All About Sparkle Abbey

This is a picture of us with the real Sparkle and the real Abbey. Don’t you love the stare-down? Our real names are Mary Lee Woods and Anita Carter. We write the Pampered Pets mystery series together. We’re also friends and neighbors so you’ll often find us writing at ML’s dining room table or at our local Starbucks.

We’ve chosen to use Sparkle Abbey as our pen name on this series because we liked the idea of combining the names of our two rescue pets – Sparkle (ML’s cat) and Abbey (Anita’s dog).

We live in central Iowa, but if we could write anywhere, you would find us on the beach with our laptops and depending on the time of day either an iced tea or a margarita.

We have had so much fun writing this series and we hope you enjoy Caro and Mel’s adventures!

Here’s a little bit more about each of us:

Mary Lee Salsbury Woods is the “Sparkle” half of Sparkle Abbey. She is the founding president of Sisters in Crime – Iowa and a member of Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Kiss of Death, the RWA Mystery Suspense chapter, Sisters in Crime, and the SinC internet group Guppies.

Prior to publishing the Pampered Pet Mystery series with Bell Bridge Books, Mary Lee won first place in the Daphne du Maurier contest, sponsored by the Kiss of Death chapter of RWA, and was a finalist in Murder in the Grove’s mystery contest, as well as Killer Nashville’s Claymore Dagger contest.

Mary Lee is an avid reader and supporter of public libraries. She lives in Central Iowa with her husband, Tim, and Sparkle the rescue cat namesake of Sparkle Abbey. In her day job she is an Information Technology manager. Any spare time she spends reading and enjoying her sons and daughter-in-laws, and five grandchildren.

Anita Carter is the “Abbey” half of Sparkle Abbey. She is a past-president of Sister’s In Crime-Iowa and is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and Kiss of Death, the RWA Mystery Suspense chapter.

She grew up reading Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and the Margo Mystery series by Jerry B Jenkins (years before his popular Left Behind Series.) Her family is glad all the years of “fending for yourself” dinners of spaghetti and frozen pizza have finally paid off even though they haven’t stopped.

In Anita’s day job, she works for a staffing company in operations and marketing. She also lives in Central Iowa with her husband and four children, son-in-law, grandchild and two rescue dogs, Chewy and Sophie.