Paula Morton

Before Paula Morton was an author, she was a farmer in York County, Pennsylvania. Together, Paula and her husband owned Boar-Mor Farms, the farrowing and nursery component of swine production where over four hundred sows produced nine thousand piglets per year. Two miles from the commercial farm was the home farm, and here they built their house, raised two children and nurtured gardens and pets -- cows, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens, horses, burros, dogs and cats. It was a rich but demanding life style, and after more than twenty years they wanted a change. They sold the farm and headed west.

Paula arrived at New Mexico State University in Los Cruces, New Mexico, across the border from Mexico, to study horticulture; she left to write about chile peppers, border crossings and Mexican fiestas.

“The environment, the culture, the political complexities were so intriguing that I simply had to write about my new world.”

Initially, Paula wrote for magazines until her editor pitched an idea for a book, the history of tabloid valley, the home of the supermarket tabloids in Florida.

“At the New York Public Library I scrolled through microfiche issues of the 1950s gory New York Enquirer and pored over stacks of the transformed National Enquirer supermarket tabloid in the 1970s. I was hooked; what was the story behind the tabloids?”

A year into writing the book, she gained access to the corporate newsroom in Boca Raton, Florida. “I was permitted to enter where few had ventured, interviewing reporters and editors, researching the tabloid archives and collecting valuable illustrations. I had my story.”

Paula is presently working on a second book about Fr. Benito Vines, a 19th century Jesuit priest in Cuba who made the first accurate hurricane prediction.