Archive for June 2022
l Smell Smoke! My Special Connection with DI Parker—Two Signature Scents
I suspect most mystery writers have something in common with their detectives. Multiple things actually. We can’t help it—real life informs fiction and leaches into it. Personally, I believe it’s necessary to connect with our main characters in deep and even intimate ways. Only then can we see and portray them as fully human. When…
Read MoreLooking for an Hour’s Worth of Bookish Fun to Watch?
Looking for an hour’s worth of bookish fun to watch this weekend? How about this . . . Goat communes, documentary film making, fire tornados, London’s 1-square mile and its 2 separate police forces, botany, women in academia in the 1920s, and how fully-formed characters have a life outside of detecting (even if some of…
Read MoreToo Damn Hot!—the Great Fire of London reached unimaginable temperatures
In And by Fire, Detective Inspector Nigella Parker has a fear of fire deeply rooted in her childhood. But even people who generally aren’t pyrophobic would be terrified by the heat generated by London’s Great Fire of 1666—legitimately so. How hot did things get inside London in September of 1666 when, in just under five…
Read MoreMore Reader Praise for AND BY FIRE
It’s been less than one month since And by Fire released and I continue to be awestruck by the reader love my novel is receiving. Today to celebrate, I am sharing some of my favorite recent review quotes, illustrated by yours truly. Pleasing the Anglophiles . . . As a Yank, getting the tone right…
Read MoreIt’s UK National Crime Reading Month!!!
Hey UK friends and readers—it’s time to CELEBRATE crime. Crime Fiction that is. Today, June 1st, marks the start of the United Kingdom’s annual “National Crime Reading Month,” an event spearheaded by the UK Crime Writers’ Association! National Crime Reading Month (and we REALLY need one on this side of the pond) “aims to bring…
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