Joan Marilyn Bochmann11/21/1934 - 09/26/2013Joan passed away, the victim of cancer, just a couple months shy of her 79th birthday. Her award-winning novel, Absaroka, Where The Anguish Of A Soldier Meets The Land Of The Crow was published in the fall of 2005 and is still available at Raven Publishing, Norris, MT. www.ravenpublishing.net. She began writing Prism in the 1970s, and having written several chapters, developing the book's main characters and leaving many plot clues, she put it aside.
After learning she had cancer, she brought it out to see if she could finish it and worked on it with her sister, Janet Muirhead Hill. When it became apparent that she would not be able to finish, due to her illness, she asked Janet to finish writing and publish it. A Colorado native, Joan was always an avid reader and writer, she published many essays and short stories in Prairie Times and other periodicals.
Raised on a cattle ranch and having had horses of her own, she paints a real portrait of ranching with all of its joys and its heartaches in her novel, Absaroka, Where the Anguish of a Soldier meets the Land of the Crow, which she later published as an audio book.
Janet Muirhead Hill is the author of thirteen published novels for children ages 8-18. She co-authored curriculum units to adapt the novels for use in classrooms and home schools.
Hill has presented many writing and publishing workshops across the state and in Colorado and Oregon. She is available to present workshops to fit one, two, three, four, or five days of instruction depending on the needs and time schedules of her sponsors and students. She has conducted many one-day school visits in Montana and Colorado, and has plans for longer residencies. She wrote and published comprehensive workbooks for use with her three, four, and five-day writing workshops.
She is listed in the Artist's Registry of the Montana Arts Council. Her published children's and young adult novels include the award-winning Miranda and Starlight series of eight (soon to be nine) books, Danny's Dragon, a Story of Wartime Loss, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award, and a trilogy about twins, separated at a young age and searching for each other. Kyleah's Tree, a finalist for both the High Plains Book Award and USA Book News, Best Book Award, is the the girl twin's story.
It's companion novel, Kendall's Storm, silver medal winner of the Moonbeam Award, is the boy twin's story. Kendall and Kyleah, is the third book of the series completes their story. Her book, Call Me Captain has been renamed, The Body in the Freezer, and is a story about a 13-year-old rich kid who is both smart, and smart-mouthed searching for his place in the world-and finding when forced to "volunteer" in a homeless shelter.
Hill calls the writing she does "true fiction, " because, she says, "My goal is to tell the truth about the human experience, its dilemmas, natural responses, and emotions through fictional characters; characters children relate to; characters who will help them better understand themselves, giving them comfort and encouragement in their own lives."Ms. Hill spends much of her free time enjoying the outdoors, her horses, and most of all her family, which includes eight grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
She writes and publishes from her home office in rural Montana near the Madison River.
