Wherefore Art Thou Agatha?

Photo credit: http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/nostalgia/agatha-christies-mysterious-disappearance-continues-10080204

For the past ninety years, a real-life mystery has intrigued fans of the Guinness Record-holding best-selling author of all time. For eleven days in 1926, the Queen of Mystery herself, Agatha Christie, disappeared without a trace.

Most mystery lovers have heard this tale at one time or another, but if you haven't, the story goes like this: Thirty-six-year-old Agatha argued with her husband the evening of December 3rd, 1926, over his infidelity. After their argument, he left the house to spend the weekend with his mistress. Agatha put her seven-year-old daughter to bed around 9:30 PM, came down the stairs, walked out the door, got in her car, and promptly disappeared. She left her secretary a letter saying she went to Yorkshire, but her car was found abandoned in an old quarry in Surry.

Over the days that followed, a reward was offered, and a massive manhunt launched. One thousand police officers, 15,000 volunteers along with Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle and a spirit medium he hired all searched for Dame Agatha to no avail. 

Finally, eleven days after her disappearance, Agatha was recognized in the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire. The kicker? She registered under her husband's mistress's name. 

So why did she do it? Although two doctors diagnosed her as being in a fugue state of amnesia due to Agatha having no recollection of how she got to the hotel, several other theories persist. 

One theory suggests that this was the ultimate mystery plot and a possible cover-up for a plan to frame her husband for her murder! How Gone Girl! While I think this is far-fetched, who can argue that it's an incredible mystery plot? 

Another scenario is that Agatha's disappearance was a well-orchestrated publicity stunt with the bonus of making her philandering husband sweat. Nothing like a weekend tryst interrupted by a missing wife! This solution, either taken together (publicity and payback) or seperately, comes with one important question--would she do this to her young daughter? Not knowing her personally, I can't answer that one, but as a mom myself, I would like to think she wouldn't. 

The conspiracies for what happened during those eleven days are endless (Aliens!), but in my mind, I'm going with the doctors' diagnosis brought about by the stress of her husband's infidelity, her mother's death earlier that same year, and literary burnout. 

Although...there is a website that claims Agatha also dropped a letter to the Deputy Chief Constable of the Surry Police stating that she felt concerned for her safety. So, maybe she was setting her husband up? 

The world will never know. What are your thoughts? Leave us a comment below and let us know - and for fun list your favorite Agatha novel! Mine is And Then There Were None. 

P.S. This is my first post here at Inkspot, and I hope you enjoyed it. Deadly Dog Days, the first book in my Dog Days mystery series comes out November 8th. If you're a pet cozy mystery fan, add it on Goodreads or pre-order on all major retail sites!  

Until next time, happy reading!

Jamie Blair

Wrapping up the Press Push

 

By Tracy Weber

 

I'm finally wrapping up the big press push for my third Downward Dog Mystery, Karma's a Killer.  Check out some of my favorite articles and interviews.  From insider tips on writing and the path to publication, to photographic tours of pivotal settings in the book, to a character interview with Kate, the yoga teacher/sleuth in the series.  I've had a blast connecting with all of these bloggers and editors!  Check them out and  conduct your own interview by asking questions in the comments!  I love chatting with readers!

• Book Publishing Secrets: A fun interview about my path to publication and my advice to other writers. "Once you sell your work to a publisher, you give up both creative and marketing control. In return, you get marketing and editorial expertise, a little prestige, and a potential path onto the shelves of major booksellers. If you decide to self publish, you need to be more than a writer. Successful self publishers are small business owners who spend as much time editing, formatting, and marketing their books as they do writing them. It’s all about trade-offs."
• Beyond the Books: An interview with Kate Davidson, the yoga teacher/sleuth of my series: "Who could have predicted that three hundred pages after being attacked by a Chihuahua, I’d have come to peace with a repressed memory from my childhood and reconnected with a long-lost family member? And I even ended up with a new way to torture Tiffany! Nothing is more fun than that."
• It's Not Always a Murder: An article about Green Lake Park--a pivotal location in Karma's a Killer.  The photos alone are worth a look! "In the summer, the area near the lake’s shore is smothered with lily pads; its surface, dotted by boats. The path around its circumference is crowded with thousands of locals who flock to it each day. What better place to plot murder!"
• Read Your Writes: An article about my dog, Tasha, and the unique friendship she has with several local crows.  "I still don’t know what magical connection that first crow has with my dog, but I think it’s lifelong, in both animals. I’ll never look at crows the same way again."
• Straight from the Author's Mouth: An interview about publishing, priorities, and the business aspects of writing. "I write for three blogs, I’m on social media, I book blog tours, I do signings, and I attend conferences. I’m out wherever I can be, however I can be. I’ve yet to see a correlation of any single activity with sales, so instead I focus on having fun with whatever I’m doing."
• The Serious Reader: What kind of yoga teacher writes about murder? Most of my readers don’t practice yoga, which isn’t surprising. Reading immerses us in worlds we might otherwise never experience. I write murder mysteries, but I don’t expect my readers to be killers, either. ;-)
• Island Confidential:  An interview about writing, character development, and yoga classes from hell.  Even experienced yoga teachers sometimes teach the class from hell. The class in which everything goes wrong. You say right when you mean left; you say big toe when you mean bicep. You step on students’ hands and cell phones go off during Savasana. Then you look down to realize—or in my case, a student tells you—that your pants are not only unzipped, they are also on inside out.
• Blogger News Network:  An interview about writing and creativity:  "I get my most creative ideas outdoors while I’m walking or playing with my German shepherd, Tasha. I suspect the combination of fresh air, exercise, and being with the love of my life all conspire to get my creative juices flowing. Besides, you meet a lot of crazy people when you’re attached to the leash of an unruly, hundred-pound German shepherd. Sometimes, you just want to kill them."
• Kings River Life Magazine:  Detailed interview about the themes in Karma's a Killer and the life of a writer.  And a fantastic review!   "Despite the complex issues facing animal shelters and rescues, the novel never becomes too dark due to the wit and humor of the dialogue. The strongest attribute of this very engaging and smartly-plotted mystery series, though, is how the author successfully balances animal rights with dynamic human relationships."

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!

 

Tracy Weber

PS--all three books in my Downward Dog mystery series are now available!  Learn more at http://tracyweberauthor.com.  Thanks for reading!

Perils of the Writing Life, or, the Dreaded Technology Loop

By Lisa Alber

Today (Wednesday as I write this) I had one of those weird writing days in which I got no writing accomplished. So let's talk about this--distractions. Especially social media distractions. Am I totally off the wall when I say that social media can suck the souls out of us?

Yes? No? Maybe?

All I know is that when it comes to doing the author thing, social media is mandatory. We need to be extroverts -- at least on social media if not in real life. And I don't mind this, in a way. I kind of like communing with people through Facebook and Twitter.

The problem is when I go nutty with it. Today was one of those days. Here's the context: I'm a contributor in a book project called EIGHT MYSTERY WRITERS YOU SHOULD BE READING NOW, which includes a sneak peek (yay!) of WHISPERS IN THE MIST coming out in August. It's a great project, and I'm honored I was asked to participate.

This week promotion for Eight Mystery Writers exploded. We've got two guest blog posts up on premiere mystery blogs (Jungle Reds and Femmes Fatales), a Facebook party with giveaways and special guest Hank Phillippi Ryan, free days on Amazon this weekend to promote the heck out of, a new Facebook book page, a #mysterious8 Twitter hashtag we're bandying about.

There's just a lot of coordinating and social media posting and word-spreading to do everywhere. Here's one example of coordination. Isn't it cute? I'm no graphic designer but I pat myself on the back for whipping up this banner for the Facebook book and event pages.

Nifty--but that's more time away from the writing. Plus, let's not go into the three blog posts (including this post) that just happened to come due--bam, bam, bam--this week.

I'm curious, are there any readers or aspiring novelists reading this post? If so, I'm here to say that I and a lot of my writer pals are amazed that we get our books written!

I'm a tad distractible to begin with, so when a promotional period comes around, I'm likely to take to social media like a fiend. Something takes over my brain. My thoughts skitter about on the surface of things: gotta do a Facebook post, oh gotta retweet, oh gotta join the Jungle Red Writers conversation, gotta post the Facebook party announcement EVERYWHERE, gotta promote a blog post ...

I'm convinced that the brain on social media is a different brain that the brain on writing. I'm talking brain patterns, synaptic firings, everything. When I'm writing, I'm deep in my creative process. There's no turbulence. It's the deep ocean compared to the choppy surface of social-media brain.

I end up feeling spazzy and frenetic. Yet, I can't stop. All of a sudden it's noon, and I barely remember the previous four hours. (Check out this funny video from the television show "Portlandia.")

It's as if my brain succumbs to an addictive drug. Even if I manage to wrench myself away from social media, I'm still pretty useless because withdrawal sets in. I find myself popping back in to check on comments, or retweet one of the other Eight Mystery Writers's tweets, or whatever. I keep checking and re-checking. (P.S. The seven other contributors? Fantastic writers all. What a joy to find new authors to read, am I right?)

Please tell me I'm not the only one!

Today, the only way I could fully disengage was to leave the house. As luck would have it, a friend called. I was all over meeting up with him for happy hour. Get me out of here!

I'm not usually this bad, I swear. Today was just one of those days. Tomorrow I'll be better, I promise.

Do you get stuck in technology loops sometimes? What do you do to get out of them? Is it just a matter of becoming better at compartmentalizing and sticking to schedules? Or do you think the brain does succumb to something?

Creepy is as Creepy Does

Hi, I’m Eileen Rendahl and I’m new to Midnight Ink and to the Midnight Ink blog. My first Midnight Ink book, Cover Me in Darkness, is scheduled for release in December. It seems like a long way away, but in publishing years it’s about a nano-second.

The genesis of this story is something that has been bubbling under the surface since my childhood. In the quiet Midwestern University town I grew up in, a mother killed one of her children. What made this extra scary was that after killing one of her three children, she woke a second child to ask for help in killing the third.

I was about ten when this all happened. Grown-ups talked about it in hushed voices and stopped talking about it when kids came into the room. We still heard about it, but I doubt what we heard was all that accurate. To give you an idea of what my home life was like, it had never occurred to me that a mother would hurt her child. Mothers were the source of comfort and care and love. The idea that a mother could be anything else was terrifying. Over the years, I’d think about it and wonder what it would have felt like to be the kid who was asked to help. That was terrifying, too.

A lot of that wondering went into creating the character of Amanda Sinclair, heroine of Cover Me in Darkness. Like the case from my childhood, a mother killed a child and sought help from a second child to kill a third. Unlike the case from my childhood, Amanda’s mother was caught up in a cult-like religious group called Children of the Greater God or COGG.

When Amanda’s mother commits suicide in the mental ward where she’s been locked up for the past decade, Amanda isn’t surprised. But when she looks through the personal belongings left behind, it seems her death may be related to the upcoming parole hearing for COGG leader Patrick Collier. Amanda must dig into the past and expose her own secrets as well as her mother’s to get to the truth.

To write this book, I’m definitely digging into my dark side. It’s always been there. I doubt I would have been as fascinated by a murder as a ten-year-old otherwise. How about you? Do you have a creepy side? Is there something from your childhood that makes you want to take a closer look at it?

All the News That's Fit to Print - from 1888

Edith here, working on a short news article about Quaker Midwife Rose Carroll in 1888 Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Grove Cleveland was President of the country, which now proudly featured thirty-eight stars on its

flag. The Great Blizzard of 1888 hit the east coast hard in March, with hundreds dying.

Textile mills filled downtown Amesbury, and boardinghouses full of mill girls from New Hampshire farms or western Massachusetts villages kept the mills running. The news in early April wasn't good for the bustling town.

The world-famed carriage industry was in shambles after many of the factories burned to the ground on Carriage Hill one night. Midwife Carroll finds herself in the middle of the arson investigation. Here's a draft of my news article.

Local Quaker Nabs Arsonist

Area midwife Rose Carroll apprehended a local man attempting to set the Friends Meetinghouse aflame Sunday morning.

The Chronicle has learned that Carroll, twenty four, ran from the worship service after she deduced the identity of the man, Stephen Hamilton, whom she thought was the Carriage Fire culprit. She’d planned to go directly to the police station to inform them. Instead, she caught Hamilton red-handed starting a fire at the back of the thirty-year-old wooden structure on Friend Street.

She raised the alarm within, and members of the church joined her in putting out the fire and restraining Hamilton, son of mill owner Cyrus Hamilton. Famed poet John Greenleaf Whittier assisted in the effort.

Will young Hamilton also be charged with setting the Carriage Fire? Detective Kevin Donovan was close-mouthed about the investigation. “Miss Carroll is to be commended for her insight and bravery,” he offered instead.

Readers: What do you think? Did Stephen set the big fire, or? What else do you know about 1888 history?

Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries from Midnight Ink, among other series. The first book, Delivering the Truth, releases April 8 and is available for preorder wherever books are sold. You can find her at edithmaxwell.com, on Facebook, and elsewhere.

BOOK LAUNCH MONDAY | Deirdre Verne and Drawing Blood

Your friendly neighborhood web mistress here--Lisa Alber--to introduce our first guest author since we relaunched the InkSpot blog. We hope you like the new look and our new schedule! Please welcome Deirdre Verne, whose latest novel, Drawing Blood comes out today! ~Lisa

Bad Habits, Good Books by Deirdre Verne

Quirky characters, strange settings, unsavory professions—maybe you’ve read one of my books? As a new writer, I was initially taken aback by early reviews until I realized that my unconventional characters had become my calling card. A big thanks to Kirkus Reviews for being the first to spot my fondness for the peculiar: “A dysfunctional family to die for...” and “an oddly effective sleuthing team” are two Kirkus quotes I happen to love. 

But my all-time favorite review comes from a Goodreads fan who recently wrote “The regular characters are a quirky but lovable bunch that form a supportive family.”

If you’re not familiar with my cast of characters, my protagonist, CeCe Prentice, is a Dumpster diving artist who lives on a self-sustaining farm with an extended clan of far-out friends. There’s an eco-friendly clothing designer, an MIT dropout, CeCe’s wealthy but soused mother, an eccentric doctor, the manager of the town dump, a pawn shop owner and well, many more.

Apparently it takes a village to solve a mystery and CeCe seems to have a habit of recruiting the more interesting folks in town.

If you’re wondering where I find inspiration for the off-beat, I’d be happy to reveal my source. For years, I’ve watched boatloads of junk television, although I reject the term “binge watcher.” In fact, there’s a method to my research that involves a steady diet of low quality programming, dished out on a nightly basis. Portion control is my guide as I spend no more than ten minutes on any one channel before clicking frantically through shows for a minimum of two hours.

Too short, too tall, too heavy, too much skin, too many tattoos, too many coupons, controlled substances, kids or just plain too much junk in your house? I love it all, every last weird and wacky display of humanity makes my heart beat that much faster. And it’s not just the visual ridiculousness of it all. I pay careful attention to the words, the phrasing and the terminology of these people that live such unusual, yet real lives. A few hours in front of the tube and I’ve got reams of dialogue dancing through my head. I’m like the cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead, but without the hassle of world travel.

As if publishing a mystery series wasn’t reward enough, I’ve also discovered an unintended side-benefit to my television addiction – writing off my cable bill. A stretch you say? Absolutely not. I long for a call from the IRS so I can hand an unsuspecting auditor the complete Sketch in Crime series as evidence of my legitimate expenses. My day will come!

In the meantime, I invite you all into the weird and wacky world of CeCe Prentice, criminal sketch artist, Dumpster diver and big-hearted friend. You can catch CeCe in Drawing Conclusions (2015) and Drawing Blood (2016).

Deirdre Verne is a mystery author and college professor. Her AirBubble Blog unravels the mysterious, weird and often hilarious happenings on both sides of the classroom door. There are helpful tips for students and teachers. Taboo topics such as missing class, favoring students, sleeping in class and cheating are all covered in an honest open forum. You can find her online here:

www.deirdreverne.com

https://www.facebook.com/deirdreverneauthor/

https://twitter.com/DeirdreVerne

Dying for New Sins for Old Scores

There are few things more satisfying as an author than completing a book. Typing “The End” is both a thrill and a moment of, well, sadness. You’ve exhausted yourself on your hero’s latest caper, spent sleepless nights second-guessing your plot, and worn yourself out with hours and hours of edits, proofs, discussions, and all manner of craziness trying to get it just right. Then, “The End” hits the the last page and you sit back, contemplate the story, and wonder what you’ll do with your characters next. And for me, there’s that moment of panic—I’ve got a dozen outlines in my folder for new books, five or six with my current series and characters, and not enough hours in my life to write them all. ARGGGGGG! What to do? (Oh, God, what to do???)

Then, the dark clouds part. The light shines. The music plays. I know just what to do. It’s simple, really. Very, very, simple.

I start a new blank page, copy and paste the template of my title page, set up the footers and headers, and start with CHAPTER ONE of a new novel … and I’m off. Another adventure awaits. Someone has to die. A hero has to catch a killer or track down a spy. There is no choice. No one can stop it. Murder and chaos must reign once again.

Oh, wait. I better close my last book and save it into the back-up before I start this one. Oops.

For those of you wondering, there are three more Tuck mysteries planned and I’m going to start one of those this coming summer. For now, I’m finishing up my ninth novel, a thriller about domestic terrorism, and I’m reviewing New Sins for Old Scores, the first of a murder mystery series I wrote a couple years ago (my agent is shopping this around as we speak).

New Sins was originally completed about three years ago after my agent, the amazing Kimberley Cameron, signed me for Dying to Know. She wanted a second series with a historical subplot and a paranormal storyline.  It took me four months to craft New Sins for Old Scores, the story of Richard Jax, a Virginia BCI detective saved by the spirit of a disgraced OSS operative, Trick McCall, who was killed in 1944 on the very spot Jax was ambushed. My website summarizes New Sinsthe best:

Murder, like history, often repeats itself. And when it does, it's the worst kind of murder.

Detective Richard Jax was never good at history. But after years as a cop, he was about to get the history lesson of his life.

After Jax is gunned down and lay dying at an old inn while on a case, he's saved by Captain Patrick "Trick" McCall—the ghost of a World War II OSS agent—who’s been waiting since 1944 for the chance to solve his own murder. Soon, Jax is a suspect in a string of murders—murders linked to smuggling refugees out of the Middle East—a plot similar to the World War II OSS operation “Operation Paper Clip” that brought scientists out of war-torn Europe. With the aid of a beautiful and brilliant historian, Dr. Alex Vouros, Jax and Trick unravel a seventy year-old plot that began with Trick's murder in 1944. Could the World War II mastermind (code named Harriet) be alive and up to new sins and old scores? Is history repeating itself?
 

Together, Jax and Trick McCall hunt for the link between their pasts that will lead them to Washington's elite and to one provocative, alluring French Underground agent, Abrielle Chanoux. Somewhere in Trick's memories is a traitor. That traitor killed him. That traitor is killing again.

Who framed Richard Jax and who wants Trick's secret to remain secret? The answer may be, who doesn't?

As I began re-reading New Sinslooking for opportunities to refine and improve it, it struck me that my evil mind had recreated the foundation of Tuck Tucker’s Gumshoe Ghost series—a traditional murder mystery surrounding a historical subplot that culminates into a grand, surprising ending. Oh, but in Tuck’s stories, he’s a dead detective telling the story in the first-person, er, first-spirit, and in New Sins, the story is delivered in third-person and shares both Richard Jax’s and Trick McCall’s point of view throughout the story. Similarly, there are scenes with a historic subplot that follow Trick’s 1944 OSS operation that lead to his death and disgrace. Those chapters form the connection between past and present and lay the foundation for several characters involved in the modern murder plot for which Jax is the prime suspect. In the end, it’s the settling of the past’s old scores that sets the stage for present-day new sins.

I’m looking forward to digging back into New Sins for Old Scores and updating the storyline. I began reading it late one evening last week and found that I still love this story and characters. I’m looking forward to finding a home for it on bookshelves.

Strangely, while I’ve written eight novels and four of them are mysteries with a paranormal twist, I never set out to be a mystery writer. With my life and background in anti-terrorism and security consulting, I see myself as more of a thriller writer. I’m finishing a new thriller now and penned three before Dying to Know, the book that was accidentally written for my daughter, and that also became my first published work. Just yesterday at a book signing for my latest release, Dying to Tell, I responded to a question about my work saying, “No, I’m really a thriller writer …” then I felt silly and added, “Except I’ve written four of these mysteries all with a paranormal subplot. So, I guess I am a mystery writer. Yeah, that’s me, a mystery writer.” Nothing proves that more than my return to New Sins for Old Scores in the middle of working on my thriller. And while New Sins has both the mystery and thriller touch and feel, it’s certainly more mystery.

How twisted is my mind when I’m working a thriller and a mystery at the same time? Don’t answer that. I already have my own diagnosis.

So as winter progresses into spring, I hope time does not get in the way of finishing both new projects in a  timely manner. I’m anxious to get them out into the light of readers and fans. New Sins is chomping at the bit for an audience.

As you can see, I have more projects than time. If only I hit the lotto or found the lost Templar treasure I could write full time and make my life complete. But alas, I don’t play the lotto and have no clue where the treasure might be. (I know for certain it isn’t under my back deck.) So for the forseeable future, I’ll be consulting by day and writing novels by night.

Hopefully, New Sins for Old Scores will be out there for you to read this year or next. In the interim, I’ll finish my thriller and launch into one of the other dozen novels I’ve planned.

What choice do I have?

We’ll again chat next month …

Tj O’CONNOR IS THE 2015 GOLD MEDAL WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS BOOK AWARDS FOR MYSTERIES. He is the author of Dying to Know, Dying for the Past, and Dying to Tell, available in bookstores and e-books from Midnight Ink. He is currently working on a traditional mystery and a new thriller. Tj is an international security consultant specializing in anti-terrorism, investigations, and threat analysis—life experiences that drive his novels. With his former life as a government agent and years as a consultant, he has lived and worked around the world in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and throughout the Americas—among others. He was raised in New York's Hudson Valley and lives with his wife and Labrador companions in Virginia where they’ve raised five children. Dying to Know is also the 2015 Bronze Medal winner of the Reader’s Favorite Book Review Awards, a finalist for the Silver Falchion Best Books of 2014, and a finalist for the Foreword Review’s 2014 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award.

Learn about Tj’s world at:

Web Site:  www.tjoconnor.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/tjoconnor.author
Blog: http://tjoconnorbooks.blogspot.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7148441.T_J_O_Connor

Why Dogs?

Hi, InkSpot fans,

My Inkspot blogs appear on the first Monday of each month.  How fun that the first Monday of this month is also the first day of the month!

I was motivated by Tracy Weber's recent InkSpot blog about her lifetime love of animals and how they inspired her writing to consider my own love of animals, especially dogs.  Yes, I know they inspire my writing.  Of the four mystery series I write or have written, every one of them features dogs. 

In my first mystery series, the Kendra Ballantyne Pet-Sitter Mysteries that I wrote for Berkley Prime Crime, Kendra was a lawyer who lived in the Hollywood Hills with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Lexie.  At the time, I was a practicing lawyer, and I still live in the Hollywood Hills with my two Cavaliers, including Lexie.  I haven't tripped over murder victims, though--except in my mind.

My second series, the Pet Rescue Mysteries, were a spin-off from the Kendra books.  And now I'm writing two series simultaneously for Midnight Ink which both feature dogs: the Superstition Mysteries, where the protagonist runs a pet boutique, and the Barkery & Biscuits Mysteries, where the protagonist is a veterinary technician who bought a human bakery and turned half into a barkery where she sells healthy dog treats.

In addition, one of the other two series I write, romances for Harlequin, consists of paranormal romances for Nocturne, featuring Alpha Force, a covert military unit of shapeshifters.  Yes, many are werewolves and they happen to have cover dogs while they're in human form.

So why dogs?  I'm not sure why I started loving them, but I do know I convinced my grandfather to buy me my first puppy from a pet store when I was eight years old.  I learned a horrible lesson then about pet stores.  My mother took Cuddles to a vet when I was in school the next day, and she had distemper.  We returned her to the store and learned that all the dogs there had distemper.  In those days we couldn't even bring a dog into the house for a three-month quarantine period after that, and I used the time to research breeds.  My next puppy was a Boston Terrier from a qualified breeder, and I had Frisky for quite a while.

And then, years later, on my first trip to LondonI saw my first Cavalier King Charles Spaniel on the Underground.  The rest was my history.  I hunted for a Cavalier puppy when I returned to the States and have been owned by them ever since.

Dogs have inspired other aspects of my life, too, and I absolutely love writing about them.  In fact, I'm always dreaming up new story ideas but don't have time to follow up on all of them.  Someday, maybe...  But meantime, I love writing my current mysteries and hope to for a long time.

I actually could tell you more about my love of animals and how they inspired me--and that can be a topic for another blog!