Nigella and O’Leary
The Shared Memory Connecting Me to DI Nigella Parker
I was once asked during an author interview whether I see anything of myself in the characters from And by Fire? My answer was an unequivocal yes. I feel a very deep connection to the heroine in my novel’s modern timeline, DI Nigella Parker of the City of London Police. One that I created by…
Read Morel 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 MorePoint of Ignition: Where the Great Fire of London REALLY Started
For precisely 350 years, everyone in England believed that Pudding Lane was THE London hotspot—the place, on the property of Thomas Farriner’s bakery, that the Great Fire of London sparked. Then a historian and House of Commons Clerk said nope, not so. Yes, the Great Fire began—as generations of British school children had learned—on the…
Read MoreA Flat with a View: Ni’s place in Bankside
In And by Fire DI Nigella Parker enjoys a posh lifestyle. Not, to be clear, on her salary from the City Police of London (I am writing fiction, not fantasy), but because she comes from a wealthy, Oxbridge educated family. Central to her daily life is a flat in Bankside purchased with money inherited from…
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