Last spring I was on a panel at Malice Domestic, and Margaret Maron was moderating. She was asking questions about JUST KILLING TIME, the first book in this series. She wondered if anyone in my family was a clock maker, since my protagonist Ruth Clagan had such a palatable love for clocks. No one in my family is a clock maker. But research for this series has made me passionate about them, and I’m happy if that spills onto the page. What has my research taught me? Being a clockmaker takes years of learning and apprenticeship. Like writing (or acting, or playing a musician), talent is important. But as important, maybe more, is spending time learning your craft. I admire people who dedicate themselves to learning as part of how they make their living. Especially when actually making a living isn’t a given. Clocks are beautiful on the outside. If you go to the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol Connecticut, you will see dozens and dozens of clocks and watches. Some clocks are “just” clocks, but most are also pieces of art unto themselves. Cabinetry, painted faces, choice of clock hands, size, style. Details matter on clocks, and…

I’m always fascinated by the American fascination with royalty. Why did the colonies fight so hard to get rid of a king, only to spend the next two hundred years wishing they had one? Well, maybe the fantasy aura of royalty is better than the reality. This series came into being because my editor had been urging me to write a big, dark standalone. I kept toying with serial killers, child molesters and terrorists and finally asked myself whether I wanted to spend six months in such company. The answer was a resounding NO. So a silly idea crept into my head. What if my sleuth was a sheltered, upper class British girl in the 1930s—what if she was a member of the royal family, not allowed to work, to go out unchaperoned, and destined to marry to some chinless, spineless, buck-toothed and utter awful European royal. Trying to solve a murder would indeed be a challenge, and fun. I would have a chance to poke fun at the British class system and chuckle to myself as I wrote. And I did have the necessary background to make this authentic: I had had tea with the current queen. I had…

When I was a teenager, back in the Jurassic period (okay, the late 1970s), Gothic novels were hugely popular. I read them voraciously, entranced by atmospheric castles on the moors (or someplace equally remote), sinister servants, and heroines standing up to brooding heroes (or were they really the villains?). I read Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, Joan Aiken and her sister Jane Aiken Hodge, Daphne duMaurier, Susan Howatch, Dorothy Eden, Philippa Carr, Mary Stewart, and many others. I hope those names ring a bell for some of you. They swept me up and entertained me, gave me something to look forward to after doing my Algebra homework, and comforted me when the objects of my crushes ignored my existence. I’m not sure what attracted me to that variety of romantic suspense, but I think it had something to do with a young heroine, sometimes protecting a child (if she was a governess or new wife as many of the protagonists were), striking out on her own and emerging triumphant. (The fact that “triumph” in these books meant, at least in part, snaring the moody man of the moment was a non-feminist story chestnut that didn’t bother my teen self as much…