Jenny Hilborne - Writer of Mysteries and Psychological Thrillers

I met Jenny Hilborne at a book fair in Solana Beach in April of 2011, when we were sharing a booth and promoting our debut novels. We were both new born to the green wood of publishing.

Jenny is a Brit from Swindon in Wiltshire, England, who has lived in Southern California for the past fifteen years. She still maintains her roots in England, but she now carries a subdued British accent.

She and I hit it off when I told her the subject of my next writing project, a true crime history of the John Norman Collins murders of 1967-69. This time I would try my hand at non-fiction, and I've been buried by my research ever since.

In the meantime, Jenny had just published Madness and Murder, had No Alibi close to publication, and was planning her third novel, Hide and Seek. She has since completed and published her fourth novel, Stone Cold. She is a virtual writing machine.

So far, most of her novels take place in her favorite city, San Francisco, and people familiar with the City by the Bay will recognize the locales. But Jenny went home to the United Kingdom for six months to do research on Stone Cold to enhance its verisimilitude.


"I didn't want to be stereotyped as only writing about the West Coast," Jen said. "I needed to draw inspiration from home, but it was a challenge getting used to British English again." 


Jen says that she enjoyed her research for Stone Cold which got her out of the house and away from her computer screen. While in England, she visited the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire, the settings featured in her latest book.

Check out Jenny's blog: http://jfhilborne.wordpress.com/

Check out her Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Jenny-Hilborne/e/B003YYF5F4/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1365958456&sr=1-2-ent  

Detroit's Plum Street Turns Sour In The Sixties

One of the quirkiest neighborhoods in Detroit's long history was the establishment of an artsy "Hippie" enclave in a depressed neighborhood just south of downtown called Plum Street. In the spring of 1967, young counter culture types, self-described as "freaks," set up head shops, clothing boutiques, alternative bookstores, and several small eateries within a two or three block area.

Among the first supporters of this area, which might be described as Detroit's answer to San Francisco's fabled Haight-Asbury district, was a Wayne State graduate named John Sinclair. John became a local celebrity when he got busted for selling a joint to an undercover agent and was sent to jail.

The group he led, Trans Love Energies, lobbied for his release and held a rally at the University of Michigan's basketball arena, attended by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. By the time the Lennons arrived late that evening, only hard core supporters of Sinclair remained.

Few people were as impressed with John Sinclair as he was with himself. His outspoken manner was one reason he was targeted by the police. He advocated the legalization of marijuana. Today, many people find it difficult to imagine what a huge story this was in the local newspapers.

I knew John Sinclair from a distance and saw him in Ann Arbor many times. He was a large man with a huge mane of hair, who stood out in a crowd and attracted a moderate following of young sycophants and musicians. John was a charismatic figure who could be verbally aggressive if challenged or disagreed with - though usually his imperious bearing was enough to keep his followers in line.

Once Plum Street started to became successful, it attracted crowds of  "tourists" from the suburbs which robbed the street of some of its charm. Worse than that, it captured the attention of a local motorcycle gang - The Outlaws. They rolled in and started taking over and roughing people up.

After a stint of bad publicity and little help from law enforcement, the Plum Street "experiment" failed and the area once again became deserted and depressed.