Category: Research

Writing about Murder Knocks Twice

5/25/2019

The launch of MURDER KNOCKS TWICE has been such a whirlwind! But I do enjoy meeting readers at my book events, and telling new stories about my research and writing.
I've also had the chance to write a few blog posts on different aspects of my research and writing. Here are a few:

"The Real Canary Murder Case of 1929 at Criminal Element, in which I discuss a rather odd murder of a bird
A Day in the Life of Gina Ricci, over at Dru's Book Musings What's it like to work in a speakeasy anyway?
The Page 69 Test over at Marshal Zeringue's blog, where I discuss the meaning of what is found on that page
The 1920s fascination with slang--Why were people in the 1920s so fascinated by it? Over at Grammar Girl
An interview about how I wrote Murder Knocks Twice, over at Writers at Work

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From 1667 London to 1929 Chicago...

9/20/2018

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It's the Bees' Knees!

Well the cocktail break is finally over and I have returned to my blog!!!

I’m no longer entrenched in the gritty plague-ridden world of 17th century London—I’ve now ventured into 1920s Chicago—a world that is both sparkling and shadowy.

The first in my new series is called MURDER KNOCKS TWICE (Minotaur/St.Martin's), and it is set in a 1929 speakeasy on Chicago’s West Side.

MURDER KNOCKS TWICE IS EXPECTED TO LAUNCH
April 30, 2019.

Researching this new series has been a lot of fun, and so-o-o different than how I've done research in the past.

I read every issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune for a year to better feel the period. The Drys! The Rumrunners! The Gin Joints!
I shook my head at advice columns and the ‘around town’ interviews...
I poured over the Sears & Robucks catalogue and studied advertisements..
I listened to twenties era music...
I watched tons of 1920s movies...
I walked around the area where my story is set, imagining the sights, smells, sounds...
And perhaps the most fun...so far I've tried about 25 different cocktails from the period. (My goal was to try 100 Prohibition-Era cocktails before my book launches!)

So stick around...and let's get swizzled!

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Writing From Passion--A Guest Post by Christina Hoag

7/4/2017

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"How do you write about a world you haven't lived in?"

This is the question posed by my guest author, Christina Hoag, a journalist-turned-novelist as she discusses her latest thriller...

From the official blurb:
Los Angeles homeboy Mags is desperate to get out of gang life, but the only exit is through sacrificing everything – and everyone - he loves. He must make the difficult choice, and soon, or have it made for him. Based on extensive interviews with street gang members, this noir crime novel explores a poor immigrant family’s struggle to survive in a gritty world where gangs appear to offer youth a way out but instead ensnare them in a tangle of deceit and betrayal.

Just think how boring literature would be if writers just wrote what they knew. You could basically throw out historical and science fiction, for starters, plus a whole lot else. Just how many authors, screenwriters and TV writers have been serial killers?

But how do you write about a world you haven’t lived in? Write what you’re passionate about, what intrigues you, and prepare to do a lot of research. You’ll also need your novelist’s imagination, a healthy dollop of intuition to fill in the gaps, and plenty of confidence that you can pull it off.

My novel “Skin of Tattoos” is about an immigrant family who leaves a war zone of guerrillas in Central America and ends up in a war zone of gangs in Central Los Angeles. Much to his family’s dismay, the protagonist Mags gets involved in a gang with some inevitable consequences, such as a prison stint. When he gets out, things really go sideways for both himself and his family.

How did I delve into this foreign world? First, I should say that I was a journalist, and the idea was sparked by my interviews with former gang members in El Salvador for a magazine story. I lived in Latin America for nine years so I knew that culture pretty well and speak Spanish.

Years later, when I moved to Los Angeles, I worked for The Associated Press and my urban affairs beat involved writing about inner-city neighborhoods. I remembered my idea for a novel about the trap of gang life, and was amassing knowledge.

I interviewed people involved with gangs in various aspects, plus people who were directly affected by gang activity. One of those interviews led to a nonfiction book about community peacekeeping in gang neighborhoods. “Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence” involved even more interviews with experts and former gang members. As I drove around these neighborhoods as a reporter, I absorbed details like the proverbial sponge.

To get more personal details about this culture, I read every memoir written by former gang members I could find. They were a fantastic firsthand source. I read books about gangs themselves, devoured news stories, watched movies and TV shows about gangs, which were great as visual and dialogue aids. I found online dictionaries of gang slang.

I stopped and started the novel many times, repeatedly losing my confidence as I began to realize the depth of the venture I’d taken on. But in the end, I persisted, and I’m glad I did even though it took years to finish the project. I love that book and all the characters.

Maybe I’ll even do a sequel.

Christina Hoag is a former journalist for the Miami Herald and Associated Press who’s been threatened by a murderer’s girlfriend, had her laptop searched by Colombian guerrillas and phone tapped in Venezuela, hidden under a car to evade Guatemalan soldiers, posed as a nun to get inside a Caracas jail, interviewed gang members, bank robbers, thieves and thugs in prisons, shantytowns and slums, not to forget billionaires and presidents, some of whom fall into the previous categories. Kirkus Reviews praised Christina as a “talented writer” with a “well crafted debut” in Skin of Tattoos (Martin Brown Publishing, 2016), a noir crime novel. Her thriller Girl on the Brink (Fire and Ice YA, 2016) was named to Suspense Magazine’s Best of 2016 YA list. She also writes nonfiction, co-authoring Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence (Turner Publishing, 2014), a groundbreaking book on violence intervention used in several universities. Christina makes her home in Los Angeles and lives on the web at www.christinahoag.com.

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Suspense Writing: It takes a village (a guest post by thriller writer Sherry Knowlton)

5/1/2017

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After a too-long hiatus from my blog, I am delighted to be joined today by Sherry Knowlton, author of DEAD OF SPRING (2017). I asked Sherry to talk about how she researches her novels, and below she shares some terrific insights into how she balances authenticity and readability.

(Basically, how to keep your reader entertained while being accurate at the same time!)

In popular culture, authors are often portrayed as brooding figures who seethe with creativity. After long, pensive walks along a cliff (or dock, or meadow), the authors return to their garrets and type pages and pages of inspired prose.

For me, it doesn’t work quite that way. You’re more likely to find me writing in my sunroom in winter or in the gazebo on a nice summer’s day. And, I like to take walks, but I work out most of my plots in the car while I’m driving to yoga. Yes, there’s certainly a large element of creativity and inspiration involved in writing my Alexa Williams suspense series. But, much of my process involves a more mundane – although often fascinating-- task: research, research, research.

Some genres of fiction might not require much, if any, in-depth research. (Certain fantasy novels spring to mind.) But, I write contemporary suspense, and each of my novels also include a historical story that parallels and intersects with the main plot. So, I want the background details in both stories to be as accurate as possible to enhance the novel’s “believability” and credibility. Plus, I don’t want my readers to drift away from the suspense, distracted by a historical anomaly or incorrect fact. (Wait a minute. Would that Depression-era character really have said, “Awesome, dude”?)

I rely on some of my own experiences and knowledge of a topic or place as I write. But, often, I need to do further research to refresh my memories or obtain more specific information. My research follows two broad paths: learning from written, video and audio sources; and, interviewing experts.

My new book, Dead of Spring, deals with fracking and politics. The historical story takes place during the Three Mile Island nuclear crisis in 1979. The setting for the contemporary story is Southcentral Pennsylvania, but my protagonist, Alexa, also travels to Tuscany and Umbria. I live in Southcentral PA. I worked in Pennsylvania state government. I’ve been following the politics of fracking for years. I lived through the Three Mile Island crisis. And, I’ve spent time in Italy. Still, that experience was not enough. I needed to review a lot of source material to fully capture these topics in my book. These sources ranged from technical articles and regulations on fracking to news clips and newspaper articles from the Three Mile Island event to Italian justice procedures.

I might be able to get away with just delving into books and relying on the Google for my information. But, experts always add so much depth to my understanding of a topic. The acknowledgement sections in my novel are quite long because talking to experts has become a key pillar of my research process. And, I’ve been lucky to find subject matter experts on a wide variety of topics who have been very gracious with their time and expertise.

For Dead of Spring, I relied on a State Police trooper and several other law enforcement officers, a judge, a historian responsible for the preservation of the Pennsylvania State Capitol, staff from Pennsylvania’s Lt. Governor’s office, a regulator in the state’s Department of Environmental Programs, gun experts, and more. One of the most helpful experts I interviewed was a landowner in northern Pennsylvania who leased his land to a hydraulic fracturing company in the early days of the state’s fracking boom. He took me on a tour of both his lands and other fracking sites at different stages of development. He also walked me through his personal experience by showing me his photographs of the transformation of his property. A beautiful woodland that step by step by step turned into an acre of gravel and machinery. Pristine drinking water that now requires constant filtering just for showers and bathing. Battles with the energy company about compensation for various problems. His fracking tutorial was eye-opening.

Of course, research is only one aspect of the writing process...

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Research, Write, Research Again, Write Better... Guest Post by Author Elena Hartwell

4/24/2016

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I'm delighted to be joined on my blog today by author Elena Hartwell. Elena writes a great series that features a private investigator, and I was curious how she does her research to make her books (and detective) authentic.

I have a very eclectic work history. I’ve been an auto mechanic and a university professor. I’ve stage-managed children’s theater and one illustrious summer I delivered phone books.

What I have never done, is work as a private investigator.

So what do I write? A mystery series about a private investigator.

Nothing ruins a story more than having a character do something that you know they would never do in the real world. The downside of being an author is a whole lot of your readers know more than you do about an aspect of the world you’re creating. The upside is a whole lot of people in the real world love to talk about their areas of expertise.

To research for One Dead, Two to Go, I used a wide variety of methods. I read PI Magazine, a trade magazine for the industry. I read non-fiction books by private investigators, which gave insights into the real world of investigations. And I’ve asked private investigators about specific questions that came up during a draft.

My most useful resource has been a police detective with the Issaquah Police Department. Incident Commander Diego Zanella has been incredibly generous with his time. The best part of my experiences interviewing him is he doesn’t just answer my questions he also makes suggestions about things I haven’t even considered. His insights and ideas have been instrumental in the shape of books one and two, and I will be meeting with him about book three.

My process is to write the full draft of the book. Then I read through it and highlight every place where I have a specific question about how homicide investigations work in the real world. Then I sit down with him and go through my scenarios, jargon, legal issues, and how people behave — in his experience — in various situations. I love it when he says, “You’ve got that exactly right,” but I learn a lot more from, “Well … no … it doesn’t exactly work that way.”

Then I go back through and rewrite for accuracy. Usually these changes are minor, but sometimes it requires a major fix on my side. Changing a location for a scene or the outcome of an interaction or the behavior of a character. We try to keep my protagonist from out and out breaking the rules, but we happily let her bend some. It is, after all, fiction, and that means we get to have a little fun.

Usually a few more questions come up after I do the rewrite and I meet with him again.

Everyone I’ve ever interviewed in all my years as a writer has been generous with their time and knowledge. Prior to becoming a novelist, I worked as a playwright. I’ve written extensively about areas in which I have no personal experience: veterans, PTSD, combat, colony collapse disorder, dementia, and once a glass factory in the Midwest. For each of these projects I visited locations where my work was set to get the full flavor of the landscape. I spoke to experts in their fields, American veterans from Viet Nam and the Middle East, journalists covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I read a lot of non-fiction in the topics I’m researching. I also have experts read early drafts for accuracy. For book two, Two Dead Are Better Than One, I’m researching some specific psychological conditions, and I’m very lucky to have two beta readers who worked as therapists for over fifty years combined.

Insights from people in the field are invaluable, not just for fact checking, but also to give you paths to travel down you didn’t even know could be on the map.

Research before and during your writing process, that’s my suggestion. Before, to get you started and during, to fact check as things arise. But at some point, you also have to trust you’ve done what you can and let it out into the world. You will probably make a mistake, everybody does, but a reader who loves your work will still enjoy your book. And it gives them something to talk to you about at your next book signing.

Elena Hartwell worked in theater as a playwright, director, producer, and educator before turning her attention to fiction. Her Eddie Shoes Mystery Series starts with One Dead, Two to Go. Followed by Two Dead Are Better Than One and Three Dead, You’re Out. Elena lives in North Bend, Washington, with her husband, their dog Polar, and cats Jackson and Luna. She loves to spend time with her hubby and their horses Chance and Jasper, the world’s greatest Arab and the best Palomino Paint on the planet. For more information, please visit www.elenahartwell.com

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"Research as Siren"--a guest post by author M.A. Richards

4/16/2016

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I asked author M.A. Richards on my blog today, to share his thoughts about doing research for his work-in-progress. (Note, he writes these as A. M. ben Yitzhak).

(Hint: he couldn't quite borrow the Dead Sea Scrolls from the Israel Museum, but he did the next best thing...)

Qumran (Source: Israel National Parks)

Research is such a Siren…

Okay, I’ve never lashed my body to a mast and filled my ears with beeswax before firing up the laptop (in the old days, it was easier to build dramatic tension if you were striding up the stairs toward the wooden doors guarding the entrance to your local library, like hometown cousins of Scylla and Charybdis), but I have thrown myself off a cliff into the adventure of discovery – sometimes just for the sake of learning!

I’m not talking about looking for relevant statistics for Professor Cudlip’s “Theory of Infinity” course, either. I’m talking about feeling the burn in your frontal lobes, counting your pulse up to 200-plus beats per minute, experiencing the joys of carpopedal spasms. There’s something forbidden, even illicit, about digging into history. You might know where you will start your explorations, but you have no idea where you will end up.

Perhaps I’m a voyeur by nature…or an eavesdropper…or just a busybody, but the headlines of 2016 (ISIS, Republicans, North Korea, Wall Street), in my opinion, pale beside the questions lurking in the shadows of history (Did Oswald act alone? Did FDR know the Japanese plans to bomb Pearl Harbor? Did Stalin poison Lenin?) Or perhaps I’m a conspiracy theorist…

I know for sure that I am a schizophrenic. I must be…I write under two names. M. A. Richards is the author of a spy novel series featuring Nathan Monsarrat, a former deep cover operative with the CIA – the first novel, CHOICE OF ENEMIES, launched in January 2016 while the second offering, A THOUSAND ENEMIES, will be available in November 2016 (both published by Sunbury Press).

I also scribe historical fiction as A. M. ben Yitzhak. Currently, I’m conducting research on the Zealots, the group of breakaway radicals who fled Jerusalem during the Roman rule of the Second Temple Period to live a more pure life in the barren Judean wilderness…and fought the Empire to a standstill from 66 to 132 AD, when the last of the Zealots, led by Shimon bar Kochba, bled to death in the desert south of the Dead Sea.

To conduct historical research on a secretive group that lived two thousand years ago demands familiarity with the writings of the period…so, you need (1) access to the original materials (if you ever ask the Israel Museum to borrow the original – not digital - Dead Sea Scrolls for a few days, you’ll hear a really rich laugh) and (2) you need to read Latin, Accadian, Aramaic, and a few other “dead” languages. I suppose you could trust someone else’s translations, but then you are dependent on someone else…

There is another roadblock, which might be a blessing, the more I think about it: so few original texts were written two thousand years ago. I can rely on the aforementioned Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, and other apocryphal writings (e.g., the minor prophets), but the scholarship of this period is severely limited and, unless you’re on a first name basis with the Witch of Endor, it would be tough to interview Judas of Gamala, Simon bar Giora, Menahem ben Judah or any of the other original kana’im and siqari’im – the founders of the Zealots.

A third difficulty refers back to the opening of this epic…research is such a Siren! It’s addictive! Impossible to stop! I can’t tell you how many times I shut down the stacks in local and university libraries. At least, the internet never sleeps, but unless you induct your spouse into the Eleusinian Mysteries, chances are good that the time you spend researching the daily habits of the Zealots will do nothing for your marriage and family life.

Faced with so many challenges, what’s a historical novelist to do (and I’m not talking about agents and editors shaking their heads and informing you that the market for Zealot fiction is incredibly, infinitesimally tiny)?

Travel! Read the State Department warnings…and ignore them. Listen to your family and friends…and ignore them. Read the newspapers and watch the twenty-four cable stations…and ignore them!

You wanna write about the Zealots? Go to their home. Stomp around their ancient stomping grounds. You probably will not discover a missing cache of Dead Sea Scrolls in the unexplored caves of Qumran, but you will absorb the zeitgeist of the period as you stumble over sandstone boulders, tread on red desert poppies, and quaff liter after liter of tepid water beneath the broiling desert sun.

You don’t have to go the fully Monty, either…you can sleep not in a tent beneath clear, star filled skies but in an air conditioned hostel that offers hot showers and a fantastic breakfast of yoghurt, cheese, olives, bread, fruit, and vegetables. After a few weeks of following in the footsteps of the Zealots, you will have collected enough ambiance to fill the pages of a historical novel and a wonderful appreciation for the amenities of the twenty-first century.

When you’re back home, having made amends with your spouse, family, and employer, when you’re sitting in front of your laptop with English translations of Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls piled on your desk, when you launch your fingers against the monolithic blank digital page…you will always have your best ally by your side: your imagination.

After all – it’s not history. It’s historical fiction.

M. A. Richards is the author of the Nathan Monsarrat
international espionage novels. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater Studies from Connecticut College and his Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

During a career as a Cultural Attaché in the Department of State that spanned more than two decades, he served in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Lagos, Moscow, Seoul, Tel Aviv, and Washington, D.C. He also served at U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu as the Special Advisor to the Commander. He speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, and Russian. M. A. divides his time between Palm Beach and Tel Aviv, where he indulges his passions for motorcycles, photography, and archaeology.

Visit www.MARichardsBooks.com to learn more about M. A. Richards and CHOICE OF ENEMIES.

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How much research is "enough"? An excerpt about Easter from A Death Along the River Fleet

3/26/2016

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Probably one of the most frequently asked questions I get from people seeking to write historical fiction is this: How much research should I include in my historical novel?

And my reply, which may sound more flippant than I intend, is just this: Enough to tell the story.

I've written elsewhere about balancing historical accuracy and authenticity. So, I thought today I'd given an example of how I seek to have my characters interact with historical details, hopefully without just dumping my research on my readers.

I could have picked any passage, but in honor of Easter, I picked an excerpt from my forthcoming novel, A DEATH ALONG THE RIVER FLEET. In this, scene Master Aubrey has just returned from selling pamphlets (unsuccessfully) on Maundy Thursday, (known in other parts of the world as "Holy Thursday.")

There were a couple of factual details about Easter that I wanted to bring up in the scene. First, since the Middle Ages, there was a tradition in England that on Maundy Thursday, the monarch would give money to the poor and wash the feet of twelve poor people. [Indeed, while the etymology is not certain, the word "Maundy" may have come from the Latin world mendicare ("to beg.")] But we know from the diarist Samuel Pepys, in 1667, King Charles II opted against the practice that year, asking the Bishop of London to do it for him.

Second, there had been an ongoing debate about the moveable date of Easter--some scholars of the time insisted that the date should be the same each year, similar to how Christmas was always on December 25.

Third, in general, I wanted to allude to the fact that England was on a different calendar (the Julian Calendar) than Catholic nations like France and Italy, which had adopted the calendar created by Pope Gregory (the Gregorian Calendar).

I couldn't use all the research I had at my fingertips, but I tried to work in a few of the more salient points within their trade as the printers and sellers of books. So you can see what details I managed to include...

John Pell, Easter not mis-timed (1664) Wing / 395:11

Master Aubrey laid his pack down. “I sold a few. I went to Whitehall to see the King wash the feet of the poor people, but the Bishop of London did it on his behalf.”

The printer seemed a bit disgruntled. It had long been the custom for the monarchs of England to wash the feet of twelve men and women, as Jesus had washed the feet of the Apostles before the Last Supper. Having the Bishop of London take on the task instead of the king clearly irked him. Sometimes Lucy suspected the printer had Leveller sensibilities and liked it when the royals took on more mundane responsibilities.

“Which pieces did you bring?” Lucy asked, changing the subject. In truth, she was always intrigued to know how the packs got decided. Master Aubrey had a knack for knowing what to sell to attract a crowd that she desperately hoped to learn for herself one day.

“Could not very well sell murder ballads and monstrous births on Maundy Thursday, hey? Brought along John Booker’s Tractatus paschalis and John Pell’s Easter Not Mis-Timed. Too many of them, it seems. Only the sinners’ journeys, like the one you wrote about that Quaker, sold today.”

He kicked the still-full bag, looking in that moment a bit like Lach, causing Lucy to hide a smile. A rare miss for Master Aubrey. Most people did not care how the date of the moveable holy day was affixed in the almanacs each year. Nor did they care why Catholic nations celebrated Easter and Christmas on different days than they did in England.

I'm sure some readers might think that I have provided too much detail here, and other people think I have not offered enough. But, for me, this was "enough to tell the story."

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Question from the Reader Bag--How do English Nobles address each other?

8/15/2015

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I received a query from a reader yesterday that gets at the many meddlesome and troublesome questions that writers of British historical fiction inevitably face--How do nobles address each other?

"...I just wanted to know: if the oldest daughter of an earl was going to soon be marrying the oldest son of another earl, how would they address one another? The setting is 1860s London, if this helps answer my question. I have read many websites and guide-books that explain how the peerage would be addressed by various people in various situations, but I am having trouble finding information about two people, both children of earls, who are engaged to be married. Would they be more casual with one another? Or would it be inappropriate to address one another without their appropriate title? Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you." --Maryam.

This is indeed a tricky question. I know something about the forms of address in 17th century England, but I didn't want to assume what was common or expected in the 1660s would be the same 200 years later, in the 1860s. So I threw this question out to the lovely and talented Sleuths in Time, who have spent a lot more time than I have thinking about this question.

So, first, the basics. According to Tessa Arlen: "The eldest daughter of an earl would be called Lady Susan; that would be the extent of her title until she marries. If she were to marry an ordinary man she would be called Lady Susan and then his surname: Lady Susan Blogs for example. The eldest son of an earl might be given an honorary title of his father's of a lower rank this would be given to him until he inherited his father's title. For example, his father who is Roger Parker, Earl of Bainbridge might bestow the honorary title of viscount on his eldest son. So the son's name and title would then be Denis Parker, the Viscount Lord Winslow. It is also important to remember that the Earl of Bainbridge would have a family name, in this case Parker."

This seems pretty straightforward so far, right?

Tessa continues: "I can't imagine why this young couple would call one anything other than by the first names when they were alone together. And if they are English the usual terms of endearment! If they were together out in society Lady Susan would be referred to as the Vicountess Lady Winslow and her husband would be the Viscount Lord Winslow and they would be announced as Lord and Lady Winslow. When Lord Winslow's father dies and he inherits the earldom he will become the next Earl of Bainbridge - and be called Lord Bainbridge and his wife would become the Countess of Bainbridge. The order of precedence can be very confusing - even for Brits. So tell your friend to follow this pattern and she will sound like she knows what she is talking about!"

Excellent advice!

Alyssa Maxwell also commented: "Sometimes the son and heir would be called by his courtesy title without Lord in front of it, as in Brideshead or Bridey as friends and family called him in the book." She also directed us to Jo Beverley's Guide to English Titles in the 18th and 19th centuries, a very helpful resource!

As Anna Lee Huber further notes: "In the case of an earl, he usually does have a lesser title (viscount or baron) he can grant his eldest son as a courtesy, but it's also possible he doesn't. (Author's choice since it's fiction.) In that case he would be called Mr. Parker by his fiancé in public, Denis in private. The rules for daughters & sons of earls are slightly different. Daughters of dukes, marquesses, & earls receive the honorary Lady before their first name. Only sons of dukes & marquesses receive the honorary Lord before their first name."

And to round us out, Ashley Weaver says, "I have always found [Laura Chinet's] site really useful for reference. She has little charts and everything!" [I will say, however, that what Laura Chinet describes for the 18th and 19th century may be different from 17th century conventions. In my research, I have seen many letters between family members that use endearments, like "My dearest Anne." So it stands to reason that if they use such intimacies in written letters, they would do the same in private conversations. There is a formalization of speech and manners that happened in the mid 18th century that was not as pervasive in earlier centuries-SC].

Ultimately, in my opinion, this comes down to an accuracy vs authenticity kind of question. I think writers of historical fiction should try their best to be as reasonably accurate as possible, but ultimately their focus should be on telling the best story possible, without jarring the reader.

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The Release of a Masque of a Murderer! What's behind it all anyway?

4/13/2015

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I'm so happy and honored to say that my third historical novel, The Masque of a Murderer, officially launches today, April 14!

And while I may not be quite as giddy when my first novel, A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (2013) launched two years ago--because nothing can ever compare to the release of a first novel--I'm still as loopy as I was last year, when From the Charred Remains (2014) entered the world.

Recently, in preparation for the launch, I've been answering a lot of fun and interesting questions about The Masque of a Murderer (the historical background, the story and characters, and my writing process etc). So, I thought I'd do a quick round-up here!

I welcome you to:

Learn more about what inspired my historical mysteries in general, and The Masque of a Murderer more specifically

Discover the difference between a 17th century Masque and a Mask (and why I titled my book as I did)
Read an interview with Lucy Campion, printer's apprentice
Explore the world of the penny press and murder ballads and last dying speeches
Discover why women might wear the dreaded scold's bridle and how that device features in my book
Learn more about 17th century Quakers--and the tensions that surrounded them
Follow Lucy Campion through A Day in the Life (giving testimony at a trial, no less) (post coming soon!)
Discover the most difficult scenes for me to write (hint: it has something to do with Lucy's two love interests)
Find out if The Masque of a Murderer passed The Page 69 Test
Learn something about my writing process
Tell me if what I know about publishing makes any sense, and what was different this time around
Share in my excitement over this MADE IT MOMENT!

Thanks so much for sharing this journey with me!!! And I appreciate all the bloggers and reviewers who hosted me, including those through Amy Bruno's Historical Fiction Virtual Blog Tours!

And I'm always so grateful to the wonderful people at Minotaur, especially Kelley Ragland and Elizabeth Lacks, and my agent David Hale Smith, and of course my wonderful alpha reader, Matt Kelley!!

(and now, I turn my attention back to A DEATH ALONG THE RIVER FLEET, due out April 2016!!!!)

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Restoration Playhouses-An amazing reconstruction

10/28/2014

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Reconstruction of Lincoln's Inn Fields

While I work on my copy edits of The Masque of a Murderer, I thought I'd post something about Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater, which plays into my third novel. Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater interested me because it was one of the playhouses that King Charles II built in 1661 after he was restored to the throne.

Ironically, it was not originally intended to be a theater, but a tennis court. (You can see the long rows of box seats on either side where an audience would have watched a match). The Lisle Court only became a theater in 1662, before being temporarily closed during the plague in 1665. [There may also have been a murder that occurred there, but somehow that tale has only recently resurfaced :-) ]

In doing my research, I came across the work of Steve Bouler, a theater professional and academic, as well as being an extremely talented designer of virtually reconstructed theatrical playhouses.

It's hard to express how immensely helpful these reconstructions are to a researcher. Since so many of these Renaissance and Restoration playhouses are now gone, we must rely on extant sketches that can be difficult to track down,and even more difficult to interpret.

I know I spend a lot of time looking over faded sketches with teeny print, trying to figure out how everything fits together. But when I came across these reconstructions, I gained a far better sense of how plays would have been staged (and received). You'll understand when you check out Bouler's amazing panoramic reconstructions! Check it out!

Image: http://historicalplayhouses.com/Lincoln_s_Inn_Fields.html

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Writing about Murder Knocks Twice

From 1667 London to 1929 Chicago...

MURDER KNOCKS TWICE IS EXPECTED TO LAUNCH
April 30, 2019.

Writing From Passion--A Guest Post by Christina Hoag

Suspense Writing: It takes a village (a guest post by thriller writer Sherry Knowlton)

Research, Write, Research Again, Write Better... Guest Post by Author Elena Hartwell

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MURDER KNOCKS TWICE IS EXPECTED TO LAUNCH April 30, 2019.

Susanna Calkins

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MURDER KNOCKS TWICE IS EXPECTED TO LAUNCH
April 30, 2019.