A woman who sought to break writers' block by responding to questions while sitting in downtown Santa Fe storefronts died last Friday of an undiagnosed illness, her friends reported.

Georgelle Hirliman, an astrologer, actress and author who billed herself as the Writer in the Window, was 73.

A longtime presence in the Santa Fe area, she had moved to Albuquerque in 2000, where she often performed her autobiographical one-woman stage show, Dear Writer in the Window. She moved back to Santa Fe in the autumn of 2008.

In a 1997 interview with The New Mexican, Hirliman recalled how she started working — with only a typewriter and an improvisatory mindset — out of an empty storefront after she had two disappointing experiences getting books published.

"I was sitting in a friend's apartment looking across the street to the storefront window," she said. "All of a sudden, I had the idea that I would love to sit and write in that window."

The window in question belonged to the now-defunct Gamut store near the Plaza. The locale — and a stipend for her work — came from the Santa Fe Council for the Arts' then-popular Santa Fe City Streets art project.

Though she initially expected to start a new novel in her new locale, Hirliman ended up taking questions from passersby.

"It became a Q and A," she explained. "And it really developed my writing skills. There was no edit time. No ponder time."

The questions ranged from the silly ( "Where do ducks go when ponds freeze over?" to which Hirliman replied, "Warm, chlorinated pools in Miami and Beverly Hills.") to quite serious requests for advice on love, spirituality, faith and work. She continued to field such questions on her Web site, writerinthewindow.com. — which also contains a blog in which Hirliman discussed dealing with her illness.

She was born in June 1937 to low-budget film producer George A. Hirliman, whose filmography includes the 1936 cult classic Reefer Madness. Her mother was B-level film actress Eleanor Hunt, whose main claim to fame remains an appearance opposite (then B-actor) John Wayne in 1934's Blue Steel.

Hirliman did not speak well of her mother on her Web site, referring to her as "a strange bitch and a violent binge drinker — who has since moved on to another body I hope never to meet."

But stage blood must have flowed into Hirliman's body all the same as she appeared onstage as early as the first grade. "I'd gotten a new, flower-print dress to wear, and I had a line in the play: 'je suis fatigue/I'm so tired' and the actress in me was excited," she wrote on her Web site.

As a young adult, she claimed to have worked various jobs from secretary to cigarette girl to model to journalist to call girl. She moved to the Santa Fe area in the early 1970s because her only daughter, Heather — who passed away last June of brain cancer — had asthma and Hirliman was advised to move here to alleviate it.

At one time she was known in the Cerrillos area by the name Gentle Wind.

She worked in radio — KUNM in Albuquerque and KAFE-AM in Santa Fe, among other stations — and became romantically involved with one of four members of the Vagos Motorcycle Club who were convicted in the murder of an Albuquerque college student in 1974. Hirliman was covering the case as a journalist, and reportedly later married one of the bikers — who has since died, according to what Hirliman told The New Mexican in 2005 — after he and the others were exonerated when the actual killer confessed. Hirliman wrote a book about the case, which she was still trying to get published as recently as several years ago.

She also wrote The Hate Factory, the 1982 account of the 1980 New Mexico state penitentiary riot, which left 33 inmates dead and many others injured. The book was based on interviews with inmate W.G. Gannons, who Hirliman referred to in the book under the pseudonym W.G. Stone. In 2005, when the book was revised, she told The New Mexican that Gannons died in prison in 1985.

But she was best known for her Writer in the Window persona. Besides working out of the old Gamut store, Hirliman became a regular sight at such Santa Fe businesses as Downtown Subscription and The Zia Diner, and she took the project to other cities including Albuquerque and New York City.

"She served as a kind of muse offering spiritual and practical advice," recalled Richard Hooker, who worked as a coordinator for the Santa Fe Council for the Arts in the late 1980s. "She would ensconce herself for a period of days or even a week, responding (to questions) on her typewriter and pasting answers on the window, so over the course of a week she'd have a whole narrative based on her view of the world."

Jo Fisher, a longtime Santa Fean who now works as general manager of the box office at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, recalled that Hirliman "answered the questions nobody else would answer. I read them a lot. I probably should have lived by them."

On her Web site, Hirliman wrote of her depression and decline as her illness overcame her. "I really don't desire to fight death, or live longer than my body can handle without interference from needles and cold steel tests," she wrote in November. "I'm ready to leave."

According to Rowan Stanland, a friend of Hirliman's for the past 10 years, the dying author spent the last week of her life visiting with friends and acquaintances.

"She really cared about people a lot," Stanland said. "One of the last things she said in that last week was, 'I never want to have anything bad happen to anyone.' "

And even a few months before the end, Hirliman was willing to dole out advice for those who sent her questions via e-mail. When one visitor to her Web site asked what happens to goldfish when they swim into the side of the fish bowl, Hirliman she gave a typically sensitive and amusing answer.

"They cry, and when goldfish cry, their eyes go dry."

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com