Cargill, Linda 1955- (Linda B. Cargill)

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Cargill, Linda 1955- (Linda B. Cargill)

PERSONAL:

Born March 11, 1955, in Pittsburgh, PA; daughter of Larry E. (an engineer) and Alice J. (an educator) Bognar; married Gary Cargill (an attorney), October 28, 1978; children: Kenneth Scott. Education: Studied at Bryn Mawr College; Duke University, B.A., M.A., 1978; University of Virginia, M.Ed., 1979. Hobbies and other interests: Photography, travel.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Tucson, AZ. Agent—Pema Browne, Pema Browne Ltd., 11 Tena Pl., Valley Cottage, NY 10989-2215. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Atlantic Monthly, certificate of merit, 1973, for Old Man Cactus.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

To Follow the Goddess (novel), Cheops Books (Charlottesville, VA), 1991.

The Witch of Pungo, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1993.

The Seawitch, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1995.

The Surfer, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1995.

Hang Loose, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Pool Party, Scholastic, (New York, NY) 1996.

The Girl in Blue, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1996.

Up from the Grave, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1997.

The Graveyard at Midnight Beach, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1997.

The Tree of Dead Spirits, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1997.

Siren Song, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1998.

Bloody Thorns, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1999.

Still Waters Run Deep, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1999.

Mirror, Mirror, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2000.

Gold Hair, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2000.

River of No Return, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2000.

Sink or Swim, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2000.

Grizzly!, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2001.

Heart of Stone, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2001.

Lullaby and Good-Night, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2001.

Horror in Hilton Head, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2001.

One Perfect Rose, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

Are You Scared of the Dark?, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

The Opium Cave, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

Note in a Bottle, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

Vampire on Board!, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

Fire Lake, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

Curse of Fire, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

Horror House, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2002.

Shadow Plays, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2003.

No Name Girl, e-reads.com, 2003.

The Dark Lake, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2003.

Fire! Fire!, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2003.

The Fatal Shore, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2003.

The Tenant, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2003.

The Dark 1, Scholastic Point (London, England), 2003.

The Dark 2, Scholastic Point (London, England), 2004.

The Spiral Staircase, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2004.

Never Kiss a Vampire, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2004.

Date with the Dead, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2004.

The Mysterious Surfer, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2004.

Volcano, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2004.

Who Hates You So Much, Shawna?, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2004.

The Double, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2004.

The Raven, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2005.

Face in the Falls, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2005.

Murder on the Mountain, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2005.

Snow Ghost, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2005.

Eyes of the Dragon, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2006.

The Louvered Window, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2006.

Murder in Yellowstone, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2006.

She Who Watches, Cora Verlag (Hamburg, Germany), 2006.

The Black Stone, Cheops Books (Tucson, AZ), 2008.

Also author of the blog Cheops Books.

SIDELIGHTS:

Linda Cargill is a writer of dozens of books, ranging from young adult books to adult thrillers and historical novels. Cargill studied at Bryn Mawr College, Duke University, and the University of Virginia in the 1970s before taking up writing professionally. In an interview on her home page, Cargill joked about the large number of books she has published, pointing out that "I don't have another job. I write fiction full-time." She commented that if she spent her time pursuing other activities, "I wouldn't have time to do all the edits." Cargill also responded to a question about running out of topics to write about and inspiration. To that, she remarked: "I don't think I will run out of ideas as long as I keep on traveling and keep on making observations about what I see and the people I meet. I'm somebody who is very focused on setting, and there are lots of settings in the world." Cargill also explained her particular interest in writing supernatural stories in the interview. Cargill stated: "I've always liked a good mystery or a good scare." She continued, "I think I came to writing supernatural stories though the roundabout route of writing novels about ancient Greek mythology first. Some of the scariest monsters, spirits, and demons come from Greek mythology."

Cargill told CA: "The Black Stone is my biggest and most ambitious title to date. It combines the suspense of my thriller novels with the historical sweep of my earlier Cheops Books title, To Follow the Goddess, that the Kirkus Reviews called ‘a spirited page-turner’ and ‘a delightful read’. The Black Stone is also a cautionary tale of what might actually happen if we let 9/11 become too much a thing of the past. 9/11 wasn't just a one-day event. As this novel demonstrates, it was two thousand years in the making."

Cargill later added: "Nearly thirty-five years ago, on August 5, 1973, two gunmen from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September attacked passengers bound for New York on a Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight at the Athens Airport, using machine guns and grenades. Three Americans died and fifty-five were wounded. The gunmen held thirty-five passengers hostage for more than two hours before surrendering to police.

"Little more than three months earlier, I had landed at the Athens Airport for a visit with a group of seniors from my suburban Pittsburgh high school. It could have been me. One of the Americans who died was a teenage girl. She was only sixteen years old. I was eighteen at the time. I immediately identified with her. That was one of the reasons I wrote the novel The Black Stone."

According to Cargill, the account in her novel of a 1973 visit to Athens by the heroine's mother, Lucinda, is largely autobiographical, and the photograph on the Cheops Books Web site of Lucinda in Greece is, in fact, a photograph of Cargill. "That's me! I was stand- ing there on that Greek island in my tennis shoes and white London Fog raincoat with a bandanna blowing in the breeze, feeling nervous. I look as if I really do see a terrorist lurking about."

Cargill stated that no one warned her before she embarked on the ten-day high school trip to Greece that it could be dangerous. "I don't think my parents knew either. Nor did the chaperone from the high school. I'm sure of that. But isn't that typical of Americans. They walk into danger, and they aren't even aware of it. The Athens Airport Massacre was sort of like a mini-9/11."

In researching her book, Cargill stated that she discovered many other terrorist incidents involving Americans, both minor and major, going back as far as the sinking of the British ship Lusitania, which carried many American passengers, on May 7, 1915.

"That is, if you want to consider that a terrorist incident. It depends upon how you define it. After all, the Germans attacked a ship full of innocent civilians. … And we don't understand everything that happened. There was a second, mysterious explosion after the liner was torpedoed.

"Another terrorist incident occurred on April 3, 1986, when four people were killed after a bomb blew a hole in the fuselage of a TWA flight as it approached Athens. On November 14, 1995, a bomb planted by what some believe to be al-Qaeda-inspired militants killed four Americans in Saudi Arabia. Both of these events are featured in The Black Stone.

"But finding out about the Athens Airport Massacre happening so close to the time I was in Greece was like throwing me a curve ball. It really got me angry. That's why I dedicated The Black Stone to the three Americans killed that day—Jeanne Salandri, Laura Kay Haack, and Elbert Kersing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

School Library Journal, January, 1996, Jana R. Fine, review of The Surfer, p. 128; December, 1996, Jana R. Fine, review of Hang Loose, p. 136; January, 1997, Carrie A. Guarria, review of Pool Party, p. 112.