Author Judith Doloughan Dies; Finishes FRATERFAMILIAS & Two Sequels

It is with great sadness that we must tell you that Judith Doloughan, one of the authors of the popular mystery/crime eSerial FRATERFAMILIAS, died on June 5th. Ms. Doloughan wrote the book with her writing partner, author Paula R. Stiles, under the pseudonym Peter Ferrer. They had recently completed the eSerial version of the novel, which spans 100 issues and was just released as an eBook. She was 63 years old.

"We were very sad to learn that Judith passed away, as we recently celebrated our first year in business, and FRATERFAMILIAS was the first story we accepted for publication," said Dave A. Law, Chairman of Virtual Tales. "We knew she had been battling cervical cancer for some time, but she continued to work on FRATERFAMILIAS with Paula for the past year, despite her illness. She will be greatly missed by everyone at Virtual Tales, as well as devoted readers of the story."

Judith Doloughan was born in England during WW2 and moved to Canada when she was eight. She has lived for most of her life on the West Coast, in both Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia. She earned a BS in Biology from the University of Victoria and a MS in Marine Engineering from the Canadian Coast Guard College in 1986. While working for the Coast Guard, she sailed all the way around North America, from the Arctic to the Panama Canal. In addition to her first novel, FRATERFAMILIAS, which was written with co-author Paula R. Stiles under the pen name Peter Ferrer, Ms. Doloughan also completed a second novel, SOLITUDE, before she passed away.

According to Ms. Stiles, "Judith went peacefully; I don't think she suffered at the end. I will be looking into getting SOLITUDE published as soon as possible, as well as another novel, ALEC, which I'll complete for her and probably publish under our pseudonym. We also completed two sequels to FRATERFAMILIAS and parts of two others. I would like to thank everyone who passed along their support, and our FRATERFAMILIAS fans. Judith and I both appreciated it."

As a tribute to Judith, we will be offering a very special price on FRATERFAMILIAS as next week's "e-mail list only" promotion, and will donate all Virtual Tales proceeds to the National Cervical Cancer Coalition (NCCC).