Former Tribune-Review reporter Robin Acton publishes first novel

Robin Acton spent more than three decades as a newspaper journalist.

The job took her from crime scenes and courtrooms in Western Pennsylvania to the mountains of Idaho, the Arizona desert, the sunny Caribbean, the streets of New York City and the marbled halls of Congress in Washington, D.C.

She incorporated the knowledge of those scary, sometimes unbelievable, stories into a much larger piece of writing — her first book, “The Taker.”

“This is really exciting,” said Acton, an award-winning journalist for the Herald-­Standard in Uniontown and the Tribune-­Review. “I covered courts and crime most of my career. So for this book, I took some information and experience from here, and some from there, and added some more.”

Acton, 63, of Mt. Pleasant Township describes the novel as “a thriller about a Pittsburgh-based crime reporter who risks her life and her career while covering the kidnapping of the preteen daughter of her former police detective boyfriend.”

The book is fiction, but she was inspired by cases and stories she covered — something that helped her develop characters and ideas.

As she was writing “The Taker,” Acton met best-selling author Steven James, who was the keynote speaker at the Killer Nashville International Writer’s Conference. James and New York Times best-selling author Robert Dugoni run “novel intensive writing retreats.” Acton was accepted into one of the retreats in 2018. It’s like a boot camp for published and aspiring authors, Acton said. She submitted pages from her manuscript to be critiqued.

“They praised my writing and offered great suggestions that helped make it better,” she said. “They said that how you choose to publish your book, by submitting to agents or doing it yourself, it’s a personal decision. They recommended anyone who self-publishes work with professional editors.”

Acton self-published and collaborated with editors Beth Terrell, based in Nashville, Tenn., and Linda Rettstatt of Moon, whom she knew from Brownsville, where they grew up.

Rettstatt said Acton’s writing experience shows through. A story like this one, she said, usually requires extensive research to dig deep into the characters, but not for Acton, because she experienced it.

“She has the skill set to write a book,” said Rettstatt. “Robin nailed it. It has suspense and is a really, really good story. I told her to stay on the treadmill and keep writing the next one. Don’t get off.”

A second book is in the works and scheduled to be released in fall 2022. “The Taker” has been a work in progress — six years to be exact. She really wanted to finish it now because she wanted her dad to read it.

Acton’s 84-year-old father, Robert Emmett Acton of Windham, N.H., has had many major medical issues recently, including multiple heart attacks and covid-19.

She named one of the characters, a policeman, Bob Emmett after him. The character is “all buzz cut and muscle and impatient and way too young to handle this case,” Acton said.

“My dad’s dream was for me to write a book,” Acton said. “And now he is holding a copy in his hands. He is thrilled.”

Her dad introduced her to newspapers at a young age. She recalled Saturday mornings at the Herald-Standard with her father, who was the advertising director. She took calls for classified advertisements.

When she moved from the advertising department to the news department she would often listen to the police scanner. That is when she fell in love with the news.

Others took notice of her passion for reporting on tough stories.

One judge, William Franks, told her she should go to law school. But Acton decided her passion was to continue covering the law.

“The best thing about my job as courts reporter was that no two days were ever the same,” she said. “That is a gift to have a job like that.”

She’s appeared on “America’s Most Wanted” to talk about an unsolved case she wrote about.

“They tell you to write what you know,” said Acton, who retired in 2010 and is married to Merle Harr, a retired Marine. “I knew what a district justice’s courtroom looked like because I was there, and I knew about a judge’s demeanor. I would just close my eyes and picture it. Those images were definitely clear in my mind, and I hope they come through loud and clear in the book. I want people to feel like they are there.”