Mystery Factory is the brain child of mystery mastermind Juanita Rose Violini. JR was introduced to the world of mystery entertainment in 1988. It was like stepping forward to shake someone’s hand and falling off a cliff. Oops.
The winter Olympics had arrived in Calgary AB and one of the spinoffs was a theme entertainment company in Banff needed a production manager. Juanita’s first mission was to find the perfect pair of mukluks and a stage crew willing to carry 200 trees up a two story fire escape at midnight – for beer.
After two years of harem scarum chaos (aka on-the-job training), Juanita decided to set up shop for herself. Investigating mystery entertainment she discovered that the events either had no particular clue trail or solution or they were dry as dirt. Violini knew she could do better. About the same time she fell in love with her husband (she fell in love with him first and then they got married) and moved to Vancouver BC, founding Masterpiece Mysterys.
Determined to produce events that were entertaining as well as ‘Fairplay’ the self-proclaimed Mastermind analyzed Agatha Christie, studied Rex Stout and picked apart Sherlocke Holmes. The result was ten years of hilarious entertainment which actually had clues that could be followed to a solution and audiences having the time of their lives.
After twenty plus years of writing and producing live murder mystery entertainment Mystery Factory was born. In the late 1980s, Juanita R Violini was working for a theme entertainment company operating in Banff, Alberta. After four years of apprenticing in the industry in the Canadian Rockies she moved to Vancouver, BC and formed Masterpiece Mysterys.
Committed to producing ‘Fairplay’ mysteries as well as quality entertainment, Ms Violini studied and analyzed the writings of Agatha Christie and other authors dedicated to the ‘fairplay’ art form. ‘Fairplay’ means that the reader or audience gets all the clues they need to figure out ‘whodunit’.
In 2006 Juanita returned to the mountains and focused on writing Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible and the Ignored. She is now back at work custom writing mystery entertainment for fun and profit and polishing her cluetrail research; Mystery Bones; How to Create a Mystery Plot or Party. She loves putting together mysteries of all kinds and is building this website to spread the word.
Ancient History:
Juanita grew up in Banff, Alberta, with Ukrainian-Italian parents and absolutely no interest in skiing. Her first short story, read aloud in a University of Victoria writing class, brought her peals of laughter and the idea that writing could be fun. Her life has taken her through occupations as diverse as visual artist, Parks Canada outhouse cleaner, taxi driver, home support worker, selling cigarettes in a bus depot and teacher’s aide for disabled children.