Look and Listen

Biography

Originally from Quebec, Anne Grobbo spent a number of years working as a news reporter and community editor on suburban newspapers in the Toronto area, and later as a business writer for a large international corporation. For years she combined career with further education, studying piano performance part-time and taking evening courses at university. Fed up with the employment treadmill after 20 years, she left the workforce and began to write the first of the "Gloria Trevisi" mysteries. The story featured an imaginary "daughter" who shared the author's love of music and respect for the written word, along with her husband's Italian work ethic and strong family values. "As a teenager I read all my parents' paperbacks, cozy mysteries, spy thrillers, romantic suspense, historic fiction," she recalls, "and I wanted to create something that wouldn't embarrass a mom who found her thirteen-year-old daughter perusing her bookshelf." The first two novels of the series were published in 2005 by LTDBooks. After the closure of that publisher, they were accepted by Double Dragon Publishing for publication in both e-book and trade paperback. The third novel was released in January, 2007. Although her mysteries are solidly grounded in this world, Grobbo is an occasional visitor to Starfest, an international gathering of amateur astronomers held on a hilltop outside Mount Forest, Ontario. Brought up in the suffocating atmosphere of middle-class suburbs of Montreal and Toronto, A.R. Grobbo now loves everything rural. She lives in a century home in southwestern Ontario with husband, dog and cats. She teaches piano, keeps bees, and dreams up mystery plots.

Inspiration

"I grew up in a blended family, hated school, and was saved by the Felician Sisters of St. Francis. Without them, I never would have made it this far. Eventually I found happiness surrounded by the things I love: my horse Trinket, my husband John, and my beautiful old house. "I don't even have cable television. Who needs it, really? "My mom was also a writer, but I find my inspiration for my main character in John's huge Italian extended family. I imagined "Gloria" growing up as he did, surrounded by cousins, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces. "I love to write with a cat sleeping on the desk, listening to the beautiful classical music on CBC Radio 2, and occasionally looking out the window at some of the most exquisite farmland on the continent."