In this spooky-season episode of Miles Beyond the Page, host Michelle Miles welcomes fellow RWA member and dark romantic suspense author M.R. Rutter for a fascinating conversation about forensic anthropology, the secrets hidden in bones, and turning real-world knowledge into chilling fiction.

Megan. shares her unusual journey into forensic anthropology, beginning with a teenage car accident that unexpectedly led to the discovery of a real skeleton. Her career eventually brought her into difficult modern cases, including work involving murdered children, before the emotional weight of the cases and the realities of how few are ultimately resolved led her to step away.

Michelle and Megan dive into what bones can actually reveal about a person—from age and biological characteristics to occupation, injuries, postmortem changes, and even clues about where someone grew up. M.R. also separates forensic reality from television fiction, sharing some of the misconceptions that make crime shows especially entertaining—and occasionally infuriating—for someone who knows what really happens in the lab.

They also explore how Megan’s forensic background influences her fiction without turning her books into gore. She discusses building fear through psychology, suspicion, isolation, and the secrets people keep, particularly in rural communities where darkness can remain hidden beneath an ordinary surface. Her novel Dangerous Ground, inspired by Minnesota sinkholes, puts that idea to especially chilling use.

🎧 Join Michelle and Megan for a Spooky Season conversation about bones, forensic science, small-town secrets, romantic suspense, and the unsettling stories the dead can still tell.

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ABOUT M.R. RUTTER:

M.R. Rutter was born in the mountains of Colorado to an ex-hippy and former Marine. She spent much of her childhood on her grandparents ranch near Leadville CO.

She studied forensic anthropology and ancient history in college and started her professional life as an assistant to her advisors while working on her coursework and thesis. After years of teaching other professors' classes and putting murdered children back together rather than working on her focus, ancient remains, M.R. left the field to pursue a career as a writer.

After living on a sustainable agriculture research farm in Minnesota with her husband, daughter and a menagerie of animals; M.R. has returned to Colorado where she is a full time farmer, research assistant, mother and writer.

Happily for M. R. she can still fill her novels with mummies, skeletons and corpses.

WHERE TO FIND HER:

Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | BlueSky

WHERE TO FIND HER BOOKS:

Amazon