Need Christmas Present Idea?

Need a Christmas present or hostess gift for someone who likes to read? Consider giving a journey back into the Roaring Twenties via my Roaring Twenties mysteries, set in 1924 with a vaudeville and silent movies backdrop. The first in the series, THE IMPERSONATOR, won the national award for Best First Crime Novel in 2012, the second, SILENT MURDERS, had a terrific review in the New York Times. 

Find them in your local bookstores, libraries, or online at amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.

Take one missing heiress, an unscrupulous uncle, and a young vaudeville performer fallen on hard times; add several murdered girls, a mysterious Chinese herbalist, and a handsome bootlegger; then move from the seamy world of Prohibition-era vaudeville to Oregon’s rugged coast, and what do you have? A formula for suspense, as Jessie finds herself torn between her deceitful charade and her determination to find out what really happened to the girl she is impersonating.

 

 

In the second Roaring Twenties murder mystery, Jessie trades her nomadic vaudeville life for a modest but steady job in the silent film industry. She quickly learns that all Hollywood scorns the Prohibition laws: studio bosses rule the police and gangsters supply speakeasies everywhere with bootleg hooch and Mexican dope. When a powerful director is murdered at his own party and Jessie’s waitress friend is killed for what she saw, Jessie takes the lead in an investigation tainted by corrupt cops. Soon tangled in a web of drugs, bribery, and greed, she finds herself a prime suspect as the bodies pile up.

The third in the Roaring Twenties mystery series takes Jessie from silent films back into the world of vaudeville to track down a performer with something to hide. At the request of her silent film star boss, Mary Pickford, Jessie uses her vaudeville talents to investigate the murder of an extra by a Hollywood actress already sentenced to death for the crime. Her inquiries lead to the discovery of a blackmailer and more than a dozen actors facing ruin or even death if their secrets are exposed. If the convicted actress is innocent, then who killed the blackmailer?

The fourth book begins in the fall of 1925 when a projectionist is gunned down in the theater booth. The killer flees to the balcony and vanishes. Jessie’s investigation succeeds where the police fail, thanks to her vaudeville skills and connections. A killer seeking revenge for an Old World massacre is targeting a group of Balkan immigrants, one by one. Jessie deduces the reason the killer is never apprehended—but fails to spot the killer until it’s almost too late. A young deaf girl whose mother has gone missing plays a significant role.

 

 

 

 

STOLEN MEMORIES, below, is not part of the Roaring Twenties series, although it is set in that decade, in France and England.

A brutal attack along the banks of the Seine leaves a young Englishwoman close to death in a Paris hospital without a memory in her head. She soon comes up against a vengeful husband who accuses her of the theft of priceless art, the French gendarmes who have linked her to a murder on the Riviera, and a scorned lover who is trying to kill her. The husband, who believes his wife’s amnesia is faked, spirits her away to an ancient chateau in the French province of Champagne, where prehistoric dolmens and standing stones dot the fields and caves hewn out of limestone are used for more than storing wine. For weeks he tries threats, bribery, and hypnosis to pry the truth out of her. As her memory returns piecemeal–some corroborating, some clashing with what she is told–she struggles to establish her identity. But who is trying to poison her and bury her in an avalanche of slate? Who is laying a trap for her deep within the wine caves of Champagne? The story takes place in 1928 against a backdrop of pagan ritual and an early Christian midsummer festival known as the Fires of John the Baptist.

 

 

Dr. Bernardo still exists! Who knew? Not I.

In my gothic mystery, Stolen Memories, I mention a man named Dr. Barnardo (d. 1905), who founded a charity for children in England in 1866 with orphanages. My fictional character, Claire, spent some time in one of Barnardo’s orphanages in London, and this plays a significant role in her story. 

Still, while I knew about the late doctor’s deeds, I was unaware that the charity was still going strong. At least, this is what I saw from the window of the bus I was riding last week in Scotland. We were vacationing in Edinburgh, taking the bus to Leith to visit the Royal Yacht, when we passed several of these establishments. They seem to be something like Goodwill or Salvation Army, selling donated goods to raise money for the charity. According to Wikipedia, this is the UK’s largest children’s charity. I was surprised to see this link to my story, which is set in the 1920s. 

 

A Surprise Nomination

I was so surprised when I got a phone call telling me STOLEN MEMORIES was a finalist for a prestigious Daphne award, I must have sounded like an idiot . . . I kept repeating, “What award? Are you sure?” The caller was sure. The book is one of five finalists in the category of Historical Mystery/Suspense. The winner will be announced on July 13-16 in San Diego at the Romance Writers of America conference. I don’t imagine my book will win–after all, it has only a 20% chance–but I’m thrilled it’s a finalist.

The award is named for the late Daphne du Maurier, one of my favorite authors (Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, The Birds, Jamaica Inn, etc.) 

How long did it take you to write that???

This is a question authors hear at almost every book signing or speaking engagement they attend. “How long did it take you to write that?”

Like most authors, I have trouble answering. The first problem is how to measure writing time. Few authors write on a 9 to 5 schedule, 5 days a week, which is sort of the standard American work week. Most authors have day jobs–they teach or work for a newspaper or manage an office or work in a hospital–so their writing occurs during lunch hour, in the evenings, or on weekends. I’ve never met a writer who tracks his or her hours! 

But the toughest issue is the definition of “writing.” Is going to the library for research considered “writing?” Is reading new publications by authors who write in the same genre considered “writing?” What about sending emails to an agent, spending two days at a writing conference, preparing a talk for an author dinner, or traveling to a book club meeting to discuss your latest publication? Is revising a manuscript to the editor’s requests considered “writing?” And does the time spent brainstorming over titles, choosing cover images, perusing the author’s Facebook page, interviewing sources, and packing books in padded envelopes and driving them to the post office count? Hardest to measure is the inevitable down time: waiting 6 months while your agent submits the manuscript to various publishers, waiting for next month’s critique group meeting to learn how your peers react to your latest chapter, or waiting a year for the book to actually appear on the shelves. And what about the many manuscripts that are partially completed and set aside for a month or a year or a decade, as the author tackles something else?

Over the years, I’ve concluded that this question is really, “How long ago did you start this book?” So that’s how I answer. “I started in the summer of 2009 and it was published in 2015.” I amend that by saying what I’ve learned from other authors: that one year is a fairly good estimate of how long it takes most writers to write most books. Sure, some churn our two or even three in a year, but they are balanced by the ones who take ten years to write a single one. 

Fifteen years after I began the first draft of my latest novel, it celebrated its official birth on Feb. 15, 2016. 

I began writing this story back in 2001 and over the years, I revised and added to it too many times to count. It went through my two critique groups, my first agent, my second agent, and my editor before I felt it was something I could be proud of. During that time, I wrote and had published seven other books, but I never let go of this one. 

A brutal attack along the banks of the Seine in 1928 leaves a young Englishwoman close to death in a Paris hospital, without a memory in her head. She soon comes up against a vengeful husband who accuses her of the theft of priceless art, the French gendarmes who have linked her to a murder on the Riviera, and a scorned lover who is trying to kill her. The husband, believing his wife’s amnesia is faked, spirits her away to an ancient chateau in the French province of Champagne, where prehistoric dolmens and standing stones dot the fields and caves hewn out of limestone are used for more than storing wine. But who is trying to poison her and bury her in an avalanche of slate? Who is laying a trap for her deep within the wine caves of Champagne?