The author of an essay entitled How To Murder Your Husband has been charged with murdering her husband.

Romance novelist Nancy Crampton-Brophy, 68, who is accused of shooting her spouse, published the 700-word piece on the website See Jane Publish in 2011, according to Oregon Live.

The writer is also behind the 2015 novel The Wrong Husband, which tells the story of a woman who escapes an abusive partner during a shipwreck in the Mediterranean.

Police arrested Crampton-Brophy last week and she is facing charges of murder and the unlawful use of a weapon following the death of her husband Daniel Brophy at the Oregon Culinary Institute, where he worked as an instructor.

She was married to Mr Brophy, 63, for 27 years before his death on 2 June. According to KATU News, students found the chef bleeding in the kitchen.


He died at the scene despite paramedics trying to save him.

Image: Students reportedly found Mr Brophy bleeding in the kitchen. Pic: Google Street View

Crampton-Brophy posted on Facebook following the death that she was "struggling to make sense of everything right now".

In Crampton-Brophy's 2011 essay, she reportedly described motives and possible murder weapons a character could use if they were to kill their husband in a romance novel.

Oregon Live quoted the piece, which has been taken down, as saying: "As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure.

"After all, if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don't want to spend any time in jail."

She is said to have suggested guns, knives, poison and hitmen as ways to kill a spouse in her essay.

She wrote: "I find it is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them. I don't want to worry about blood and brains splattered on my walls. And really, I'm not good at remembering lies.

"But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough."

The suspect's lawyer turned down news agency requests for comment.