After Mom

Losing a parent changes you.

My favorite photo of my mother, Margaret Huff. Credit: My dad, Bob Huff

My mom Margaret died on January 29, 2023, exactly one month after her 85th birthday — hence the radio silence after I’d begun updating here more often.

I started doing this true crime thing because of mom. Part of my true crime origin story involves 12-year-old me, a paperback copy of Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter (about the Manson murders), and my mom’s warning not to read it.

Naturally, I read it.

Not long after, I read In Cold Blood one night at my granny’s farm in rural Spring Hill, Tennessee, quite possibly the worst place and worst time of day to read In Cold Blood.

So, naturally, I developed a lifelong interest in true crime, and by the time I was a teen, my mom and I were sharing books like Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac and Ann Rule’s Crime Files series.

It always felt like I inherited true crime from her.

There’s a bit of writing advice I love, and by the time I first read it, I realized I’d been doing it for years: “Write with a single person in mind.” That person was my mom. I knew she loved true crime because she was curious about how criminal minds worked. The psychology of killers and the puzzles of unsolved crimes were endlessly fascinating to mom, and those became the things I focused on as a writer, too — in addition to telling true stories in a way that might make them as engaging as good fiction.

I still need time to grieve. But I’ll be back. I feel certain that’s what mom would want me to do.