life and learning, writing and crafts, physics and humor, and so much more. She was an inspiration to us all. I was lucky to serve on the MWA NorCal Board with her. Last time we chatted, she had enrolled in an MFA writing program. Really?After having written so many books and having taught creative writing? When I asked why she was getting 'another' degree in a subject she was so fluent with, she said you're never too old to learn something new. That was Camille. My heart and sympathy go out to her family and friends.
Camille received her Ph.D. in physics from Fordham University, New York City. She was on the faculty of Golden Gate University, San Francisco and taught writing throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She was Past President and a member of NorCal Mystery Writers of America, NorCal Sisters in Crime, and the California Writers Club. She taught physics at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Camille also taught fiction writing and worked as a scientific editor in the Engineering Department of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She wrote more than 25 mystery novels.
Books
The Periodic Table Mysteries, featuring retired physicist Gloria Lamerino,set in Revere, Massachusetts;
The Miniature Mysteries, featuring miniaturist Gerry Porter and her preteen granddaughter in a northern California town. See a slideshow of Camille's miniatures. The Professor Sophie Knowles Mysteries, featuring a math professor in a small New England college.
The Postmistress Mysteries (as Jean Flowers), featuring Cassie Miller, postmistress in a western Massachusetts town.
The Alaskan Diner Mysteries (as Elizabeth Logan), featuring Charlotte "Charlie" Cooke, and her sleuthing crew in a fictitious Alaska town.
A stand-alone, KILLER IN THE CLOISTER, is available on Kindle and CreateSpace.
11 comments:
I am lucky enough to own one of Camille's miniatures and it's a treasured possession! One of the first-ever book signings I attended after moving to the Bay Area was Camille and Janet Dawson at the late, lamented Boadecia's Books in Kensington. She was such a stalwart pillar of the local mystery community and will certainly be missed.
Very sad news. She was so supportive of other writers and a delightful person in every way. 😥
I am so sorry to hear that. She and I were both interested in miniatures, and I corresponded with her for some time. Lovely lady.
I'm so sorry we've lost her. She'll be missed.
I'm so sorry to hear this.
Truly sad to hear. Lovely lady, great writer, so accomplished. Happy to say I have one of her mini book chairs in my collection! She'll be missed.
This leaves me feeling so saddened. I never met Camille but admired her greatly. We had some similarities as I am also a science teacher, aspiring to write murder mysteries, and adore the tiny magic I find in the art of crafting MINIATURE scenes. I hope to follow the trails she blazed.
She was a cheerful spirit, generous and loving. I will miss her.
She was a generous spirit and a huge talent. I will miss her.
I am so sorry to have lost my friend Camille. She was just a great lady and fun to joke around with. In the 15+ years that I have known her we had traded many sarcastic comic cartoons
and videos.
Retired SLPD Homicide Detective Sergeant
Retired Alameda Country District Attorney's Homicide Inspector
chris
In the first 10 minutes of meeting Camille Minichino, I was both crushed and elated. Here was a person my age... we were both in our mid 20s and living in a house of studies...but she had read The Divine Comedy in Italian, quoted Saint Augustine constantly in Latin, was working on lasers for her doctorate, and had highly opinionated views of classical music and urban culture whereas I had never read The Divine Comedy, had read only Augustine's confessions in English, was struggling with medieval English literature, loved pop music and some classical music, and barely knew the bus lines in New York City let alone anything else about Urban culture. But I was lucky enough to have months of late night conversations with Camille who had amazing energies despite staying up so late night after night and I learned to love Dante and learned much about religious life and lasers, tons of inside jokes about science, Italian food, and kindness (she talked to me into going to a movie with a friend of hers who had lost his girlfriend and somehow assured him that it was a very pleasant experience for me... I told her she owed me big after that).
I lost touch with her for some 25 years and when I reconnected I was again impressed that she had moved from her field of physics to that of a mystery writer and, no surprise, she was so successful in that enterprise. I will miss Camille enormously. She was not just a friend or a learned woman or a poet or a mystery writer. She was a profound experience.
M.C.B. (the friend whom Camille named her Sister Francesca character after).
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