Today’s bonus bit for SILENT IN THE SANCTUARY comes courtesy of an Italian blog that was kind enough to interview me on the release of the follow up to SILENT IN THE GRAVE. Why did you choose to set the house of the Marches in an Abbey? Belmont Abbey must be a very suggestive place,…

At her Father’s ancestral estate of Bellmont Abbey for the holidays, Julia Grey is piqued to discover that her erstwhile partner in detection, Nicholas Brisbane, has also been invited along with his fiancee, Charlotte King. Her own love life has been complicated by the presence of Count Fornacci, an ardent young Italian who takes the…

Oh, this one was fun, chickens! It was also TERRIFYING. SILENT IN THE SANCTUARY was my first experience in writing with abject fear, and for that reason it was a highly educational writing experience. When I finished SILENT IN THE GRAVE and sent it off, it began a two-year circuit of various publishing houses before…

Today wraps up our feature on SILENT IN THE GRAVE with a few extra goodies. First, do you know how the character of Grim came to be? Well, when I was in London doing research for the first Julia book, I visited the Tower of London—I’m actually incapable of going to London without hitting the…

Haven’t dipped a toe into the water yet? Then today’s post might just tempt you. It’s the first chapter of SILENT IN THE GRAVE: The First Chapter London, 1886 Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. The Duchess of Malfi To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely…

So our two month long extravaganza begins today, fittingly, where it all began for me–with SILENT IN THE GRAVE. I had been writing novels for fourteen years without being published when I hit upon the idea of an aristocratic lady detective bent on solving her husband’s murder. (The notion of a particularly attractive half-Roma professional…