Taking time off

 

Haven't read the Irene books yet?
Here's the first in the series.

My great good news is that my longtime mentor wrote me today that the forthcoming Irene in Chicago Culinary Adventure is, in his opinion, the best of the Irene series. I laughed a bit—he seemed to think my writing is maturing. If so, it’s about time. But I am pleased, so watch for Irene Deep in Texas Trouble this spring. Take a diva faux French chef and set her down in the midst of Cowtown—what could possibly go wrong? A wedding supper interrupted by murder, kidnapping, a runaway couple—and Irene is in the middle of all of it, the prime suspect in the murder. Once again, Henny and Patrick must save Irene.

Having sent that manuscript off, I’m taking a break and have been social—until today when I reverted to recluse status. Wednesday, in all that rain and fog we had in North Texas, friend Carol and I drove to Dallas for lunch with Fran Vick, our longtime good pal on the Texas publishing scene. It was a great reunion—Fran was one of the world’s good people, and I am happy now to be able to envision her in her new setting, a retirement community in Dallas. We had lunch, met one of her friends, and gabbed about good times and old days. Fran can always make me laugh, and she is as full of good spirits as ever, in spite of hard times. I will admit being on the freeway in the rain made me a bit nervous, but Carol is a cautious and careful driver who goes to Dallas at least once a week and knows the city. Where I would have been hopelessly lost, she delivered us on time to the front door of Fran’s building. Fran was waiting with a transport chair for me—only trouble was it had no footrest, so while Carol pushed, I had to hold my legs straight out in front of me. Fran said she hoped my legs were a lot stronger than hers. But it really worked out okay.

Lesson learned: I have truly become addicted to my routine. The trip to Dallas didn’t disturb it all that much—I did a little work before we left, got my nap when we came home, but the truth is I did not do much else the entire day, unless fixing dinner for the family counts.

Thursday I broke my routine again but for another delightful social hour: my friend Subie had knee surgery, and her sister Diana came to help for a few days. Thursday morning Diana walked over to my house for tea, and we talked and laughed and had a good time. Subie and I have been close friends for years (like forty?) but I never knew Diana well. Just before our awful ice storm—was it ’20 or ’21? —Diana was here for a visit, and she and Subie took me to Arlington where I gave a talk to a women’s group. That somehow sparked a friendship, so now when she visits, I find we have lots in common. She and her husband live in a cottage (converted garage) on the property of one of their children, just as I do. So we have on-site grandparenting and tiny houses and all kinds of things to talk about. Such fun. Again, my routine went out the window, but both days it was well worth it. I probably should do that more often.

Today I was back in my routine but taking it slow and easy, with no deadline pressure. I lingered over the online news of the day, cobbled together lunch and dinner from whatever was on hand. We are overdue on groceries—I thought I placed a Central Market order yesterday, but when Jacob went to pick it up, they didn’t have it. It was still sitting in my computer. I have an explanation, but I’m sure my children will whisper about the onset of senility. Tonight, I pretty much confronted an empty refrigerator, but scrambled eggs are always good. Somehow, with the current panic about eggs, I have two dozen in my fridge. Egg salad, anyone? Tonight, I will read a bit.  

How will you spend Super Bowl Sunday? I plan to look for the Puppy Bowl in the early afternoon and in the evening, I’ll channel surf looking for a Souper Bowl. Was it PBS that used to have those programs opposite the football thing? I read tonight that Chef Gordon Ramsey will have a new competition show with amateur chefs immediately following the game, but I’m thinking that may be a little late to watch a cooking show. At any rate, I am not one to watch the whole game, which interests me not at all, just to see the commercials, though I always love the Clydesdales. I remember some fairly raucous Super Bowl parties way back when and look back in wonder—was I really part of that? These days I’m so glad to be home with my books and maybe my TV.

A birthday and my week that wasn’t

 

Blatant self promotion to lead off a post about cozy mysteries
with the cover of one of my own, but Dame Agatha
doesn't need the sales, and I do.

Happy Birthday today to Dame Agatha Christie, the queen of cozy mysteries. Christie, who was born in 1890, died in 1976 at the age of 85, having published sixty-six mysteries, fourteen short story collections, six novels under a pseudonym, and the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which played in London from 1952 until 2020. In my world of mysteries, she’s like a mother figure, with a major award named after her.

For many mystery authors, the occasion of Christie’s birthday sparks a nostalgic look back at the books that drew us to the genre. No surprise that many cite Nancy Drew as their inspiration, but there was also Cherry Ames, the nurse, and Trixie Belden, detective. I remember, before that, the Bobbsey Twins and the Little Colonel Stories—no, they’re not mysteries but they were books that fed my early interest in reading. And after Nancy Drew, I was drawn to the New Orleans/Mississippi River/plantation life novels of Francis Parkinson Keyes.

Confession: I never have read much of Agatha Christie. I am not as much drawn to the British mysteries as some readers are. Sometimes, because of my love of Scotland, I try to read some of the better-known Scottish mystery authors, but they tend to be gloomy—must be all that dark and dreary weather in the Highlands. There are a few cozy mysteries with a Scottish background that I have enjoyed—the Paislee Shaw mysteries by Traci Hall (a single mom eking out a living with a yarn shop) and Paige Shelton’s Scottish Bookshop Mysteries.

What I have read and thoroughly enjoyed is a book about Dame Agatha—and the time she disappeared for two weeks. I recommend The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, by Marie Benedict.

Pretty much though, I’m a fan of American cozy series. Although some authors, more likely thriller than cozy, are finding success with stand-alone novels, the conventional wisdom in mystery circles is that you draw readers to the characters in your series so that they want to read more about them. I have read and enjoyed most of Sue Grafton’s Alphabet Mysteries, several of Margaret Truman’s mysteries, and most of Ellery Adams’ Book Retreat Mysteries. Some of my favorite series have ended—Julie Hyzy’s White House chef mysteries and her Manor House Series were both work-for-hire, and then the publisher shut them down, Hyzy did not own the rights to the characters—a blow to many readers. These days I jump with delight if I discover a Goldy Schultz book I haven’t read or a culinary mystery by Diane Mott Davidson. My current favorite series are Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles herbal mysteries and Ellen Crosby’s Wine Country Mysteries.  

I have some mysteries on my to-be-read (commonly known as TBR) list—Leslie Budewitz’s Bitterroot Lake, her venture into thrillers (I like her Spice Shop Mysteries and Food Lovers Village Mysteries) and Vicki Delany’s new Deadly Summer Nights, set in a Catskill resort.

 I’ll need those books because this was to be a busy week, but I am wondering if I’ve offended the gods of calendars or something. All the fun things I had scheduled have cancelled, even my neighbors’ weekly Tuesday happy hour fell through. Tonight, I was to go to a birthday celebration with three longtime and dear friends, but one thinks she was exposed to Covid and cancelled, so we postponed until we could all be together. Tomorrow I was to have lunch with Melinda, who worked with me at TCU Press and who is a special person, but her elderly mom fell and broke some bones. What was not cancelled? A trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get an official identification card now that I no longer have a driver’s license. Sort of like going to the dentist.

How’s your week going?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Saturdays are for reading

 

My thrown-together from leftovers charcuterie
for old friends who understood and enjoyed 
a lazy Saturday happy hour.

Saturdays always seem like relaxing days to me. During the week, I have few deadlines—most self-imposed—but still they are there, and I feel the obligation to put in six hours at my desk, doing whatever is on the top of the pile, from the work-in-progress to the neighborhood newsletter to the email I promised to send to someone who wants to publish her first cozy.

But Saturday—ah, that’s a day without deadlines. I can sleep later than usual (if Sophie will let me) and piddle around the cottage, doing small chores I put off. It’s amazing how easy it is, even in a small space, to put off hanging up clothes or such.

But today was a good Saturday. Our new handyman came and replaced the torn screen on my patio doors—it’s one of those free-hung that allows Sophie to come and go at will, but the old one was badly patched and torn. Meanwhile, I filled out the contract for serial publication of my Blue Plate Café Mysteries and felt like I had accomplished the work for the day. So it wasn’t self-indulgence to spend much of the day reading.

Several mysteries series are among my favorites, and I think I’ve read most of them. But occasionally, with great glee, I run across a title that I haven’t read. I’ve done that a couple of times with volumes in Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles series, and recently I was delighted to find a title in Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand Bookstore series that was unfamiliar to me: Dead Days of Summer.

If you don’t know the series, it features Annie Darling, owner of the Death on Demand bookstore on Broward’s Rock, an island off the South Carolina Coast, and her adorable, devoted, and wealthy-by-inheritance husband Max Darling. Max is charming and as laid back as Annie is work-driven. In this book, Max is framed for murder, arrested, and agonizing in jail, while Annie is doing just what he fears—exposing herself to great danger in an effort to free him. Hart’s books are always good, and this series features for regular readers a familiar cast of characters. But Hart has ramped up the suspense in this one, and it is truly a page-turner, nail-biter that has kept me engaged most of the day. Carolyn Hart is truly a master of the cozy genre.

And speaking of mystery matters, I see a new trend developing: the serialized novel. Only it’s not new—it’s at least as old as Charles Dickens and probably older. Serialized novels were the craze in the nineteenth century, a fad popularized by Dickens when he published The Pickwick Papers in nineteen installments. While novels were serialized before his 1836 publication, Dickens name is most associated with the trend.

In keeping with the idea that nothing is new or what goes around comes around, serialization is coming back. Several companies, including the publishing division of Amazon, are offering programs for authors. A company that has had some success in serializing romances, is turning to mysteries and has approached me, along with many others. I liked the fact that a personable representative wrote me, rather than Amazon’s apparent attitude of “Come to us if you want to do this—we aren’t soliciting.” So I have tentatively suggested we start with the four novels in the Blue Plate Café Mysteries. They tell me they prefer an entire series, because if they once get a reader interested, they can keep them reading.

So, I’m taking a chance—not a big gamble—and we’ll see what works out. When I went back to compile statistics—word count, year of publication—on the books, I discovered notes on a fifth book in the series. Since I have a history of reviving once-dead projects, I’ll have to investigate that.

Meantime, excuse me, but I have to help Annie get Max out of jail.

Winding down

The cottage is chilly tonight. Eggnog in a crystal Christmas glass and a good book seem the perfect way to end the post-Christmas weekend, that suspended time between holidays when we’re all still recovering from Christmas. For me, it’s been a lazy weekend, with lots of naps and binge-reading on a mystery series I just discovered—Ellen Crosby’s Wine Country Mysteries, set not in California but in Virginia. The thing I love about series is that you immerse yourself in the fictional world, feel at home among the people, and it’s sometimes most pleasant to stay in that world through several books rather than venturing into the unknown of other fiction. I have several books on my to-be-read list, but for now I’m savoring wine and DC politics, a bit of romance, and a lot of intrigue.

I got myself into an unusual reading experience with the project called MysteryLovesGeorgia, supporting senatorial candidates Ralph Warnock and Jon Ossoff. I contributed an autographed copy of Saving Irene, the promise to name a character in a forthcoming book after a contributor, and a critique of thirty pages. The first two were fairly easy to handle—the book went off in the mail, and I wrote promising to name a character in Irene in Danger after the donor. But, ah! That critique! Turns out the manuscript is steampunk. Here’s a dictionary definition of steampunk: a retrofuturistic subgenre of science fiction that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Perhaps you understand now why it’s a subgenre that I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. And I’m to give a critique?

I am on my second read-through of the thirty-page sample, making meticulous notes mostly of questions that I think the writer must consider. I have no idea about the conventions of steampunk, so all I can do is suggest things to be considered. And insert a lot of missing commas, suggest some rewording in places, and hope that I can give the writer her money’s worth. Fortunately, my price was low.

Tomorrow being Monday, I have every intention of getting up, getting on with the day (washing my hair), and getting to work. No more frequent naps and long reading indulgences. I intend to be all businesslike. We’ll see how that works out.

Jordan and I did a long—and difficult—session of meal planning tonight. Who’s hungry, after all the food of this past week? And yet we have a lot of smoked turkey to deal with, so we landed on tortilla soup and a casserole with cornbread. I used to make a good leftover turkey casserole with white wine and noodles, but I somehow can’t see it with smoked turkey. And come New Year’s Day, we’ll eat ham and black-eyed peas. I have been amused by memes on Facebook which show a “mess” of black-eyed peas, with the plea, “For the love of God, eat two helpings, even if you don’t like them.” They are not something I grew up with, and I came to them slowly by way of making Hoppin’ John—which my kids instantly christened Hoppin’ Uncle John after my brother. But now I’m really fond of the peas—a second helping won’t be a problem. And pray God it will bring us good luck.

The weather is supposed to go downhill all week—a cold front tonight, rain all day Tuesday, and storms Wednesday and Thursday. Pray too that is not an omen for the New Year. New Year’s Day, so far, is to be clear, sunny but cold. I’ll take that any day.

And I’ll go to sleep tonight grateful that trump has signed the omnibus bills that were on his desk—or in his pocket. I’m not sure of his motivation, and I’m always leery of what con he has up his sleeve, but I am oh so grateful for those who were about to lose their unemployment insurance or have their evictions postponed. And shutting down the government? I’m not even sure what all that would entail. I know it’s happened, briefly, in recent memory, but I think everyone feared a prolonged period this time. So perhaps the entire country breathed a sigh of relief.

And now, on to 2021.

A Bookish Day

This is the blog I was too tired to write last night. Honestly, how can I be tired after a day of doing not much? The truth is I was reading a mystery I didn’t want to put down, and that sort of speaks for my day yesterday. It was bookish. So as you read, pretend it is last night.

After the heavy go of reading about Churchill and WWII I really longed for a good cozy (not cute!) in whose pages I could get lost. Thanks to Susan Van Kirk for A Death at Tippitt Pond. I did indeed get lost in the world of this novel and was reluctant to stop turning digital pages. The plot is not new: a young woman (in this case, forty-seven, not so young) finds out she was adopted as an infant and has now inherited a fortune from her biological family. The story opens with her having traveled from NYC to the mansion in the small, Illinois town where, apparently, she was born. And, no surprise—she is attracted to the single-again chief of police. Before you yawn and say, “Been there, read that,” let me tell you that Van Kirk takes these familiar elements and creates a compelling mystery. Did Beth Russell’s biological father really kill her mother that summer day at Tippitt Pond all those years ago? Why does someone keep breaking into the house, and how do they get in? Why is a stranger watching her house from the woods across the street?

Beth Russell, an independent researcher, is just insecure enough that you like her. Yet she’s bright and holds her own in a town where most people want her to go back to NYC. Other characters are equally believable, from Kyle the police chief, to the senator who looks to me like the bad guy. I haven’t finished this book yet, but I did stay up way too late last night reading it.

And I’m on the trail of a mysterious cookbook that a friend told me about. Catherine Morro, daughter of a TCU prof, herself a student until eye strain forced her to quit, apparently was known for chicken sandwiches which she sold from a now-disappeared local pharmacy. Here’s the strange part: in 1980, University Christian Church published a collection of her recipes. That’s my church, but so far, I haven’t found anyone who knows anything about it. And a church publishing an individual’s cookbook? I can imagine a collection of recipes from women in the congregation, but not one cook. I’m partly curious because Morro apparently made congealed salads, so popular in the day, by cooking in a water bath instead of using gelatin as I do. Thanks to Anne Kane for putting me on this trail.

And, finally, a nice find yesterday—a woman I knew several years ago as an administrator at TCU has retired from academic life and is writing a private investigator series of mysteries set in Harlem. I wrote her a note, she wrote back, and we exchanged a few emails, friended each other on Facebook. I hope to keep in touch with Delia Pitts. Check out her Ross Agency Mysteries. Brand new title is The Prince and the Pauper in Harlem.

Discovering Delia (does that sound like a book  title?) gave me a stray thought for these quarantine days. Maybe I should check in on Kelly O’Connell and see how she and Mike, Keisha and the girls are handling the pandemic. (That’s for you, Elaine Williams Gray!)

A blessed Palm Sunday to everyone.

Lessons in Reading and Writing

The other night I blogged about reading a cozy mystery that started off way too slowly. I’m here to apologize, sort of. I may have made a hasty judgment, but there are also lessons to be learned by both readers and authors. The action did start too slowly—I haven’t checked, but I bet it was at least three chapters until we discovered a body. Before that the reader was entertained with a Bible study group’s afternoon of board games and their all-day picnic. What I as a reader didn’t realize was that this was the fifth book in an established series, and many readers already felt comfortable with the characters. So maybe they were more interested in board games and picnics.

Lesson for readers: don’t start with the fifth book in a series. Go back to the first.

Lesson for authors: even if your series has an established audience, get right into the action.

After the discovery of the body, this novel, which I’m still not naming out of respect for the author, took off in a hearty manner. There were clues and red herrings, plot twists and turns and blind alleys. I was hooked to the extent that I read the last page reluctantly—I liked these people and liked being in their world (even if they did sing unfamiliar hymns scrolled on a screen—first time I ever heard a logical explanation of that: when singing, people raised their eyes heavenward instead of being alone, locked into the pages of a hymnal).

Long story short: I ordered the first book and found, to my joy, that the action started almost immediately. So now I’m a follower of the series.

Lesson for authors: series really matter a lot. If you can create a world that readers are drawn into, feel comfortable in, you’ve got return readers. I hope to capitalize on that in my future writing. I have seven books in the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, three in the Blue Plate Café series, and two now in the Oak Grove Mysteries. I’m well more than halfway through the fourth Blue Plate book, and I think I’ll stick to my three series for the foreseeable future.

A final note: Kudos to my unnamed author for thinking to set a mystery series in a Bible study group. The unexpected is one element of the cozy mystery—who expects all those murders to happen in Cabot Cove? Similarly, who expects a Bible study group to be involved in solving murders. Nice thinking out of the box.

Excuse me now. I’m in the midst of a really good mystery.

Waiting all summer for this day

August 15, 2017

Today is the day I’ve been waiting all summer for—cover reveal of my new novel, Pigface and the Perfect Dog (an Oak Grove Mystery). It’s my first full-length novel in over a year, and the first time I have revisited the college town of Oak Grove since The Perfect Coed was published three years ago.

Kudos to Sherry Wachter for the great cover, which I think matches the cover of The Perfect Coed in style and color. I’ve itched to share it with you for weeks, but when you sign up for a cover reveal, you’re pretty much bound to that date. So today’s reveal can be found at

http://readeropolis.blogspot.com/2017/08/coming-soon-pigface-and-perfect-dog-oak.html

English professor Susan Hogan and her partner, Jake Phillips, chief of campus security, return in this cozy mystery with an edge. Susan thinks she’s about to meet her maker when she confronts a rifle-carrying man, who looks like a pig, in a grocery store. Jake investigates the body of a young college student, shot in the back and found in an empty pasture. Aunt Jenny showers love on the new puppy a young man from the grocery gave her, but she feels she must get rid of that heavy collar.

 Trouble in Oak Grove begins with open-carry protestors in the grocery store and leads to a shooting, breaking and entering, threats, a chase, an attempted kidnapping, and a clandestine trip to the woods late at night. Will Susan Hogan land in trouble…or the hospital…again? Will Susan and Jake survive this as a couple? Susan is still prickly but she learns some lessons about life, love, and herself in this second Oak Grove Mystery.

Reader reaction to The Perfect Coed thrilled me.

Susan is a prickly character, and she doesn’t put up with any guff from her male colleagues, the cops, or even Jake. Aunt Jenny is funny and a great cook. I have a feeling all these characters will be returning for a sequel, so you’ll want to pick this one up now before you get behind. You won’t regret it.

—Bill Crider, mystery author

Few mysteries open with a single paragraph of eye-popping intrigue, but The Perfect Coed is full of such moments and its introduction is apt warning that readers will rapidly become involved in something far from mundane or predictable: “Susan Hogan drove around Oak Grove, Texas for two days before she realized there was a dead body in the trunk of her car. And it was another three days before she knew that someone was trying to kill her.”

—D. Donovan, Senior eBook Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Pigface, as I affectionately call this new novel, is available for pre-order on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Pigface-Perfect-Dog-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B073VSDKMH/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502833947&sr=1-1&keywords=pigface+and+the+perfect+dog in both paperback and ebook form. It will be available September 7.

For those in the Fort Worth area, there’ll be a launch party September 21, 5:00 -7:00 p.m., at the Wine Haus, 1628 Park Place Avenue. Cash bar, snacks will be offered, and fun will definitely be had. Ya’ll come celebrate with me, please. Many of you will get an evite soon; if you don’t hear by September 11, please let me know. Questions, comments? Write me at j.alter@tcu.edu.

The Lure of England

Please welcome my Wednesday guest, Marni Graff, the author of the Nora Tierney mystery series, set in the UK. The Blue Virgin, described below is first. Second is The Green Remains, which follows Nora’s move to Cumbria where she’s awaiting the publication of her first children’s book and the birth of her first child. When Nora stumbles across the corpse at the edge of Lake Windermere, she realizes she recognizes the dead man. Then her friend and illustrator, Simon Ramsey, is implicated in the murder of the heir to Clarendon Hall, and Nora swings into sleuth mode. The Scarlet Wench finds Nora once again involved in an investigation when a theatre troupe arrives at Ramsey Lodge and a series of pranks and accidents escalate to murder.

Graff is also co-author of Writing in a Changing World, a primer on writing groups and critique techniques. She writes crime book reviews at www.auntiemwrites.com and is Managing Editor of Bridle Path Press. A member of Sisters in Crime, Graff runs the NC Writers Read program in Belhaven. She has also published poetry, last seen in Amelia Earhart: A Tribute; her creative nonfiction has most recently appeared in Southern Writers Magazine. All of Graff’s books can be bought at Amazon.com or at http://www.bridlepathpress.com and are available as eBooks.

****

Choosing to set my mystery series in England was a deliberate choice, yet one I knew would present challenges. An admitted Anglophile, I always feel I’m coming home when I visit the UK, which is frequently but not as often as I’d like!

 My American protagonist is Nora Tierney, a Connecticut-born writer living and working in England. While I have Nora appropriate common Brit words into her language, like “loo” for a toilet and “buggie” for a stroller after years of familiarity, her voice has to remain distinctly American versus the other characters in the books. I read UK authors continuously to keep the cadence and slang of that country in my ear for my other characters. The influence of the Golden Agers I read in my teens sometimes has me using outdated slang, so I use my English friends as beta readers who help me to pump up the “Britspeak” and keep it modern.

Because of my lifelong affinity for England and its environs, I originally choose Cumbria, the county containing England’s glorious Lake District, as the setting for the opening of the Nora Tierney series. My visits to the land of Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter gave me a fascination for the area, one of the most beautiful natural areas I’ve ever seen.

            Then life intervened with an opportunity to study at Oxford, and I found myself in the hallowed halls of Exeter College, studying Wilkie Collins and Daphne Du Maurier, two of my favorite writers. Sworn in as a reader at the Bodleian Library, I was able to read the original broadsheet reviews of The Woman in White.

            Oxford is a jewel of a town encircled by the lush green countryside of the Thames Valley. Its mellow limestone “dreaming spires,” as described by nineteenth-century poet Matthew Arnold, change color with the light and weather. Magnificently preserved architecture reflects every age from Saxon to present, all exhibited somewhere amongst the federation of forty-odd independent colleges which make up the University of Oxford.

            This mix of “town and gown” is noticeable at once when visiting: The university has its dons lecturing in sub fusc, scouts bringing students morning tea, an historic tutorial system, and those forbidden grassy quads (with their tradition of only being walked on by dons), while the town has its own muddle of traffic-choked streets, packed with bicycles and pedestrians, pubs and shops. Both exist alongside green meadows with grazing cattle and rivers teaming with punters and canal boats.

            Small wonder then that I fell in love with the place. I could picture Nora here, too, and suddenly the idea for a new mystery, one that had Oxford at its heart, took over. I set aside my original idea for a Lake District manuscript and started writing The Blue Virgin, a combination of cozy and police procedural. Trying to clear her best friend, Val Rogan, of the suspicion she has murdered her partner, Bryn Wallace, Nora quickly becomes embroiled in the murder investigation, to the dismay of DI Declan Barnes, the senior investigating officer. And did I mention Nora is four months pregnant with her dead fiancé’s baby?

            I took great care to be accurate in describing Oxford’s history and the colleges, as well as the various locations and sites my characters visit. After all, this is the town that gave the world Lewis Carroll, penicillin, two William Morrises, and graduates spread across the centuries whose influences are still felt. And Oxford exudes mystery, as any Inspector Morse fan can tell you. I carefully described favorite student pubs, shops, and the wonderful Covered Market and tried to give the reader the sense of that ancient town, and how living in it affected Nora’s actions.

            When I was writing the book, I kept an enlargement of the town map taped to my desk--no sense describing a cobbled lane if I had the name wrong. I referred to research material, as well as my photos, so in the book my characters move within the real town, have tea at The Parsonage, and brunch at The Randolph Hotel. Only a few settings, such as Nora’s flat, are fictional. I found a local contact in the guise of the head of Oxford’s CID unit. It’s always amazing how helpful people will be to writers for a promise of getting their name in the acknowledgments page!

            When I left Oxford, I stayed in the Lake District for an additional week to gather information for Book Two in the series and took updated pictures to refresh my memories from my previous trips. I’d chosen the village of Bowness-on-Windermere on the shore of England’s largest lake for the next book and I talked to shop owners, visited pubs, and wrote down some of the Cumbrian slang I heard.

            By the time The Blue Virgin was in print, I had started writing The Green Remains, where I’d moved Nora to that Cumbrian setting. My local contact was a newly retired police officer from the Kendal Station, Cumbria Constabulary, and here I struck gold.

            Steve Sharpe grew up in the area, and is something of a local naturalist and fisherman.  Besides answering my questions about policing and proper titles for everyone from my detective to the pathologist, he gave me wonderful information about things like: what is in bloom in autumn? What birds would be around? What is the weather like at that time of year? Steve continued to answer my questions for the third book in the series, the recently published The Scarlet Wench.

            But I’m turning to another friend for the book I’ve just started to write. The Golden Hour finds Nora at a book signing in Bath for the children’s books she writes, and this time a friend living just outside Bath in the Wiltshire countryside will do the honors and be my contact for the town where Jane Austin once lived and where Peter Lovesey has his detective Peter Diamond do his policing.

            Wherever I send Nora next, I’ll travel alongside her, visiting my favorite places in my mind and through my photos, checking facts and weather, verifying seasonal issues and local police procedures through my email contacts. It’s a great way for me to get in a visit to my favorite place without ever leaving my desk, one of the nicest perks of being a writer.