1–What is the title of your latest release?
JANE AND THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER
2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Jane Austen stumbles over a body while vacationing in the spa town of Cheltenham, and solves the murder with the help of dishy painter Raphael West.
3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
This is the 14th book in the long-running Jane Austen Mystery Series, which follows the famous author’s life. We’ve reached 1816, which has gone down in history as the Year Without a Summer, because a volcanic eruption in Indonesia had a global impact on climate that caused relentless rain and worldwide famine. Eeek! It’s the same summer that Mary Shelley famously wrote Frankenstein because she was stuck indoors with Lord Byron, telling ghost stories around the fire in wretched July weather. Jane took a trip to the party town of Cheltenham in late May, 1816, so I set the book there.
4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Absolutely. I’ve been hanging with Jane for 26 years, now, sending her on all sorts of bloody and intriguing adventures. I love her viciously funny way with words, her pique at the way men try to control women’s lives, her zest for a complex and intelligent hero, and her tendency to indulge in whatever makes her happiest, at any moment.
5–What are three words that describe your hero?
Sexy, cerebral, and sensitive.
6–What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That Jane Austen was vaccinated. The doc who discovered vaccination–Edward Jenner–was a friend of her elder brother, James, who was vaccinated against smallpox along with almost everyone in Austen’s circle. Jenner also lived in Cheltenham.
7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Oh, I edit as I draft. Edit once I’m totally done. Edit while I’m proofreading…edit in the shower, while driving, while having a glass of wine…To me, there is nothing more critical than editing a good manuscript; that’s what makes it great.
8–What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
That is possibly the most difficult question I’ve ever been asked to answer. I adore food and cook with a vengeance, so everything is on the table, so to speak. But if forced to choose, I’d have to say Salted Caramel Brownies, washed down with a glass of Tawny Port.
9–Describe your writing space/office!
I work in what I call the library of my house, which has a hugely comfortable sofa with my handmade needlepoint pillows; divine oil paintings; a metallic gold accent wall; and bookshelves painted a color called Witching Hour. Also, cashmere throws in Hermes orange. But it would not be my office without my beloved dogs snoozing at my feet and on said couch–they are essential Companions of the Writing Room.
10–Who is an author you admire?
Besides Jane Austen? Dorothy Sayers. Amor Towles. A.S. Byatt. John LeCarre. Patrick O’Brian. I could name another twenty people, at least, but then I’ll be up all night worrying about the ones I forgot.
11–Is there a book that changed your life?
WAR AND PEACE, which I (no joke) read for the first time at age 10. I revisit it every decade or so, to check in on my own aging. Like all great works of art, it tells me something about my own journey each time I reconnect.
12–Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)
Well, my first book–DEATH IN THE OFF-SEASON, a Nantucket mystery I wrote as Francine Mathews, my other pen name, was sold in 1993. I was moving across country at the time, from D.C. to Denver. My agent gave me the news in a pay-phone at a Stuckey’s, off Interstate 70. I will never forget that moment. The best news of my life, and an ashtray shaped like the state of Kansas.
13–What’s your favorite genre to read?
I read absolutely everything I can get my hands on. That said, MYSTERY FICTION. All sorts.
14–What’s your favorite movie?
Oh, dear. You don’t make this easy, do you? Classic: The Philadelphia Story. Austen: Persuasion, with Ciaran Kinds and Amanda Root. Modern Cinema? The English Patient.
15–What is your favorite season?
Autumn. It’s so…mortal.
16–How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I love to run off into The Blue for a stolen weekend with my best friend, my husband of 34 years, Mark Mathews.
17–What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’m a complete addict of Shetland, the detective series set off the coast of Scotland, based on the series by Ann Cleeves. I’ve also laughed out loud with Queens of Mystery, a very Meta sort of comic murder series in its second season on Acorn.
18–What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Anything Stanley Tucci recommends.
19–What do you do when you have free time?
I needlepoint. Obsessively.
20–What can readers expect from you next?
I’ve just finished my latest Merry Folger Nantucket mystery–number 7 in that series–called DEATH ON A WINTER STROLL. It’ll be out Nov. 1, 2022, and is set during the island’s huge holiday kickoff weekend, Christmas Stroll. I’ve also signed an option agreement with a UK showrunner and production company to develop the Jane Austen mysteries for streaming television. Fingers crossed that happens!
JANE AND THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER by Stephanie Barron
Being a Jane Austen Mystery #14
May 1816: Jane Austen is feeling unwell, with an uneasy stomach, constant fatigue, rashes, fevers and aches. She attributes her poor condition to the stress of family burdens, which even the drafting of her latest manuscript—about a baronet’s daughter nursing a broken heart for a daring naval captain—cannot alleviate. Her apothecary recommends a trial of the curative waters at Cheltenham Spa, in Gloucestershire. Jane decides to use some of the profits earned from her last novel, Emma, and treat herself to a period of rest and reflection at the spa, in the company of her sister, Cassandra.
Cheltenham Spa hardly turns out to be the relaxing sojourn Jane and Cassandra envisaged, however. It is immediately obvious that other boarders at the guest house where the Misses Austen are staying have come to Cheltenham with stresses of their own—some of them deadly. But perhaps with Jane’s interference a terrible crime might be prevented. Set during the Year without a Summer, when the eruption of Mount Tambora in the South Pacific caused a volcanic winter that shrouded the entire planet for sixteen months, this fourteenth installment in Stephanie Barron’s critically acclaimed series brings a forgotten moment of Regency history to life.
Mystery Historical | Mystery Woman Sleuth [Soho Crime, On Sale: February 8, 2022, e-Book, ISBN: 9781641292474 / ]
Buy JANE AND THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER: Kindle | BN.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Stephanie Barron
Stephanie Barron, a lifelong admirer of Jane Austen’s work. She has published NINE Jane Austen mysteries, and is currently at work on a standalone historical suspense about Virginia Woolf, due out in 2009. She has also written eight espionage novels featuring female protagonists as Francine Mathews.
She lives near Denver, Colorado.
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