Castle Shade
Castle Shade Readalong—a Facebook Discussion
New year, new opportunities…new Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes coming soon! With The Lantern’s Dance going on sale next month, my publisher and I thought it might be fun to hold a Castle Shade readalong, to remind us all of where our dynamic duo are coming from and to set us up for the new…
Read MoreNoblesse Oblige
I’ve been putting together a book discussion guide for the Castle Shade book club kit (like the ones we did for Riviera Gold and Island of the Mad) and wanted to include a question about the idea of noblesse oblige. So I did…but I have to wonder what kind of conversations that one will prompt.…
Read MoreBlood Countess? Or Strong Ruler?
(Two weeks to Castle Shade! And here’s background of one of the people mentioned.) Elizabeth (Erzébet) Báthory was the daughter of a prominent noble Hungarian family, born in 1560. As a child she suffered from seizures, possibly epilepsy. She was educated, as only the highest levels of women would be, including several languages including Latin…
Read MoreFamily Reunion
In the summer of 1914, two branches of a powerful and affectionate family came together in the Black Sea resort of Costanța. It was a summer day in the middle of July, and this would be both a family holiday and a meeting of the heads of two neighboring states. One family travelled down from…
Read MoreMaking Hay in Transylvania
I love finding some ordinary part of life that is so vastly different in a foreign land. Such as the simple matter of how to store hay for the livestock for the winter. As Russell and Holmes travel through Transylvania towards the village of Bran, they see a rural landscape that is both familiar…and very…
Read MoreMeeting Queen Marie
I met Queen Marie during a trip to Eastern Europe in the fall of 2018. My friends who own the Poisoned Pen bookshop in Scottsdale talked me into it. Not that it was difficult. They said that they were going and asked if I wanted to join them and I had never been on a…
Read MoreTwo Months to Castle Shade!
You get two Mutterings today–because not only is it the anniversary of The Meet, but it’s also two months until Castle Shade appears on shelves and e-readers. Yay! Over the next couple of months I’ll be sharing various aspects of the writing process of the story, from travel to research to creation of the map–…
Read MoreMeeting the characters
I’m working my way through the final proof pages of Castle Shade (out in three months—hooray!) …which means reading every word aloud, watching for mistakes and, more important, listening for oddities. I can only manage 50 or 60 pages a day, but I am finding small errors on nearly half the pages, even though it’s…
Read MoreThe Senses and Riviera Gold
A recent discussion about my next contract (and how long it would be before I could jaunt off to Paris, sigh…) had me reflecting on how dependent I am on the use of the senses to provide what writers call the “telling detail.” I have a scene in Castle Shade (no, I’m not going to give…
Read MoreNew book, new category
Last week, just a few days later than I’d promised my editor, I finished my first draft of Russell & Holmes #17, Castle Shade. Every book has measures of its progress: the proposal, the first draft, cover art—and when I have the cover and a buy-link, I can open up a web page. But one…
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