Thank you so very much! It’s a huge honor and a lifetime thrill to receive not one, but two Agatha nominations in the same year. (For your readers who don’t know, it’s sort of like the Oscars but for the traditional mystery.) I’m pumped, naturally, to be able to promote Called to Justice with those nominations in the air.  The awards are announced at Malice Domestic, the conference at the end of April – so I’m also delighted that Called to Justice will be for sale alongside the book nominated for Best Historical Mystery, Delivering the Truth. The icing on the cake is to also have a Quaker Midwife short story nominated for Best Short Story: “The Mayor and the Midwife.” Fingers crossed, everybody!

Sure! We shared a bottle of bubbly, my local press came out with a front-page story, and my home town back in California ran a story, too. My friends, family, fans, and Quaker faith community are all super delighted for me.

I had to research so many aspects of life in the late 1880s. I’ve driven in an historic carriage. Lived the life of an 1870s family in Maine for a weekend, right down to the chamberpot and the wood cookstove. I’ve read up on police procedure of the time, studied a diary of a young woman in the era, checked a zillion words to see if they were used then, perused John Greenleaf Whittier’s biography, and am a docent-trainee in his house museum. I pour over maps, train timetables, the 1890 Sears &Roebuck catalog, an 1872 manual on midwifery, and historic postcards. I even had a historical seamstress sew me an authentic Quaker dress that I sometimes wear to events. I love the history of the era, and since the books take place here in Amesbury where I live, it’s easy to walk the streets and imagine life as it was then.

She lives with her late sister’s five children and their father as a boarder, but she also helps with the cooking and housework. She sees pregnant clients in her parlor/bedroom, and does home visits in the last months of their pregnancies. When she is summoned to a home for a birth, she always goes, no matter what else is happening, and she might not be back home again for 48 hours. She pays another visit or two to the new mom and infant in the next week. She also has a good friend, Bertie Winslow, and they sometimes go on outings to the beach or to a lecture or concert. And Rose’s beau, David Dodge, takes her out in his doctor’s buggy for a drive or for dinner. Their romance continues to develop in Called to Justice, although the conflict with his mother does not disappear.

I have been a member of the Religious Society of Friends since 1989. The lovely simple Meetinghouse where we worship on Sundays is a ten-minute walk from my house. It’s the same building, with ten-foot tall windows, that Whittier oversaw the construction of when it was new. I love bringing the quiet, peaceable sensibilities of the faith into a mystery series. My amateur sleuth Rose Carroll is already unusual, in that she is an independent, unmarried businesswoman (although if David has anything to do with her marital status, that will change). On top of her independent status, she’s a Quaker, so she also dresses, speaks, and sometimes acts unlike ordinary townspeople.  I like having an outsider of sorts for a protagonist. It gives her a different perspective, and lets her muse about issues in ways lifetime residents of the town who belong to more conventional religions would not.

That’s a very intriguing question. Hmm. I would have said Rose’s brother-in-law Frederick was a reluctant cast member, but he gets a much bigger role in book #3, Turning the Tide (April 2018). If anything, I have minor characters waving their hands in the air, saying, “Pick me! What about me?” Rose’s mother, a suffrage activist, comes to visit in book #3, and I loved getting to know her better. Maybe we’ll see Rose’s father Allan in book #4.

I’m delighted to announce that Midnight Ink has renewed my contract for at least two more books, so the adventures of Rose, David, Whittier, and the others will continue into 2020, and I hope beyond.

Thanks for sharing with me today, and it was an honor!