No, this isn’t the beginning of a new cozy series. And no, I’m not a detective in real life. Just a writer of mysteries. Medieval, Tudor, and Sherlockian mysteries, if you want to get technical. A reptile who solves crimes works on cold cases. Heh. Harley is a twenty-seven-year-old Mojave Desert Tortoise. We got her … Read more
Why is it that screenwriters and producers feel that a movie “based on actual incidents” or calling itself “historical” is allowed to play fast and loose with the facts? I can tell you straight out that any book that purports to be based on “actual events” or any other historical novel for that matter, can’t … Read more
I was listening to mystery author Laura Lippman on the radio a long while back and she said something that was rather an epiphany for me. She writes bestselling crime novels and I guess I would consider them the “literary” kind in the same sense that a “literary novel” is one that appeals to a … Read more
England. The mere name conjures up images of castles, long rolling plains of green, ancient stone structures, knights, kings, pageantry of a different age, stone walls and thatched cottages. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tolkien. Magical in every sense of the word. And growing up in a household of rabid Anglophiles certainly set me on an inevitable course … Read more
I remember being on a panel in one of my first Bouchercons with authors Sharon Newman and Laurie King, and since we all wrote historical mysteries, the discussion naturally rolled over to “authenticity vs accuracy.” When you write historically, history is king. You never change the history to serve the plot, it’s always the other … Read more
“Hey buddy. C’mere. Wanna buy a mystery?” Yes, it feels a little like that when, as an author, I’m set up with a little table in a bookstore with piles of my books. Sometimes I’m in the front of the store (better), but sometimes in the back (deadly). These kinds of gigs are murder whether … Read more
Sometimes I think there’s too much information these days. It’s a good thing that it’s at our fingertips, but winnowing out the wheat from the chaff is the hard part. When I started writing to sell some thirty-four years ago, writing historical fiction at the time, I researched what I could. But it was no substitute … Read more
I’ve been immersed in history all my life. My parents were rabid Anglophiles, stuffing our bookshelves with historical novels, works of nonfiction, and having discussions at the dinner table about the British monarchy. I can definitely name more kings and queens of England than American presidents. I had my own literary relationship with Geoffrey Chaucer … Read more
Steampunk seems to be a state of mind, an aesthetic. One person’s steampunk isn’t exactly what the next person pictured. Makes for an uneasy genre to write. Nevertheless, much like porn, you know it when you see it. A lot of folks have wondered what this term means. More commonly, it refers to a subgenre … Read more
I was a mere child when the Beatles hit America, but my sister was three years older (a tween) but she was the one excited about the Beatles and that excitement filtered down to me (baby sister syndrome; always wanted to do what older sister was doing). She bought the Capitol Records when they came … Read more