After 21 years as a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera, Erica Miner turned to her lifelong love of writing as her creative outlet. Based in the Pacific Northwest, she is now an award-wining author, screenwriter, arts journalist, and lecturer. Her debut novel, Travels with My Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards, and her screenplays have won awards in the WinFemme, Santa Fe, and Writers Digest competitions. Erica continues to balance her reviews and interviews of real-world musical artists with her fanciful plot fabrications that reveal the dark side of the fascinating world of opera. Aria for Murder, published by Level Best Books in Oct. 2022, the first in her Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series, was a finalist in the 2023 Eric Hoffer Awards. The second in the series, Prelude to Murder, finds the violinist in heaps of trouble in the desert at the Santa Fe Opera. The next sequel takes place at San Francisco Opera. When she isn't plumbing the depths of opera houses for murderous mayhem, Erica frequently contributes reviews and interviews for the well-known arts websites BroadwayWorld.com, us.Bachtrack.com, and LAOpus.com. Her writings also have appeared in PNWA Magazine, Vision Magazine, WORD San Diego, Our City Istanbul, and numerous E-zines. Erica also is a top speaker and lecturer. In the music world, she has presented pre-concert lectures for the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall; Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of California San Diego and the University of Washington; the Creative Retirement Institute at Edmonds College in the greater Seattle area; and Wagner Societies in Boston, New York, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, North Carolina, and New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). As a writer-lecturer, Erica has given workshops for Sisters in Crime; Los Angeles Creative Writing Conference; EPIC Group Writers; Write on the Sound; Fields End Writer's Community; Savvy Authors; and numerous libraries on the west coast.