Martie

Female

Central Illinois

- I exuded positivity at ten when I started a “Let’s Have Fun” club with neighborhood kids in Lincoln, IL. Over a professional life of 50 years, I took my enthusiasm into several different fields.
- My two favorites have been transportation and communication. As Director of Safety and Recruiting, I trained truck drivers for seven years and have had my commercial license since 1991, driving tractor-trailers, school buses, and charter buses. An opportunity to shift gears came, and I joined the web design team at Caterpillar, Inc. Therefore, I can say I am at home on the interstate or on the internet.
- Based on cutting-edge discoveries in Positive Psychology, I have taken what I learned from my life and career and combined those experiences with my philosophy, “Positivity Propels.”
- I expanded my fascination with communication when I joined Toastmasters in 2002. Toastmasters brought the world to me through the fascinating people I met and the communication workshops I conducted for Caterpillar employees.
- My husband Jerry and I were married 51 years when he passed in 2020; we have two terrific sons, two beautiful daughters-in-law, and four amazing grandchildren.
- I again shifted gears when Jerry was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and resigned from over-the-road driving opportunities. I went in a new direction and became responsible for independently publishing my dad’s romance manuscripts and writing a sequel to his five murder mysteries.
- I spent most of my growing-up years in Sunnyland, Illinois, which might explain my bright disposition. You can find me at home in a small town in central Illinois, writing furiously to capture imaginative storylines. When I am not writing, I listen to jazz, golf, travel up and down the interstate, visit old friends and make new ones.

Hi, I am Martie Liter Ogborn. My father and author Bob Liter, a retired copyeditor with the Peoria Journal Star, passed away in 2008. I now have the rights to his manuscripts. As an independent publisher, I am releasing his work under my imprint. His five Nick Bancroft Mysteries, Murder by the Book, August is Murder, Death Sting, Point of Murder, and And the Band Played On, are available as eBooks, paperbacks, and audiobooks.

The series is set in Centrel City, Illinois, a fictitious community similar to Peoria. Detective Nick Bancroft, the protagonist, has a love/hate relationship with bowling and Cubs baseball. Delving into my dad’s books, I have discovered the similarities between the author and his character. I think my dad developed the Bancroft character to express his alter ego. It’s given me a better understanding of him.

I am reissuing my dad’s mystery novels and writing a sequel, Murder Inherited, challenging myself to expand on the characters he created—including Bancroft’s love interest, Maggie Atley, modeled after my mother, Lillian. I hope my books will have as much meaning to my sons as Dad’s books have meant to me. This is an exciting way to leave a legacy and have some fun.