RUMFORD — Anne Morin, a retired neuroscientist turned writer, said her stories often come to her when she goes to sleep at night. When she wakes the next morning, she’s ready to write them down.

“The stories are just floating in my head,” she said.

“It’s like a film; I see the scenarios. Sometimes it’ll be a whole new idea for the book, or a new angle, and it’ll even come with the dialogue,” she said. And the next day, when she sits down to write, “it comes out and it’s sort of magical in a way,” she said.

Morin’s first book, “Experiment One: Murder in the Lab,” is one she’s excited about after reading articles on scientific discoveries using cells in creative and useful ways. One example is taking cells from one area of the body and placing them in another area of the body to regain function. She believes these kinds of scientific events make her murder mysteries timely.

“I love writing the stories and I love that I can do some science in the story,” she said. “Experiment One” includes information about DNA and growth factors, along with other scientific subjects, which Morin knows well from her days in the lab.

Her next book, “Experiment Two,” is a scientific mystery novel which takes place on the Maine coast. Her third book will take place in the mountains of Maine.

Morin said another distinctive feature of her books will be the scientific images on the covers. The cover of “Experiment One” has “cortical neurons from the cortex of the brain with blood splattered all over them.”

“I’ve always been really driven to be creative outside the laboratory,” she said.

Other hobbies include making honey from her bees, sewing wearable fabric art, and canning vegetables from her garden. She said working with fabric is very cathartic, and gardening and cooking were things her mother always did, so they come naturally to her.

As a neuroscientist, Morin studied the functioning of the nervous system and published many articles on the subject. She is retired from the Veterans Administration Medical Center and University of California at Los Angeles, School of Medicine where her research explored the areas of stroke, epilepsy and brain aging.

She is a lecturer for the University of Maine at Augusta and Farmington and teaches anatomy and physiology courses in Rumford.

Morin lives in Rumford with her husband, Barry Allen, and together they own and oeprate their bed-and-breakfast, Mountain Spring Farm.

mhutchinson@sunmediagroup.net

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