20 years later...

by Carola

My first mystery just reissued after 20 years (and 21 more in the series). Read an excerpt here http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/2015/03/death-at-wentwater-court-reissued.html

Online interview: Superfluous Women

by Carola

Here's a link to an interview I did with mystery blogger Terry Ambrose: http://terryambrose.com/2015/02/carola-dunn/

It's about my next Daisy Dalrymple mystery, Superfluous Women, which deals with a rarely considered consequence of the First World War: Hundreds of thousands of men killed meant hundreds of thousands of women with no hope of the life they'd been brought up to expect, marriage and a family.

And here is a link to a poignant poem by one of the women  who found herself in this position, Vera Brittain
http://allpoetry.com/The-Superfluous-Woman

Guest Blog: Patricia Wynn

Posted by Carola

Patricia Wynn is the award-winning author of 15 published novels, including the Blue Satan mystery series. She has a degree in history from Rice University. Before becoming an author, she tried international commercial banking and pre-veterinarian studies. She worked as a nursemaid in the French Alps and went to school in Guadalajara, Mexico. She loves reading, animals, and travel. An unabashed anglophile, she takes advantage of her novels’ settings to travel to England at every opportunity. 

The Perks of Writing English-set Mysteries

Patricia Wynn

It is crucial, when writing a mystery series, to plant hints that will be useful to you later in the series. I do not mean clues. Clues are a requirement. I mean hints that will allow you to travel to a place you want to go. In The Birth of Blue Satan, my first book in the Blue Satan mystery series, I mentioned that one of my detectives, Hester Kean, came from the North of England. I kept the location vague because I wasn’t sure where I would set the novel that would be the excuse for a trip.

The series begins in 1715, the year of a rebellion against George I — the aim to restore James Stuart to the throne. Since James refused to renounce his Roman Catholic faith, George’s government enacted penalties against Catholics, always suspected of being Stuart sympathizers. While researching, I came across a trick Catholics used to get around the laws against them and knew it would make a motive for murder. This plot would need a country setting, so for ACTS OF FAITH I sent Blue Satan and Mrs. Kean north.

 Blue Satan is the alias for Gideon Fitzsimmons, Viscount St. Mars. Accused of a murder he did not commit, he had no choice but to become an outlaw. Hester is waiting woman to the Countess of Hawkhurst and Gideon’s link to the patrimony that should have been his. She is his partner in detection and, increasingly, his delight. By the fifth novel, he is ready to follow her anywhere.

Yorkshire was the site of major Catholic vs. Protestant conflicts in England. So I sent Hester into Yorkshire to prepare her cousin Mary for life at Court. In the stagecoach, she meets a young gentleman returning home after receiving an illegal Catholic education in France. When his father is murdered, Hester suspects that his religion may have been the cause. Gideon has tracked Hester north, and together they delve into the secrets that made this Catholic family vulnerable to a killer.

Naturally, I had to go to Yorkshire to choose the location for my characters’ estates and visit lots of stately homes all over England to see how the nobility lived in 1716.

Dyrham Park

One of these, Dyrham Park, became the model for Yearsley Park in ACTS OF FAITH. It was built at the start of the 18^th century by a wealthy man with dynastic ambitions, much like my character Sir Ralph. Another, Chastleton House, a Jacobean manor, became the Catholic family’s Oulston Hall. It has the air of being frozen in time because the owners were royalists and loyal to the Stuarts. Diminishing wealth was the consequence of being on the wrong side of history.

Here are some of the places I saw:

The Great Barn at East Riddlesden

Byland Abbey








I have no writing excuse, but I’m going back to Yorkshire this Fall, just because I love it.

http://www.patriciawynn.com

Review:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/patricia-wynn/acts-of-faith-PaUliuVz/

To buy:

http://www.amazon.com/Acts-Faith-Blue-Satan-Mystery/dp/1935421077

Guest blog links

by Carola

I'm posting a couple of links today as I'm knee-deep in taxes AND having fits about my approaching deadline.

Here's a post about Zeitgeist--If you don't know what that is, click here http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/2014/03/zeitgeist.html?showComment=1394564077097#c181693304197194834

The Book People are a British bookseller who take a selection of books to workplaces. People can look at them and order what they want on the spot. Great idea! They asked me to answer some questions in connection with their promotion of one of my Regency trilogies, but they carry my mysteries too and my answers include both subjects.

http://www.thebookpeople.co.uk/blog/index.php/2014/02/25/an-interview-with-carola-dunn/

Meanwhile: 
The first Daisy Dalrymple mystery was picked as the February book for GoodReads' Cozy book group.

If you belong to Goodreads, do join in!
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1683000-daisy-dalrymple-death-at-wentwater-court---carola-dunn

 


What you might call "Death galore!"











And while I'm about it, the latest three Polish Daisy covers:

The Tudor Signet

by Carola

Romance, adventure, blackmail, spies, highway robbery, a persecuted widow, a mad sculptor, a card-sharp, a future inheritance: and the Tudor signet ring holds the answers. Dartmoor and Plymouth are the scenes of the crimes, where a dashing hero meets a determined young lady--in less than romantic circumstances. Positively embarrassing, in fact...

Almost as embarrassing is the error Zebra made in the title of the paperback: There is no Tudor secret. I'm glad I was able to get the correct title restored on the e-book!

Add a devoted dog and a wild ride through the night to a dramatic denouement. What more can you ask?

Available from most e-book sellers:


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tudor-signet
http://www.amazon.com/The-Tudor-Signet-ebook/

PS. CROSSED QUILLS e-book is still on sale on Amazon.

Daisy in Polish

by Carola

My Daisy Dalrymple mysteries are now coming out in Poland. The Polish publisher bought the translation rights to the first 10, and I gather they're putting out one a week. This is the cover of the first, Death at Wentwater Court:

Cute and eye-catching, if somewhat inaccurate as far as the story's concerned. Very different from the original cover:

and the large print:













Not to mention the equally cartoonish US paperback:

and the UK edition:

Or the audio and two German editions each with different artwork!
They're calling the series Daisy D. I wonder if Dalrymple is impossible for Polish-speakers to pronounce.

There seems to be a boxed set of all 10. I'm not sure exactly how this works. Perhaps readers can buy the box along with one book and fill it as they come out? Or perhaps once all of them are out, they'll start selling the boxed set already filled. This box has the cover of the second in the series, The Winter Garden Mystery.

The spines of the volumes are very clever, producing a cat that strongly reminds me of the Pink Panther, which also adorns all three front covers that I've seen. Here's the third, Requiem for a Mezzo:

Interesting--especially as I can't remember ever writing about a cat in any of the Daisy books. There may be a casual mention somewhere in the 21 I've written to date, but I'm a dog-person and so is Daisy! Her stepdaughter's dog, Nana, appears in several of the books, finding a body in one and digging up a Clue in another, only to run away with it and rebury it. Nana even graces one cover:

I'd never actually described her appearance in detail, so now the artist has defined her.

With the help of friends and relatives, I've managed to put a welcome message in Polish on my website. A couple of days later I got more than twice as many hits than ever before--though I can't tell whether there were a lot of Poles!

While on the subject of cover art, I'm thrilled that the artist who's done so many great covers for Daisy (including Black Ship, above, but not Wentwater Court) is passing through town today and we're hoping to arrange to meet. I'm trying to decide which is my favourite, in case he asks.

Not exactly murder...

by Carola

CROSSED QUILLS (Now on sale at $1.99 for Kindle or UK £1.34) is not a mystery. It's a Regency, and no one is murdered in it.

But it does have a subplot dealing with unnatural death.

It's the story of a couple of star-crossed writers. Pippa writes Radical political tracts under her deceased father's pseudonym. Wynn Selworth writes spicy Gothic melodramas under the pen-name Valentine Dred. Then Wynn inherits a noble title and must make his maiden speech in the House of Lords. He begs for help from Pippa's father, whose writing and radicalism he admires.

How can Pippa aid him without giving away her secret? Not only is her work politically dangerous, but Society would shun her if they knew about it.

How can Wynn keep his racy authorship hidden from the Ton? No one will take him seriously as a politician if they find out.

Pippa's first suggestion is to narrow his focus from all the ills of Regency England to one specific topic, where he might have a chance of changing people's minds and making a difference. Between them (though Wynn still believes he's communicating through Pippa with her father), they settle on the horrible plight of chimney sweeps.

Little boys as young as 5 were sent up chimneys to clean them. If they objected, the master sweep often set a fire to force them to climb. Sometimes, in the days when every room had a fireplace, they got lost in complicated mazes of interconnected flues:

They often suffered burns and bruises. They might suffocate in a fall of soot. They coughed and wheezed. Their masters were legally obliged to feed them but often left them to scrounge or steal for food. And in the end, if they survived to grow up, they developed "chimney sweep's cancer," later diagnosed as squamous cell cancer, usually of the scrotum.

Where did the master sweeps find these unhappy boys?  They bought them from the Poor Houses and from poverty-stricken parents. Cases were known of well-born children kidnapped and sold into the trade.

And did my fictional Wynn, Lord Selworth, succeed in awaking the conscience of the nation? Or at least the conscience of the House of Lords? You'll have to read Crossed Quills to find out the result of his crusade.

You can start with a couple of excerpts here:
http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/2013/07/crossed-quills-kindle-sale.html