I loved the line in your novel, “…the worth of a man is not in what he owns, but in the work he leaves behind.” Having a PhD in art history must give you this appreciation of the artists and the work they left behind. Is the use of artwork in this novel, both a plot device and/or theme in most of your work?
First of all, thank you for reading! Thinking about how art connects people over time is at the heart of my work, both in fiction and non-fiction. Some works of art go on amazing adventures centuries after their creators are gone. This is certainly the case with the innumerable works hidden during World War II to protect them from damage, theft, or destruction. 
In fiction, a work of art can serve as more than an inanimate object or thing of beauty; it can be a powerful thematic element or even a character in its own right. For Stella in The Keeper of Lost Art, Botticelli’s Primavera becomes more than just an old painting that needs protection. It profoundly influences Stella’s evolving understanding of the world as she navigates the complexity of coming of age in wartime.

  How do you reflect on this quote when thinking of your own life as an author?  
Like works of art, books also have the power to transcend time, to leave a legacy far beyond material possessions. Think about the many authors and pieces of writing from antiquity we are still reading today, along with those from more recent centuries that are considered classics. Hollywood producers are making movies today from stories whose authors are long gone; that’s amazing!

As an author, it's humbling to think about creating something that might outlive you, but honestly, I don’t spend too much time considering that when I’m writing. I just follow my curiosities to see what deep historical rabbit holes they will lead me into, so that I can share them with readers and students.
There are countless incredible true stories from the history of art. I certainly don’t compare my writing to a Renaissance masterpiece, but I try to create stories that honor these works and the people who created and protected them for future generations. Like the characters in The Keeper of Lost Art, I try to contribute in my own small way to keeping these cultural treasures alive in our collective imagination. If I can connect readers and students to art history in a way that is both accessible and inspires wonder, then I am happy. 
 
Another wonderful quote: “Stella’s astonishment, she discovered that darkness reveals light.” I think this is also a strong theme in the novel, beyond the relationship to the paintings. Can you speak to it more as a theme, or if I have it wrong, what you meant by the quote?  
During war, when humanity seems at its darkest, art represents our highest aspirations. In several of my novels, I have explored how art has the power to bring people hope in times of darkness. 
World War II represents one of humanity's darkest chapters, yet against this backdrop, we witness extraordinary acts of courage, sacrifice, and beauty. Sometimes, individuals had to make the choice between saving a human life or a work of art. In other cases, ordinary people risked their own lives to protect a work of art for future generations. These remarkable circumstances speak to something essential about our relationship with art—it's not just about beauty or monetary value, but about preserving our collective cultural memory and identity.
For Stella personally, it's through her losses and struggles—being separated from her parents, feeling unwanted by her aunt, navigating the confusion and danger of wartime—that she discovers her own inner strength and capacity for connection. Her friendship with Sandro, her growing understanding of art, her evolving relationship with her family—these lights could only emerge through the darkness she experiences. 
 

 Okay, I will move away from quotes after this one—although your novel says a great deal that can be quoted. “It is the artist’s greatest calling to guide…perception to what he wants the viewer to see.” Your novel has exceptional detail in description and emotional impact. How does the reader come into your mind when you write? Do you have a method to help keep your reader foremost in view?  
Thank you! The themes of vision and seeing seemed to expand for me as I wrote this story. When we stand before a great work of art or a complex painting like Botticelli’s Primavera, it sometimes takes a long time and multiple encounters for us to “see” everything the artist intended. Sometimes, there are layers of meaning and details that help the meaning unfold for us as we slowly unpack them.
As I wrote this story, the theme of seeing expanded to the young characters and their own developing grasp of the complex world they are navigating. Sandro, with his failing vision yet a deep connection to the visual world, and Stella, with her increasing curiosity yet limited experience of complex adult circumstances, helped fuel this thematic element of vision.
In thinking about how the reader will engage with my work, I try to put them in the shoes of characters who might encounter these works of art for the first time. Stella's initially naïve view of Botticelli's masterpiece allows readers to discover it alongside her, without feeling put off by art historical jargon or analysis.

Many writers and filmmakers have explored the heroic actions of the Monuments Men and Women who contributed to art preservation. But yours is an intimate story, adding the historical aspect of the children who were sent out of the city in order to be protected from the war. Where did Stella’s story come from? And how did it cross your creative path?
In my novels The Night Portrait and The Last Masterpiece, I too have written about the incredible deeds of the Monuments Men and Women in protecting works of art in wartime. They play a supporting role in The Keeper of Lost Art as well, where our fictionalized Monuments Man and Woman, Wallace Foster and Josie Evans, are based on real-life individuals whose heroic actions saved so many works of art for future generations.
But I wanted to do something different in this book. While the main characters in my previous novels have been curators or conservators or art experts of some sort, I wanted to explore a main character who had no prior knowledge or experience with art. The true story behind The Keeper of Lost Art allowed me to imagine what it would be like if you were an ordinary person who was asked suddenly to protect and care for hundreds of priceless masterpieces in your own home. This is exactly what happened as the Florentine art officials were forced to pack up their collection and swiftly move these masterpieces to privately owned properties in the Tuscan countryside. These “hidden heroes” were ordinary families like Stella’s who found themselves at the center of impossible circumstances.
Stella’s story emerged from the deep research I did for my novel, The Last Masterpiece. Among the some 30+ hiding places for works of art in the Tuscan countryside, I read about the incredible true story of the villa at Montegufoni, where Botticelli's Primavera was hidden during the war. The facts alone were astounding—more than 250 masterpieces stacked against walls, German soldiers requisitioning the same space, hundreds of refugees in the wine cellar—but mostly, I wondered about the human dimension of this story, particularly how ordinary people might have experienced these extraordinary circumstances.
During my research in Italy, I had the privilege of meeting the grandchildren of some of these hidden heroes, who grew up hearing wartime stories that brought this history to life in ways no academic source could. Walking through those rooms with them, I began to see the events through the eyes of a child—someone who wouldn't necessarily grasp the historical significance of what was happening but would feel everything intensely.
Around the same time, I read Iris Origo's extraordinary diary, War in Val d'Orcia, which documents her experience sheltering refugee children from northern Italian cities on her estate in Tuscany. The details of daily life—continuing to plant and harvest, trying to maintain some normalcy for these displaced children, navigating the complex loyalties of wartime Italy—provided a glimpse of the world Stella would inhabit.
Stella herself simply appeared one day, fully formed in my imagination—a girl caught between childhood and adulthood, between city and countryside, between her lost parents and her newfound family, between high art and the daily tasks of survival. Her perspective allowed me to explore this history in a different way from my previous works. Through her eyes, we experience both the mundane realities of wartime life and the extraordinary circumstances of living alongside some of humanity's greatest artistic achievements.
I think what drew me to tell this more intimate story is that the grand narratives of war and heroism, important as they are, sometimes overshadow the quiet courage of ordinary people—the families who took in refugee children, the local people who protected art without recognition, the children who had to grow up too quickly. Stella gave me a way to illuminate and honor those unsung stories.
 
This novel is a coming-of-age story of Stella in Italy; however, it also moves to a coming-of-age in her appreciation of art. This is a brilliant parallel in the story. How did you decide on it? And does it parallel with your journey?  
There's something uniquely powerful about that adolescent phase when we're trying to make sense of both ourselves and the wider world—it's the perfect moment for art to become transformative. For Stella, discovering Botticelli's Primavera coincides with her awakening to adult complexities. As she learns to look deeper at the painting—to see beyond its surface beauty to its layers of meaning—she's simultaneously developing the capacity to understand the complicated adults around her, the ambiguities of war, and her own identity. The painting becomes a kind of mirror for her growing emotional and intellectual maturity.
This parallels my own journey with art, though mine was less dramatic! I remember the first time I stood before truly great works of art and architecture as a pre-teen. Those moments changed something fundamental in how I saw the world and inspired me to pursue art history. My academic training eventually gave me the vocabulary and context to analyze art, but the emotional connection has always been primary. That's what I wanted for Stella—not the scholarly appreciation that might come later, but that initial, transformative recognition that art can speak to us across time, that it can help us understand ourselves and our world differently.
 
  How do you determine that a historical event will make a good story for readers? And how do you set about outlining for your research?
There are so many amazing—and little-known—true stories from the history of art. I look for historical events that contain "narrative gaps"—moments where the historical record tells us what happened, but not how it felt to the people experiencing it. These gaps are where fiction can breathe life into history. The evacuation of Florence's art treasures was meticulously documented in archival records, but those records don't tell us about the fear, hope, and daily challenges faced by the people involved. That's where story lives.
I'm particularly drawn to events that juxtapose extremes—like the presence of transcendent beauty amid the brutality of war. The image of Botticelli's Primavera—this celebration of renewal and beauty—sitting in a darkened room while bombs fell nearby contains an inherent narrative tension that makes it perfect to explore in a fictionalized story.
When outlining my research, I work in concentric circles. I start with the core historical event—in this case, the hiding of artworks in a single Tuscan villa. My first research layer focuses on establishing the factual framework and timeline: what happened, when, where, and to whom. This involves academic sources, archival documents, and museum records.
The next circle widens to include the broader historical context—what was happening in Italy during this period, how the war progressed, how it affected civilian life. This helps me understand what constraints and pressures my characters would face.
A third circle focuses on daily life details—what people ate, wore, how they traveled, what news they received, what work they did. For this novel, I studied agricultural cycles in Tuscany, wartime rationing, and rural education systems, among other topics.
The final research circle explores the emotional and psychological context—memoirs, letters, diaries, and oral histories from people who lived through similar experiences. These first-person accounts are invaluable for understanding how historical events were processed emotionally.
Throughout this process, I'm looking for places where my fictional narrative can illuminate historical or universal truths. I want to honor the real experiences of people who lived through these events while creating characters and situations that help readers connect emotionally to this history.
Once I have this research foundation, I create a detailed “story spine” that interweaves historical events with my fictional narrative, ensuring that my characters respond to historical developments authentically. This becomes my roadmap as I write, though I always leave room for discovery along the way.
 
  Do you do research before, during, or after the first draft?
Yes to all three! My research process is cyclical rather than linear. I begin with substantial research before writing a word—enough to understand the historical framework and to feel confident that the story concept is viable. For The Keeper of Lost Art, this initial phase included trips to Tuscany, conversations with people who lived through the war, time in the Uffizi archives, and extensive reading about the evacuation of art during World War II.
However, I don't wait until I've exhausted all possible research avenues before beginning to write. If I did, I'd never start! Once I have a solid foundation, I begin drafting, knowing that the writing process itself will reveal what additional research I need. As I write scenes, questions inevitably arise—"What would they have eaten for breakfast?" "How would news from the front have reached them?" "What would the landscape look like in October?" I put these questions in brackets and come back to them over the course of writing and revising.
I believe this approach creates a more organic integration of history and story. The research informs the narrative, but the narrative also guides the research, creating a dialogue between fact and fiction that hopefully results in a novel that feels both historically authentic and emotionally true.
 

Historical fiction authors--who would top your list?
Some of my favorite authors are Geraldine Brooks, Ken Follett, Anthony Doerr, Tracy Chevalier, Maggie O’Farrell, Karen Maitland… I have tremendous respect for novelists who can write a well-paced story with beautiful literary language and sensory detail that sink you into the historical time and place. I also like to read books set in places I’ve never been to or historical time periods where my knowledge is limited. I’m constantly reading historical fiction, but I also read outside the genre—often mysteries, thrillers, or suspense stories—for a refreshing change. I read fiction every single day and always with the eye of a craftsperson; I’m always asking how the author has constructed the story or made the reader feel a certain emotion. There is so much to learn.

Are you writing a new book? When will it be out?
Always! I’ve just completed a long research trip in Italy, which has filled my creative well and made me tremendously excited about this new project. I’m turning away from wartime and into new territory with this dual-timeline project. I’m writing about two eras I’ve never tacked before in fiction. So much fun! I’m still drafting the book, so there will be many more revisions before it’s ready to land in the readers’ hands.
 
Many sincere thanks for this interview. I have enjoyed your work and look forward to getting to know you better.
Thank you, DJ, for your wonderful questions, and for reading my work.

 But Not Forgotten: a Clint Wolf Novel. “Clint Wolf, chief of police here in Mechant Loup.”Wow. By the end of Act I, I was exhausted. You left each chapter at a point where I had to turn to the next chapter. I was breathless to have my emotional ending chapter’s question answered. Where did you learn to write such an emotional, impactful structure?
 
If I’m being completely honest, I don’t really know how I do what I do, and it gets scary. Like, if I don’t know what I’m doing, how can I replicate it? I know the exact steps I need to take in order to throw a straight punch, or put three bullets in the same hole with my sniper rifle, or process a murder scene. However, as far as writing goes, I have no actual formula. I just do what feels right at the moment, and hope it works.
 
What I immensely appreciated was your ability to handle the clues laid out in the novel. You didn’t give me twists and turns that I would need to double back-read to see how you got to them. No, as soon as you were about to twist or turn, I did so with you. Structure again? 

Thank you for your kind words. For me, writing is like waking up in a strange cabin and trying to feel my way through the darkness. I think the thing that saves me is I know how to investigate a murder, so I just have my characters going through the logical steps of a homicide investigation. As they work, I try to imagine what real detectives would say and do in similar circumstances, and how they might react to what’s happening around them.
 
Which is better? To surprise your reader or lead them to the turn or twist? 

I love building up to a twist or turn. Since the late nineties, I’ve written about 100 short stories and more than forty novels, yet I still get very excited when I’m close to revealing something huge in a story. During these times, I have to force myself to settle down and not rush through it.
 
You have an extensive background in law enforcement. As a reader, I felt I was in safe hands through reading the novel: step-by-step processes, objectivity, and observation. How do you think your background aids in giving your stories a good reality base and in bringing your reader along for the ride? 

Without my law enforcement background, I would never be able to do what I do, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to write as fast as I do. For me, the hardest part is coming up with a plausible storyline. Once that’s done and I know who’s doing the killing and why, I just walk my characters through their investigative duties, while trying to make them grow as individuals. I also try to make each book a little different, which means I’m constantly dreaming up new ways to kill people.
 
I have friend writers who spend lots of time researching the investigative part of mystery writing, and this cuts into their writing time and slows them down. I don’t take for granted how much my background benefits me, and I share what I know with any author who reaches out to me. If I don’t have an answer to a particular question, I usually have reference materials on hand that might help, or I know where they can look to find the answer.
 
Offering a broken protagonist provides sympathy for your readers and takes them on an emotional journey. Clint Wolf is broken, which is the basis for this first novel in the series, but you also give him high moral integrity. Are both paramount to you when creating a protagonist?

I do tend to write protagonists with high morals, but they don’t necessarily have to be broken. Clint happens to be struggling in the first few books, but he eventually gets his act together. As a reader, I would be annoyed if a character remained in a broken state throughout the course of 33 books, and I’m guessing other readers might feel the same.
 
Could you write a protagonist without one of these traits? Or have you? 

I have written protagonists who weren’t broken. London Carter is one example. While he suffered a great loss as a child, it only served to harden him and motivate him to get revenge, rather than breaking him.

How much of you is in the character Clint Wolf? 
 
Not much. While he shares my same passion for hunting down criminals and doing it the “law” way (a reference from Young Guns), he’s a bit more diplomatic and reserved than I am. I’m pretty rough around the edges and I don’t have much of a vocal filter.
 
What genres do you prefer reading? What authors? And which has most influenced your work? 

Louis L’Amour has influenced every aspect of my life. I grew up a poor kid in a fatherless home, and I tell anyone who’ll listen that L’Amour—through his protagonists—raised me to be the man I am today. I learned about hard work, honor, respect, courage, and doing the right thing regardless of the obstacles. I don’t know where I’d be today, or what I’d be doing, had I not discovered his work at such a young age.
 
I also believe he’s had an influence on my work, but it’s not something that happened on a conscious level. For instance, an editor once told me that he liked my pacing, and he likened it to Louis L’Amour’s books. I hadn’t given it any thought up to that point, but since I’ve read everything he’s written many times over, it made sense that I learned a lot from him.
 
You have written a large volume of mystery, police procedural, and thriller. How do you label your work? 

Hardboiled mysteries. I also place them in the police procedural categories on Amazon, but they seem to do better in the hardboiled category.
 
What do you hope your legacy speaks to? 

I’ve not given any thought to legacy, but I did have to do some soul-searching when I retired from law enforcement.
 
Ever since I first became a cop in 1990, I’ve felt like I was making a small difference in the world. I was very passionate about seeking justice for the victims of crime, especially those who had been murdered or violently assaulted. While I have no clue if I’m a good writer, I have no problem saying I was very good at my job—and I say that with humility. I cared a lot, and it showed in my work. I solved a lot of cases, put away a lot of murderers and other violent criminals, recovered a lot of stolen property, and protected a lot of people. It was a very fulfilling job.
 
Fast forward to the summer of 2021. I had retired a year earlier at 49, bought a home and property in Tennessee, and was enjoying two of my lifelong dreams: being a fulltime writer and living in the mountains of East Tennessee like Louis L’Amour’s Sacketts. Over the coming months, I began feeling guilty. I felt like riding off into retirement and enjoying my life had been a selfish act. I felt like I had more to give, and I even considered getting back into law enforcement here in Tennessee.
 
These thoughts quietly plagued me for a few months, until I received two messages. One came from a man I didn’t know. He thanked me for writing the Clint Wolf series, and he cited some historical quote from history that talked about the importance of an author’s work. (I spent two days trying to find the email to share the quote, but I haven’t had any luck.)
 
The second message came from a mother from Louisiana who had lost her daughter in a car crash. She told me that she would read my books to her daughter while she lay in the hospital bed, and that my books had been a safe place of distraction. This came at the right moment for me. It was the first time since retiring that I felt a sense of fulfillment out of what I was doing, and I finally realized that being an author was not some casual pastime, but rather, an important responsibility.
 
Getting back to the question of legacy. I’ve accomplished a lot of things in my law enforcement career and also in my life, but if I were to be remembered as anything, I’d want it to be as a good dad to my kids, a good husband to Amanda, and a good pepere to my grandkids.
 
And last question: New book coming out?
 
Yes! But Not For Sacrifice, which is Book #33 in the Clint Wolf Mystery Series, is set to come out on March 21st.

“ Her heart was hammering as she heard the key turn in the rusted lock and the door squeak open just a few feet from where she crouched. He must not find her, or it would end now.   The prophetic shriek of the gulls again: death, death, death. The body in the marsh.  Dismembered.”
 
I wanted to start with this quote from the beginning of your book because its tone foreshadowed the essence of the novel. Wonderful.
How do you decide where to start your story and what to include in the first chapter to produce a tone for its entire narrative?
I always like to start with a dramatic scene as the best way get readers involved with the story. In this case I wanted to bring in some childhood fears, to intensify the feeling of terror, so had Liz choose a familiar cubbyhole in her family’s holiday home, and describe her fears of being caught.  
 
 This novel is not only a suspenseful mystery but also a forensic mystery in that a marsh is a different type of geographical area than most people are used to. Do you do your research before you write along with an initial plot plan, or do you research along the way?
It does vary, but generally I do the research as I’m going along. I’ve learned that this often saves wasted effort where I research something in detail only to then not include it in the plot. Just recently, I’ve written a scene about a woman who  makes a remarkable Houdini -like escape from a locked kit bag. She had a suspicion she would be abducted, and prepared for it by secreting a GPS enabled fitness tracker (minus its strap) under the shoulder webbing of her sports bra. I was lucky enough to have several female friends with different types of tracker who volunteered to test whether the device would still function in that location on the body. This enabled me to write the scene so that the woman’s police colleague was not only able to discover the location but also remotely monitor her heart rate and stress levels, to know she was in trouble.

I think your novel’s craft works well with your background in finance—left-brain, logical. One plus one needs to equal two. Would you say this is reflected in the plot while your right brain created the characters?
I don’t tend to think of my creativity in those terms. I’m certainly surprised at the fertility of my imagination, particularly relating to plotting whereas characters I have to work a little bit harder at. My finance experience certainly helps me to construct the property scam within the Body in the Marsh.

Craig Gillard is a memorable protagonist for a series, and  I think the quote “Dignity in the face of mayhem” reflects his character. How important was it in this first book of the series to show that Gillard was emotionally broken (love and marriage) but strong in morality?
You’ve hit on a very important point. One of the best pieces of advice for writing a truly compelling novel is to tighten the relationships between characters. Normally, the relationship between an investigator and a murder victim is simply a professional one. But there’s a great deal more emotional heft when the detective was in love with her, even if it was a long time ago. The subtler way in which Craig’s enduring obsession with her overshadows his empathy with and treatment of some of the other women in his life was lost on some reviewers.

Okay, you got me with the ending. I will be careful here because I don’t want to give any spoilers, but after finishing this read, I thought, yes, this author is more intrigued by the how than the why. Would you say that is true with your storytelling? 
The how and the why really have to work together. If the mechanics of the murder don’t work, all your efforts creating motivation are lost. Certainly in this case I wanted to imbue my perpetrator with an incredible level of preparation and skill, so that an almost impossible ‘how’ makes sense at the end.
 In a later book in the Gillard series The Body in the Stairwell, I created alternating viewpoints between vulnerable victims and an evil perpetrator, which showed exactly the detail of ‘how’ as it was developing. While there was no mystery about the direction of the plot, the tension instead came from the reader being unable to warn those endearing victims of the consequences of their foolish actions.
 
How did you hope to develop the character of Craig Gillard from this first book to the next several in the series? What was important for his arc? 
While Gillard’s development as a detective is perhaps conventional, the arc of his personal life as he moves on from book 1 is about re-engagement with women after the trauma of Liz. His relationship with Sam follows this throughout the twelve books.
 
I don’t see how this story could have been written without careful planning. Do you plot before writing? And how intricate is your plot in detail?
I’m definitely a plotter not a pants-er: I know exactly how each book is going to finish before I begin, and have a 5000 word treatment of each title prepared sometimes four or five books ahead. Over the years I’ve got much better at not having to make disruptive plot changes during the course of writing, by predicting  in advance which part of the plot are going to work, so I can work faster.

What software tools do you like to use, i.e., Scrivener, Plotrr?
I use dictation software for the first draft and then edit by hand. No charts, no diagrams, it’s all in my head! I have a Word scratch pad, for writing scenes one at a time, and then move them into the main body of the text when I’m happy with them. I do often write scenes out of order and then save them so that I can add them later.
I had to look up the other tools you mentioned, as I hadn’t heard of them!  
 
Where the body is found in your series is highlighted in your titles and essential to the story. How does this challenge you, more so than emphasizing the overall theme?
The naming convention The Body in… used by the publisher actually turned out to be a bit of a burden over the course of the series. Sometimes I would like to keep the location of the body a mystery, and other times I couldn’t really place the body in the type of locations that they are often found, because the body in the dumpster (for e.g.) doesn’t make for a good cover image! In such ways marketing leads content by the nose…

 I enjoyed this first book, the first in a series. I see you have other books published. Is this a second series or  stand-alones? What is your writing schedule like, and do you work to write one or two novels a year? Next book out you don’t want the readers to miss?
The twelve book DCI Gillard series is complete, though I may yet add another title or two. My new protagonist is a woman, Detective Inspector Jan Talantire, who is based in the beautiful coastal county of Devon. I signed an eight-book ebook, paperback, and audio deal, with a two book per year schedule, exactly the same as my Gillard series.
Some people would regard my writing schedule as punishing, because I work seven days a week, and rarely take a day off. But I create ideas like an apple tree grows apples. It never feels like work, and I never get writers’ block. My most recent first draft I wrote in seventy-seven straight days, which puts me months ahead of schedule.
The first book in the DI Talantire series is two The Two Deaths of Ruth Lyle, and the second is The Last Ride, published earlier this month by Canelo in ebook and paperback, and by WF Howes in audio.
 
 
Thanks for chatting Nick!
               Thank you for your time and interest, DJ.

 I loved this line in your novel: “The woman’s eyes showed her story was deep and troubled and not yet over.” It summarizes this story. So, I need to ask, how did this story come to you?
You’ve selected one of my favorite lines and I’m so glad it resonated with you. In many ways, those who know me would say that The Direction of the Wind does not seem like a story I would write, and that is mostly because I am someone who has never even smoked a cigarette, so I’m dealing with subjects outside of my personal sphere of knowledge and that needed to be heavily researched. (My google search history while I was researching The Direction of the Wind would certainly raise a few eyebrows.) But at the end of the day, the story is about addiction and the impact it has on a family. And that theme, is far more common than we speak about. I have had people close to me who have struggled with addiction, and whether that relates to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, or anything else, addiction is at its core a mental health issue that requires serious treatment. I really wanted to bring awareness, empathy, and compassion to this disease that is often misunderstood or judged by society, and through Nita’s and Sophie’s eyes, I was able to give two perspectives.
 
I have also spent a lot of time in Paris and consider the city a second home, but I wanted to show a grittier side that is not often portrayed in media. There is a commonly held sentiment that the “West is best” when speaking about lifestyles and cultures, and I wanted to show that for someone like Nita, the West wasn’t the best choice for her despite her romanticized notions of it.  

 
I also love the line, which sets the overall theme: “The direction of the wind cannot be changed, but we can change the direction of our sails.” Where has the wind taken you? Especially your journey as a writer. 
I’ve been fortunate that the wind has taken me to many places thus far, and I can’t wait to see the places it takes me next. My journey as a writer was far from linear. As a nine-year-old girl, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but having grown up in an immigrant household that lacked financial stability, I knew I didn’t want that for my life. So, I became an entertainment lawyer and worked in Hollywood for nearly twenty years. Halfway through that career, the pull to write resurfaced, especially as I was working in an industry that centered around storytelling, but didn’t have the representation of my culture that I hoped to see. So, in 2009, I began taking writing classes and writing what would become my debut The Taste of Ginger. Within a year, I had finished my draft and began the process of querying agents and had some interest, but ultimately the book never found a home. For the next decade, I continued revising it and eventually started writing The Direction of the Wind, thinking that I’d have more success with another story and maybe The Taste of Ginger would be my “drawer book” that was good practice but would never be published.
 
Then in 2020, during the midst of a global pandemic and racial tensions in the United States following the murders of George Floyd and many others as well as rising Asian-hate, I was offered a book deal for both The Taste of Ginger and The Direction of the Wind. It was a difficult series of events that led to my childhood dream coming true, because the publishing industry along with so many others was having a racial reckoning that it hadn’t been equitable in promoting all voices in the past. I wrestled with feeling like a token. But the converse is that it seemed the world was finally ready to start hearing authentic stories of immigrant families and the sacrifices and burdens associated with assimilation and acculturation. I was grateful to finally have a platform to share my stories and truly believe that my books were published at the right time. Because of the social climate, I was able to cover issues in a more direct and authentic way. During the decade in which I was writing and revising without a book deal, I was growing and developing along with the world, and I think that my books were able to reach a much wider audience in 2022 and 2023 than they would have ten years earlier.
 
In 2022, I was able to fully achieve my childhood dream and retired from my legal career in order to be a full-time writer. While all of my novels center Gujarati families, each book takes place in a different country, allowing me to combine my love of travel and writing. I am so grateful that my life and work now consists of traveling the world and creating stories.


Having quoted two lines from your work, all of us who have read this novel are reminded of the beauty of your prose. Can you tell us how you developed this skill and how you can dig deeply into emotions? Especially through dialog.
First of all, thank you for the generous compliment. As for the focus on emotional development in my stories, I am someone who has always been fascinated by psychology (it was my university degree), and I think emotions and the human condition are at the heart of everything I write. Writers need to be observant, and I love seeing how people behave and trying to understand the why of people’s actions. When I started out, I took many writing classes at UCLA, because writing is a skill like any other, and I knew that creative writing was very different from the legal writing on which I had built my first career. That set me up with a good foundation from which to further develop my craft. I am someone who loves learning, and writing is an area in which we can continue to improve each day. My personal goal is to challenge myself and learn something new and grow with each book that I write, and so far, that has been the case.


The layout of the narration by time and point of view allows the reader to become deeply involved in the story’s journey. Did you construct the novel by writing various drafts or outlines?  
Writing a dual POV across two different time periods was a big challenge for me, because each storyline had to be engaging unto itself and they had to be connected in a way that made sense. I am someone who loves doing puzzles, and I saw this book as a big puzzle that needed to be put together. I had notecards with each scene written on them and had one color for Nita’s story and another color for Sophie’s story, and spread them out on my dining table, moving them around until I had a story that made sense and would be cohesive. In terms of drafts, there were many, as I was still very much in the learning phase of my writing. Plotting is the key element that keeps readers turning the pages, so I focus my first drafts on making sure that pacing is strong. Once I’m satisfied, then I go back through it and focus on the language and make sure each sentence is essential to the story and constructed in the best way possible.


We move through Sophie’s character arc by attaching ourselves to many of her experiences or learned lessons.  Possibly, some readers can identify with abandonment, curiosity, compassion, forgiveness, or at least compassioned understanding. Wow! Did you see this arc for Sophie when you grabbed this story idea? Where does Sophie come from psychologically—from a hurt inner child to a healed adult?  
Sophie’s arc was always very clear to me. I knew I wanted to write a character who had lost her mother early in life and had lived a very sheltered, comfortable life in India alongside her father. I wanted someone who would experience France and have a far more positive experience than her mother had, but still choose India as her home and not be seduced by the West. Sophie needed to grow into her own independent person who could take care of herself by the end of the story, and she navigates that journey well despite the many hurdles in front of her.
 
While I am fortunate to have been raised in a healthy, loving two-parent household, the older I get, the more I realize how rare that is. Through conversations with friends or family, I’ve seen the impact that not having that stable upbringing can have on a person, and I wanted to delve into the emotional journey that stems from feelings of abandonment. And most importantly, I wanted Sophie to find compassion for her mother and use that as her guiding compass in life because compassion is one of the most important traits we can have in life.


Okay, easier questions: What satisfaction did you receive when you placed THE END on this manuscript? What goals did you achieve?  
There is no better feeling than typing THE END on that first draft. Even though I know I’m going to go back through it at least a dozen more times, that first draft is the one where I know I have a book and haven’t wasted months (or years) of my life on a story that is going nowhere. After that first draft, I move to what I consider the fun part of revising, which is making sure the story flows and has the language I want. But the process of writing a first draft is all about battling imposter syndrome, and it’s nice to be able to move past that and really focus on making the story the best it can be.


Why do you think the novel has been so greatly received in the marketplace?  
That’s such a tough question to answer. When I’m writing, I focus on writing the best story and not worrying about whether anyone will actually read it. But, naturally, that becomes a question when it’s heading toward publication because publishing is a business at the end of the day. I think many of the themes covered in The Direction of the Wind are very universal. As I’ve heard from readers since the launch of the book, I’m aware of how many lives are affected by addiction and I think that theme and the way Sophie responds to it has really resonated with readers. I’ve been humbled by messages I’ve received of people who have forgiven or changed the way they view loved ones who have battled addiction. For me, that is the power of good storytelling, and I’m humbled that the book has resonated with such a large audience.


Working on another?  
Always. With writing as my full-time career now, I’m always working on another. My third novel A Good Indian Girl is being released on September 3, 2024, and I’m so excited for this book to reach readers. It takes place in Italy and is the culmination of my obsession with food and cooking, complete with original recipes in the back of the book. It is an immersive, fun and heartfelt novel about a disgraced Indian American divorcée who spends a summer in Italy, reconnecting with her passion for cooking and reckoning with cultural expectations to make the choice of a lifetime. I had so much fun working on this novel. I’ve also completed my fourth novel, which will be released in 2025 and takes place in Singapore. So, my days are currently spent working on my fifth novel, which takes place in Bali.
 

Future goals you have set?  
I aim to write a novel each year and have so far managed to keep up that cadence. Having had the career in Hollywood before becoming a writer, I would be thrilled to see one of my stories adapted for the screen and have a true full circle moment of being on the other side of one of those talent agreements that I used to negotiate on behalf of the studios.


Anything more you wish to share?  
Only to say thank you for reading and getting the word out about The Direction of the Wind. Writing is a very difficult business, and I would encourage everyone who enjoys reading to support those authors they love in whatever way they can. For those who can’t afford to buy the books, there are several free ways to support like requesting books from your local libraries, posting on social media, or leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Every little bit helps to ensure that authors continue to have a platform to keep telling their stories, and we all appreciate the help from our readers so much.
 

 What I like most about your book The Booklovers Library is that not only does the story take me through a historical period, but the narrative makes me feel as if I, too, had the same experience.
 
 This was the first time I’d heard of a lending library—other than our public library in the U.S. How did you come upon this type of library?
I’m always reading some article or another, so I can’t recall where I first heard about the original Booklover’s Library, but my imagination immediately began wandering down a path of possibilities. I was intrigued by the name, because it's so perfect, but also by how women who worked there had such long engagements because they did not want to give up their jobs to get married (this was during the marriage bar). I knew writing a book about the children's evacuation was going to be a little heavier and the Booklover’s Library created the perfect setting to offer lightness and comfort – not only for my characters, but also for readers.
 
In your book’s afterword, you mentioned visiting the Bromley House Library in Nottingham and spending time there. Do you always physically research your settings? What is your ratio of time spent on research/outlining to writing?
I have been fortunate to have visited on location for three of my historical fiction novels (Lisbon, Portugal and Lyon, France for The Librarian Spy, Warsaw, Poland for The Keeper of Hidden Books, and Nottingham, England for The Booklover’s Library). The only book I have not gone onsite to research was The Last Bookshop in London as it was written during the pandemic. However, being an Army brat, I spent about 12 years in Germany which means I had the opportunity to visit London many times and was able to draw on those experiences.
I do a lot of research. Writing a historical fiction novel takes me approximately one year with 80% of that time spent on research and 20% on writing.

 Would you state this is true with all of your books?
​Yes. I love research! LOL It makes the world I’m writing come to life for me. Once I have about eight months of research under my belt, the entire story plays out in my head like I’m living the life of the character and I write the story as I experience it. I don’t think I could do that without so much research.
 
he mother-daughter theme, combined with themes of sacrifice and survival, was an intriguing plot and character concept. How did you decide to do this historical story from this point of view?
As a mother, the idea of the children’s evacuation in England during WWII has always plucked at a deep place in my heart. Having to send a child away for an indeterminate amount of time, to an unknown location, to stay with people you’ve never met…it’s unfathomable to have to make that kind of call. Especially when the idea of keeping your child home meant you risked them being killed or injured from bombs.  I wanted to write about this to understand what those parents went through and help others realize how deep their love for their children was to make the sacrifice of sending them away for their safety.
 
In the afterward, you state that you included several personal experiences in your story.  Is this usual, or is it more prominent in this book?
​There are parts of me in all the books I write. However, I put a lot more of my own personal experiences into this particular book. I was a single mother for several years and the protagonis, Emma, is a single mother as well. I drew on my own situations, feelings, and some particular instances as inspiration for this story. Additionally, I used my two daughters as the foundation for creating Olivia’s character, which only endeared her to me all the more.

The mention of excellent novels to read included in your story—because where would a library story be with books—made me want to read them all again. How great that you added a list on your website. How did you decide which books to use?
It’s always so fun for me to include some of my favorite books in my novels. Some of them are just personal favorites that have had an impact on my life. Like Anne of Green Gables, for example, which has an important role in this story. Other books are ones mentioned in that time period and come up again and again in my research. Books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover for being so risqué the library would never allow it to be out on the shelves. Or like Gone with the Wind that took the world by storm.

What is the best book for those who want to write a historical novel?
I think the best book in general to start with for brand new writers is Stephen King’s book On Writing. It’s a great intro. For historical fiction in particular, I would recommend joining HNS (Historical Novel Society) and taking advantage of opportunities to network with other authors, attend conferences, and take workshops.

Is this your favorite genre? Why?
Confession: Aside from historical fiction (which I feel is the obvious answer) I love thrillers. I have no idea why, but I’ve always been drawn to them ever since I was a girl sneaking R. L. Stine novels under my covers with a flashlight way past my bedtime. I think it’s the wild excitement of the story, but knowing that it ultimately ends up OK in the end.

The romance in this story is placed toward the end. Did you place the romance here so that romance didn’t take over the novel?
Because I’ve written romance novels previously with 35 published, there are some preconceived prejudices about my putting romance into books. I intentionally tone down the romance subplot as a result. But it is important to me to always still include a romance of some kind – after all, romance is a part of our daily lives. Our spouses, our partners, boyfriends/girlfriends, or even the absence of having someone in one’s life – it’s such a huge part of our daily world that not including romance of any kind would flatten the characters.

 What book should readers start with to learn your work?  What are you working on now?
My first historical fiction was The Last Bookshop in London which is a great one to start with. All my historical fiction novels are stand alone and can be read independently.
My next book is coming out September 2025 and is called The Secret Book Society. Set in Victorian London, a thrice widowed countess seeks to liberate repressed women through her secret book society operating under the guise of afternoon tea, but rather than gossip and other 'banal, womanly pursuits', the conversations take a far more subversive direction and enable the women to pursue freedom from their current lives.

 

The Orphanage by the Lake is a new series with Hazel Cho as your detective and protagonist. Where did she come from?
     I’ve always loved detective stories and I’ve wanted to write one for a long time. However, I felt like the grizzled, alcoholic, white guy with a haunted past had been done to death. I thought it would be fun to take that convention and turn it on its head with a smart, fun, spunky female detective like who resembled many of the women in my life.

           How is this series different from your Tree of Knowledge series?
     While I love them both, the two . are quite different. The Tree of Knowledge is more of a speculative fiction adventure series about larger historical themes: faith vs. logic, democracy vs. authoritarianism, etc. The Orphanage By The Lake is a much more focused, real-life mystery-thriller series about the demons we face every day.

          I like that Hazel is mid-age, 30 years old, single, and that her private investigator business is going under. The reader immediately roots for her to succeed.  Economics, or social levels, play a big role in this book. What are you saying beyond the mystery plot?
        Beyond the mystery plot, The Orphanage By The Lake is fundamentally about power and how it impacts everything we do in both subtle and overt ways. As an African-American orphan child, Mia is the personification of the powerless, so no one makes much an effort to find her. It’s only when Madeline (a powerful white woman) and Hazel (a fighter for the powerless) intervene that things begin to change. Likewise, because the perpetrators in Mia’s disappearance are powerful, no one with the power to find Mia actually wants to know the truth. I find this to be a major theme in our society, how power corrupts our search for truth.

          A missing person’s case linked with an orphanage was a captivating idea. What—WHAT IF—brought about the idea for the story?
     I actually reference the case that catalyzed the idea in the novel. I saw an article about a children’s home in which hundreds of children had run away over the years. I asked myself, “how could this be?” And the story flowed from there.

          Your novel is very informative about missing person cases while Hazel is ferreting out how a girl from an orphanage could have vanished. Where did you get your research? How extensive did you research before writing?
     I did a ton of research before writing this because I wanted the book to ring true. I spoke with experts in the field, including police and private investigators who had worked on missing persons cases. I also read everything I could find on police procedure. Finally, I had experts read the novel to check if anything I wrote missed the mark.

          Your plot features many characters with complex character arcs, many of whom become prime suspects. Do you outline your character arcs and plots before writing?
     Yes, and I swear by this as a writer. Before I write an ounce of story I write detailed character sketches so that when I’m writing the character I know everything that makes them tick. This enables the plot to flow naturally from the characters motivations. For example, Mackenzie isn’t just mean to Hazel because it serves the mystery, he’s mean to Hazel because he cares deeply about St. Agnes and doesn’t want to see his legacy ruined.   

          “…looked more like haunting houses now. Each one has a simple light on inside, big enough to lure you in but dark enough to trap you.”  The novel is set around Halloween and has some dark elements. But you keep the atmosphere more in shadow than darkness.  Were you tempted to go darker? If not, why not?            Great question. No. I’ve always liked Hitchcock’s approach of leaving the horror behind the curtain to allow people to imagine the worst.  

          The Orphanage by the Lake became an immediate bestseller. Why do you think it hit the market so big—other than it is a well-written and intriguing story? Did you set your mind to your reader and keep to that focus?  Research marketability?
     I think there were two big factors. First, was the fact that, unlike with the Tree of Knowledge, I targeted a very specific audience with the style and substance of this book. I wrote a book that would appeal to people who like fast-paced thrillers like Freida McFaddens, Charlie Donlea, Lisa Jewell, etc. Second, there’s something uniquely creepy about the old-school orphanage in our imagination that makes it irresistible to thriller-lovers.    

           Book 2 of the Hazel Cho series, The Red Letter, will be released on February 25th. Do you see this series as multi-volume?
     I would like to do at least three Hazel Cho stories. Beyond that, I’m not sure. It will depend on whether I feel like there’s a real story to tell with Hazel versus just cranking out another book.

          What are you working on now? And how best can readers connect with you other than here on this website?
​I’m putting the finishing touches on The Red Letter, which I actually like better than The Orphanage By The Lake. We’ll see if readers agree. After that, I’m working on a stand-alone novel. More to come on that. I love hearing from readers and they can email me anytime at [email protected]. I also post and interact a fair amount on Facebook and Instagram so please follow me there. 

                                                                                                                                                                                            Your journalistic talents are shown in reporting the death of Annalise. How do you balance your factual storytelling and your emotional narrative?
For me, the key to sparking emotion in a reader is to try to take the reader deeper via a character’s unique point of view. Every person—every single character, even the ‘villain’—is the hero of his or her own story. Everyone has reasons for doing things, an inner logic, feelings, past traumas and triggers. If we can see and understand the motivations driving a particular character’s actions, I believe it’s easier to feel their emotions.
 
I enjoyed your protagonist, Jane Munro. Why did you decide to tell this story in a multi-voiced narrative? Why would a writer choose multi-voiced over first-person?
 For my past few novels I’ve essentially been writing in two mystery/thriller sub genres: procedurals and psychological suspense. THE UNQUIET BONES—while leaning heavily into police procedural—is a bit of a combination of the two. A psych suspense wrapped in a procedural. The story follows Detective Jane Munro, my cold case cop, as she closes in on a group of old friends who made a pledge on a terrible night many years ago. At the same it shows how Jane’s peeling back the layers of the old friends’ lies messes with their heads, and they begin to psychologically unravel. The question becomes; how far might they go to stop Jane from learning the truth? And how might they turn on each other in order to save themselves, and to protect their own families?
 
 The plot comprises many characters, settings, and deaths.  Are all your books structured like this? Do you use any writing tools to keep the many details organized?
 I do tend to use multiple POVs in all my novels, and I often include dual timelines and various settings. I write with Scrivener. It’s fabulous for keeping track of characters, settings, research notes and links etc. And Scrivener folders from one book can also be transported to other projects, which is great for ongoing characters and series.
 
  I like how the plot doesn’t twist and turn to where the reader needs to pause, gather the clues, and catch up.  Instead, the plot grows like a pot set on a flame to boil. How do you think this method benefits suspense? What elements do you enhance to bring to the climax?
  I love the way you describe this. My goal was not to consciously craft the novel with this method, but rather to seed questions in readers’ minds (curiosity seeds), and to lay clues, and to misdirect with red herrings. Personally, I love to read stories where I think one thing is happening, and then realize—either suddenly, or with a slow, creeping dawning—that something quite the other is going on. And that the layers were much deeper than I originally thought. I particularly love it when I can then go back in the book and see—aha!— the clues were there all along. I love this ‘fair play’, and I strive to create a similar feeling when I write suspense.
 
 I love the line: “Just like the lines of tree trunks, our lives are written into our bones.”
How extensive is your forensic knowledge, and how do you go about your research—before the writing or during?
I have read a lot on the topic and attended various law enforcement workshops over the years that I have been writing. Hopefully my knowledge has kept on building over that time! Some of my research has been done before the plotting and writing begins. And some of it informs the plot. And then as I craft a novel I realize I might need more specific nuggets of information, and I hunt those out as I go along.
 
 I appreciated how the novel was informative allowing the reader to become knowledgeable, giving the reader what the protagonist knows and learns. Do you do character sketches of your characters before writing?
Thank you! I do create character sketches for my key characters. I find it difficult to actually start writing until I have a sense of who they are: what their dreams are, their hurts, their losses, their loves, their passions, their triggers and drivers. I like to know a little bit about what might have shaped their pasts. Once I get a sense of them as ‘real people’, they begin to talk in my head J . They begin to drive the book.
 
 How did some of your other novels help in the writing process of this one?
I suspect every single past novel helps shapes the writing processes of a future one. We are, after all, a result of our cumulative experiences.
 
Your bio states that you are a “recovering journalist” who resides in British Columbia, where this novel is set. Please tell us about the settings in your other work. Do you think the setting is as important as another character in the plot? Or do you use it primarily for the atmosphere?
Most of my recent suspense novels have been set in British Columbia, either in urban or rural environments throughout the province. I think characters—people—are products of their environments and environments create atmosphere that shapes both plot and character. To me they’re tightly interwoven.
 
 
 What is the next book we can expect?  Will it follow up on Jane, her need for closure, and Detective Noah?
  THE SWIMMER, a psychological suspense more in the vein of THE MAID’S DIARY, is releasing September 10. This will be followed by two novellas set in the world of detective Jane Munro and forensic anthropologist Dr. Ella Quinn, and we will begin to learn a tiny bit more about what might have happened to Jane’s fiancé, Matt Rossi (the father of her unborn child who has gone missing in the mountains).
 
 Is Detective Noah and the search for a serial killer in other of your books? 
 Yes!!! Forensic psychologist Dr. Noah Gautier and his hunt for a dark and cunning serial killer who has been operating for years will begin to take more of a center stage in the next Munro & Quinn works to come!


Thanks, Loreth.. All of us enjoyed getting to know you and yours work.

​Thanks for talking about this wonderful read.
 
Please tell your readers how you got the idea for your book—which is how I think all great stories are generated.
 
With The Ghost Cat there was a key moment: it was when we let our cat, Tabitha, out of her carry box the day we moved into our current flat. We live in an Edwardian tenement in central Edinburgh and Tabitha immediately took exception to one room – the back room that overlooks the garden. She hissed and looked around as if seeing something. Maybe there’s a ghost cat here! I said to my wife jokingly.
That simmered in the back of my mind for the next month or so: if there was a ghost cat in the flat, I thought to myself, what would it have seen? when did it die? How many residents would it have seen pass through? I have always adored old houses and often wondered how I could tell their stories, but never quite known the way ‘in’ that was digestible, popular and compelling. I remember, when I was around 10, trying to tell the story of the house we lived in through a film made on an early iteration of Windows Movie Maker! I suppose Tabitha hissing simply inspired the framing around a desire to write a house’s story which had been simmering decades…
 
I believe The Ghost Cat is very similar to Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy in that it can be categorized as an adult story tale—defined as full of creative embellishments. How would you categorize this novel?
              
Cue the next entry on my TPR pile! I’ve never read Sipsworth, but already I can see that it’s a book after my own heart.
I think, you’re right. I’m very exorcised by C. S. Lewis’s famous quote: “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” I’ve always felt that books meant for kids are incredibly engaging – they have to be written with a concision and vibrance that adult fiction can get away with not having on the grounds of ‘being literary; similarly, ‘grown up’ books can be brimming with childish playfulness (we never truly escape our childhoods, after all). Charles Dickens is famously credited for always writing ‘with the eyes of a child’ – and haven’t his characters stood the test of time.
Ultimately, I have always written true to myself, rather than for any given market trend. As a result, books like The Ghost Cat are just me having fun; they’re the meeting place of several themes I find interesting but which are perhaps not considered compatible: footnotes, magic, history, humour, tragedy… thinking cats. I’ve always loved YA fiction and feel that, often, the unabashed innocence of their narrators has a purity that’s much more compelling to read. They’re opinionated; naïve; puffed-up; accident prone; starry-eyed… and all those things make them fun to be around.
But at the same time, I have a serious side: I have completed three degrees in English literature, so have read a fair few monographs! I love the stuffy majesty of an old archive and the pristine geometry of a Shakespearean quatrain. Equally, I have an obsession with British comedy and love performing.
Put all those things in a blender and I suppose you come out with something approximating my writing style! It doesn’t fit neatly into a given category (and it spooks the hell out of some editors!); but then the people who get it really get it, and that’s enough for me!
 
The blend of literary devices used must have been challenging. Using footnotes and summaries could--but don’t—disturb the readers’ narrative flow. Using footnotes also reminds me of another novel The Confederacy of Dunes. While John Kennedy used footnotes for a different literary value, your use of them to bring in greater historical detail was very creative. How did you come to use them? What gave you this idea? And how did you plan so that the notes did not disturb the narrative?
 
               Another book to add to my TBR pile! Loving these recommendations!
On the one hand, I think the choice to include footnotes stemmed from my desire to poke fun at the stuffiness of academia and take it down a peg or two. Going to an ancient university like the University of Edinburgh, you can really lose yourself in the ‘boffin cloud.’ You work among people who have never existed outside academia and it fascinates me how unworldly, arrogant and drunk on ideas people can become. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact my family background isn’t remotely academic, both parents having come from very working-class homes.  
So I love the idea of footnotes poking fun of that and of offering verification to a ‘fact’ which is self-evidently absurd. Writing a cat’s great because you and swerve between inhabiting their apparent aloofness one minute, and their goofiness the next; they’re the perfect vehicle to take modern academia down a peg or two, and boy does it need it.  
Equally, I like how a footnote brings verisimilitude – after all, I am telling the story of an actual flat on an actual street, that intersects with actual points in history, whether big or small. In a funny way, you’re recruiting history to do some of the storytelling for you – everyone knows where they were when they heard of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. These moments of realism help induct the reader into the  story.
 
Okay, I have to giggle here. You do the opposite of Blake Synder’s recommendation to “Save the Cat.” Our character, Grimalkin, dies at the very beginning. However, he is resurrected to continue with his remaining 8 lives. Any play on humor here with this idea?

Ah, now that is a book I HAVE heard of! And the save-the-cat technique is a fantastic one to live by.
If I did indeed subvert this notion, I can only claim to have done so subliminally! That said, I did enjoy the bite of having a lead character die at the outset. You get the emotional punch in there from the early pages – you’ve snared the reader with emotion. And telling a life both backwards (through our history), but forwards (through the cat’s history) was something that I felt was unusual and weirdly beguiling. 
I love Eilidh’s character. We would all wish to be owned by someone like her: “Her eyes permanently sparkled, as if she was always on the point of telling a joke, and their turquoise irises were so deep and kind one could tell, just by looking at them that their bearer could be trusted with your secrets.” 

You use Eilidh to point out a social perspective in the book. You also use other images to do this. Was this social comment one of the goals of the story?
 
Yes, definitely. I guess this goes back to my mum reading me loads of Dickens as a kid where there’s a social commentary lurking around every corner. We all love an underdog story, but with Eilidh I wanted this to have a twist; something that linked back to the main narrative. Having the charwoman reveal the realities of servile duty in contrast to the wealth of those around her was a nice way to kick things off with Eilidh. I also wanting this book to be touch; to describe the effect pets have on our lives without being cloying. I think keeping a foot in the social realism agenda helped this.
I also wanted to make clear that these social divisions have never really disappeared. Take the University of Edinburgh, for example; in my first-year halls, students from working class backgrounds were scraping by each week on ready meals, while their neighbours in the rooms opposite were children to blue-chip CEOs and Middle Eastern royalty. The social injustice war has never gone away, and in The Ghost Cat, Eilidh is its quiet custodian.
 
 
Cat lovers will love this book: “He was a thinking cat, and as such, enjoyed a life of quiet intellectual contemplation.” This line also serves as a great foreshadowing for the reader to accept Grimalkin's intellectual lessons. Why did you give your ghost cat more intellectual musings than antics?
 
I suppose focusing on musings rather than antics concertedly lifts the book out of the category of children’s literature. Also, it can be easy for the story to turn too farcical and pantomime-esque if it’s all about antics.
By and large, cats are creatures of subtlety and quiet decision-making. Just like in my former book The Library Cat, I have found this makes the perfect foundation on which to build a contemplative persona. The conflict in how Grimalkin sees the world, versus how it actually is, gives a potential for comedy and meaning which is almost endless. 
The antics have their place though; we always have to remember that Grimalkin is, first and foremost, a cat: he scratches, he sniffs, his tail goes fat with anger, he tests the laws of physics. This gives opportunities for more slap-stick type comedy which is important too; ironically, it keeps the main character real and believable.
 
Born in 1887, Grimalkin’s “life” periods extend through many historical periods. How did you choose which to use?
 
Very good question! In the early chapters, I was guided very much by local history. The theatre where I work, the King’s, was built in the early 1900s. I discovered it was built by the same guy who built our flat, the famous architect William Stewart Cruikshank, whose styles are contemporaneous with Charles Renee Mackintosh. This got me looking into the Rockefellers who spent time in Scotland at the beginning of the century and how this could feed into the social commentary. Basically I went down a bit of a wormhole!
I wanted to include big moments in history, but not so many that it felt contrived. In this sense, I wanted it to be like life itself: a mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary, with a slight bias towards the extraordinary, given Grimalkin was ultimately an upper-middle class Victorian. I was very influenced by David Nichols’s One Day in this sense – the idea of witnessing a character develop by visiting them for little snapshots across the time. Sometimes you drop in on them having a banal, dull day; other days you drop in on them in the midst of a huge life crisis like a death or marriage or birth. 
 
 
Is this paradise? Cat-Sỉth comes from Celtic Mythology. You use it for the ONE who comes down to judge Grimalkin while in his limbo: “…a giant black cat paraded up and down. It was easily triple the size of any feline Grimalkin had ever beheld…a great white spot that shone out from its chest like a moon was almost too bright to look at directly.”  Black generally symbolically represents the devil or a bad omen, as in a black cat crossing one’s path. Why did you choose this opposite representation?
 
I wanted to pay homage to a broadly unknown feline mythology. Originally, I’d had Cat-Sìth as the Egyptian cat-god “Bastet”, but that didn’t feel right somehow. Why Egypt? Scotland is such a wonderful repository or various mythologies and legends it felt fitting to call upon the myth kitty here. I was really struck by the ‘campness’ in visual depictions of the Celtic god, Cat-Sìth’s – I thought that’d be fun to write. It made me think of the perniciousness of the Greek gods and how they’d make huge decisions based on flights of fancy or stroppy grievances. I thought these behaviours fitted Cat-Sìth’s image as the black cat with the swirling white heart on his chest, as did the rejection of the Christian binary of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’. He was just the sort of god that would send Grimalkin on a helter-skelter whistlestop tour through time because he wasn’t paying attention at his point of death!
 
What is nice about your structure is that you lay out this story for the reader. “All cats have nine lives on planet Earth—three when they stay, three when they stray and three when they play.”  Did you need to outline, or did you write drafts of this story to bring it to completion?

The first chapters took a fair bit of rewriting. I like to spend quality time with my main character, building up a kind of ‘muscle memory’ as to who they are. The structure, funnily enough, came to me as I was walking past Scotmid in Marchmont, Edinburgh (Scotland’s equivalent of England’s ‘Co-Op’ – a convenience store). It came in the form of the subtitle used on the original UK hardback: 12 decades, 9 lives, 1 cat. It sounds cheesy, but a subtitle can really help distill a plot idea.
Landing on a good structure was tricky, though; perhaps the hardest thing, in fact. Having a solid structure gets you through your darkest moments. I feel that writing a book is very much like building a suspension bridge; you can always tweak the carriageway and the cables but the location and strength of the piles that bore through the seabed are fundamental. You need to depend on them absolutely. It took a while to get those piles situated in sure enough ground to support the story.
 
For some reason, as Shirley Jackson stated with her story The Lottery, the story came to her all at once; from your wonderful descriptions, use of color, and ease of narrative, it felt like this story came to you all at once. Can you speak to this?
              
 In one sense, yes – Tabitha hissing in the back room was a kind of “Harry Potter Moment” akin to when JK Rowling looked out a train window and the entire seven book Harry Potter series ‘came to her.’ In reality, as I’m sure many authors would agree, these moments do more for journalistic click-bait and marketing than they do honour the reality of the process. I always remember Sue Townsend, the author of the Adrian Mole series saying on her death bed in a documentary just how agonizingly hard the whole process of writing was… even right down to the final books in the Mole saga. I remember being amazed… her hero, Adrian, feels so real: he just LEAPS off the page. And surely, by the time you get your character to book 8 in the sage, the books just write themselves? It turns out not!
 
 
I could go on and on asking questions. Your book is full of insights, life-lessons, thoughts to consider and muse upon. I loved it. So, I need to ask, what are you working on now?
               Thank you so much, and thank you for these wonderful questions!
Yes I am indeed writing a new book! And I’m just free of the foundation building mentioned in the above bridge analogy. I feel like I’ve just cleared a hold up on a motorway and the cars are all speeding ahead which is a great feeling. This book – The Ship’s Cat – features a very different type of cat who turns up unexpectedly on foreign shores. I don’t want to give too much away but gentle magic features again, as does Homer’s The Odyssey as a narrative touchstone, together with my own experiences working as a deckhand as a teenager in my summer holidays…
Thanks for discussing The Ghost Cat. This book will be a great success.
               My pleasure, DJ! 

Your book offers a wonderful story using captivating elements: history, mystery, and romance.

.I’d like to begin with the narrative’s point-of-view: Devisha, creating a magical spiritual atmosphere; Chloe in 2015, discovering her grandmother’s wartime diary; and Lena (1944) recounting her own experiences during the war. Have you used this narrative technique in your previous work?
Yes, nearly all my books involve a dual or triple timeline. I started this with Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, my first novel, which tells the story of a soldier imprisoned by the Japanese on the Death Railway, and his daughter in the 1980s trying to uncover his story. The book swaps between the soldier’s backstory in Penang in the 1930s, his time on the Death Railway, and his daughter’s journey in the 1980s. All my books follow a similar pattern. Some involve three characters, others two and in some I have a single character looking back over her own past.

.It was impressive how smoothly you shifted from Lena’s diary entries in first-person to third-person. Did you have prior experience using this in your previous work? Do you know of any previous instances where this has been done?
This is the first time I’ve used that particular technique. In several books I have written complete diary entries, and in the first draft of the Fortune Teller I started by doing that. However, it didn’t work very well. The diary form didn’t lend itself to the sort of detail I needed to include, so I rewrote Lena’s story completely, putting it into the third person and just including a small introductory entry from the diary in each chapter. I don’t know of instances by other authors, but I’m sure there must be some.

Most of your books take place during World War II. What is your interest in this specific era of history?
My father served in the British-Indian army in the Malaya campaign, was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore and was a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma railway. He died when I was seven, so growing up I became fascinated in his story and began to research as much as I could about that campaign and the plight of prisoners of war. I discovered his records in the National Archives in 2010 and my first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest was inspired by his experiences. That led me to delve deeper into the war in South-East Asia and research different aspects of it. Most of my subsequent books are set during the war in SE Asia, relating the experiences of different people affected in different ways by the conflict.
However, I have also written about British India during the 1930s, Germany and France during WW2 and also London during the Blitz.

Your book enlightened me about the historical specifics of the India-Japan war. It captivated me completely. What led you to discover this?
Finding out about the Burma campaign was an extension of my original research as outlined above. I wrote about it in The Tea Planter’s Club, which tells the story of a woman who has to escape the fighting in Burma by walking through the mountains to Assam with her baby. After that I wrote The Lake Palace, about a nurse who worked in a field hospital behind the front line at Kohima and Imphal during the Burma campaign. During research for those books I stumbled across the story of the Wasbies, and decided I would write about that too one day.

This brings me to the discovery of the Wasbies, also known as the Women’s Auxiliary Service in Burma. How did you come across their service? What was the reasoning behind including it as one of Lena’s experiences?
I think I’ve answered that partly in my above answer. I stumbled across the Wasbies when I was researching the Burma campaign for other books. I was interested in the roles that women played in the war. There were very few women at the front line apart from nurses. I found it fascinating how the simple act of serving tea and cakes to soldiers could have had such a profound effect on their morale. I read a diary of a Wasbie ‘Frontline and Fortitude’ which brought home to me the bravery, strength and camaraderie of those women who were prepared to put themselves in danger to support the troops.

Your novel is a captivating blend of romance, adventure, and mystery. Which do you like better, when the romance is the main focus and the mystery is secondary? Maintaining parallelism between the two areas is a challenge for authors. How do you approach it?
This is difficult to answer because I don’t necessarily separate them like that in my mind. I like to read page-turners myself so really try to make my plots fast-moving, complex and surprising. That involves blending mystery and adventure in equal measure. And I also love to include a love story to invest readers in the characters’ journeys. However, I wouldn’t necessarily write either an adventure, mystery or romance without the other elements too. I think the way they come together in a book is down to planning, editing and rewriting if things don’t work the first time.

I’m curious, do you extensively outline before, during, or after completing the first draft of a novel?
Yes, I plan very carefully. I draw up a high-level outline and tweak it until I’m satisfied, then I write a chapter plan and try to follow that when I write. However, I often find myself departing from the chapter plan because interesting plot-twists come to me as I write.

.Your reviews often mention that your depictions of Napal are so realistic that readers could use your book as a travel guide. How familiar are you with this specific area of the world?
I have been to Nepal twice. Once in 1988 as part of a much longer journey, when I spent time in Pokhara, Kathmandu and trekked to Ghorepani as the characters do in my book. I wrote a diary on that trip, which I drew on extensively whilst writing the book. I returned last year while I was writing it, spending time in Kathmandu and Pokhara and did the same trek (much harder now than when I was in my twenties, and a lot has changed). I also spent a couple of weeks in Darjeeling and Kolkata in 2019. I loved Darjeeling – the beauty, the atmosphere and the people - and thought it would make a perfect setting for a book. 

What is the desired takeaway for readers after finishing this book?
I hope that readers are able to escape into a different world when they read The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu, and that the book brings that world alive for them. I would also like people to understand about the hardships experienced by so many during the war and that a lot of ordinary, unsung people, like Lena and Billy made huge sacrifices for the sake of others. I also hope they remember Lena, her strength and her bravery and her desire to be true to herself and to those she loved.

Working on the next? Tell us more.
Since writing The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu, I have published another book, A Rose in the Blitz. It tells the story of May Rose, a nurse with the ambulance corps in London during WW2, and her daughter Rachel, to whom May tells her story years later, and who goes on to uncover various explosive family secrets.
I have also written two books about WW2 set in Germany for my publisher, Bookouture, which are about women and families affected by the Nazi’s Lebensborn programme. The first of these, The Orphan List, will be published on August 15th 2024, the second will be published in November.
I am currently working on another book set during WW2 in South-East Asia, this time focusing on Pearl Harbor and the war in the Philippines. That one is called The Lotus House. I’m not sure on a publication date for that one yet, perhaps either October 2024 or January next year.   
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“I came across a story about an unhappy-looking blonde who had checked into a Hollywood hotel and was linked to the scandalous murder of Cecil Wells in far-off Alaska.”  Okay, was it just because you couldn’t find anything written on this story that captured you to write it?  What continued to intrigue you?
When I read about the circumstances of the murder – and the later suicide of Diane Wells – I was astounded there wasn’t a movie about the case, let alone more information online, as it seemed such a quintessential film noir, especially since the inter-racial affair between Diane and Johnny Warren would have been a big deal too.
Later I found the story had indeed been covered in many magazines – both of the serious and pulp variety – but more than that, I was just curious. What had really happened the night of the murder, and what happened to Marquam Wells, the 3-year-old son of Cecil and Diane?
When I found out that the family members knew little about what had happened either, and hadn’t seen Marquam in years, it became a real mystery that got its hooks into me. Now however I was trying to find answers not only for myself, but for several generations of people.    

Why chase this story and not an untold Hollywood story since much of your other work is involved in Los Angeles?
Well, about half of The Alaskan Blonde does take place in Hollywood. It was where Diane and Marquam came as soon as she made bail, and where her friend William Colombany, the so-called “Third Suspect”, also came to as well, in order to be her constant companion. He was arrested in LA twice too, and of course Diane committed suicide in Hollywood.
The Alaska connection was especially interesting to me though, as I knew very little about the huge state (which in 1953 was still a territory), and that added another level of complexity.
 
I found I couldn’t put this story down. I needed to find out “who did it.” I am fascinated, however, with your take on Diane at the beginning of your investigation—compared to your overall discovery. How did you find yourself relating to her as the investigation developed?
Thanks, I’m so glad that you found it a compelling read. It’s ultimately a difficult and unhappy story overall, with so many contradictions and ideas that change over the course of the narrative.
Initially, Diane was very much seen by many people – and particularly the press – as a young, blonde gold-digger who was clearly after Cecil’s money, and probably killed him for it so she could run off with her *gasp* Black lover.
But talking to people who knew her, especially her eldest daughter from her first marriage, Saundra, revealed a different, more complex person. Saundra and her younger sister Bonnie never saw their mother after the divorce, and Saundra was justifiably angry about that – but my research led me to believe Diane hadn’t forgotten her daughters at all; her letters and calls probably weren’t passed on.
Other stories too showed Diane was someone very different from the narrow, titillating media portrayal. She was no angel per se (she was always the most attractive woman in the room, and seemingly initiated a short but passionate affair with Johnny, despite her many denials), but in Cecil she had an abusive, jealous husband, and found herself living in a very small town with challenging extremes of weather.
Moreover, it seemed she suffered from postnatal depression, then a condition all but unknown to the medical community (as was the term “domestic abuse”), and before she died, she was depressed and taking barbiturates.
I couldn’t relate to much of that directly of course, but I began to get more of an understanding of her – or at least what might have been an understanding – the more I heard and read about her.
 
You write from a journalistic and investigative point of view, but I found that you sometimes gave a “first-person” opinion. Was it hard not to become involved with the characters you presented?
I was urged by several friends – and potential publishers – to put more of myself in the story; to relate it more to my life, as that is very much a popular tactic in true crime writing.
It’s true to say that true crime books are often written by people directly connected to the case or the victim, but that wasn’t the case with me. I didn’t know anyone involved, had never been to Alaska (at the time), and wasn’t even alive when it happened. The focus should be on the living family members I felt, not on me. And besides, as a journalist I always find other people more interesting; they’re the ones I want to meet and interview.

You will occasionally step away from the investigation to offer historical information about Alaska or other biographical information on organizations or witnesses.  Why did you feel this added information—not necessarily relevant to the actual murder—necessary?
Again, that was something suggested to me, mainly because most people know very little about Alaska, let alone Fairbanks, even today. I spoke to some people in The Big I pub in Fairbanks who told me that tourists – foreign and American – often think Alaska is an island. Why? Because it’s in a box on the TV weather forecast, so they assumed it was like Hawaii!
As for background about other organizations or witnesses, I included that because I wanted to give a rounded look at the whole picture. More practically, I didn’t have an overabundance of witness interviews to draw from, as the case happened 70 years ago.
 
If you were to write another True Crime novel, what would you like to tackle as a mode of craft that you didn’t attempt here?
I would still be uncomfortable about inserting myself into the story unless it actually happened that way, though I would certainly try to avoid reexamining crimes from so long ago because, as I mentioned, almost everyone involved with them has passed away, or cannot remember much about it. The police/FBI files related to them are less likely to still be available either.

What advice would you give someone wanting to write a True Crime book?
A golden rule is to befriend and always be kind to the librarians, archivists, historical society volunteers, museum staff, law enforcement officials and others that you encounter during your research. They nearly always really want to help, and can access places and have ideas you’d never think of – maybe even find something vital that will help you.
As for doing interviews, just be patient and respectful, and make sure to listen to what your interviewees are saying, even if they take some time getting to the subject.
Recalling and talking about an act of violence or tragedy – even if it was decades ago – is always going to be difficult if not traumatic, though I often found that people wanted to talk, and wanted answers (even if they weren’t the ones they wanted to hear). Almost anything is better than the black hole of not knowing.

I always find coincidences to be karmic. You suggest this in your Epilogue. Do you still feel that way? Have you written other stories that have given you this same cycle of events in life?
As any true crime writer will tell you: you couldn’t make these things up. There’s also nothing stranger than real people, and what they will do and say to each other.
In fact, there was another utterly bizarre karmic coincidence that I found out about after the book had been published. In the early days of my research, a bookstore called Book Soup in West Hollywood asked for local writers to come and be “living exhibits” in their window.
My wife Wendall Thomas, who is the novelist behind the Cyd Redondo mysteries, and I both signed up, and there’s a picture of me in the window, sat at a desk with my laptop. I took a large picture of Diane in a frame with me too, so I could show passers-by who I was writing about.
Years later, I found a picture of where the mortuary where Diane was taken to after her death: it’s now the location of the Book Soup bookstore.

I know your Gourmet Ghosts books. Do you plan to do more of these, or do you plan to stay with true crime?
People often ask about another book, but I vowed that the bars, restaurants and hotels I featured – and the true crimes, ghost and celebrity stories that happened behind their doors – must have a solid backstory in terms of the newspaper archives/witness accounts, and though I look into new and old locations all the time, I still haven’t found enough good ones to justify a whole new book.
As for true crime, there was another death that happened in Fairbanks – coincidentally also in the Northward Building, where Cecil Wells was murdered – that someone messaged me about.
It’s a very suspicious suicide from the 1970s, and I’ve got a couple of witness interviews already, though the current family members, of course understandably, have not replied to any of my letters, emails, messages or calls.
Unless I hear from one of them or more, whether it’s a book or not will probably come down to whether I can get the FBI file on the case. I have the file number, but they sent a standard response to my FOIA request, and so I appealed.
If that doesn’t go my way, I may well use the circumstances of the case as the basis for a fictional mystery/crime story in the future (though that’s moving into my wife’s lane, as she calls it, so I have to tread carefully!).
 
 What are you working on now?
At the moment I’m writing and pitching the travel/lifestyle/feature pieces I write as a freelance journalist, and working at my regular day job – got to pay those bills!
But every now and then I come across a great historical crime story, or just a very weird one, and go down the research rabbit hole. Sometimes there’s an article in it for Crime Reads, or LA Magazine or somewhere else, but sometimes not.
Even so, the thrill of finding something in the archives and wondering “what happened?” keeps me going!