Writing and Researching Historical Mysteries: October 15

Writing and Researching Historical Mysteries
Saturday, October 15: 12-2 p.m.
Laurel Books, 1423 Broadway, Oakland, CA 
www.laurelbookstore.com

I will be moderating this panel on Writing and Researching Historical Mysteries with participants Rhys Bowen, Tony Broadbent, Laurie R. King, and Catriona McPherson. This event is sponsored by Mystery Writers of America NorCal. Free.

Rhys Bowen is the Bestselling Author of the Royal Spyness Series, Molly Murphy Mysteries, and Constable Evans mysteries. She has won the Agatha Best Novel Award and has been nominated for the Edgar Best Novel. Rhys currently writes two mystery series, the atmospheric Molly Murphy novels, about a feisty Irish immigrant in 1900s New York City, and the funny and sexy Royal Spyness mysteries, about a penniless minor royal in 1930s Britain. Her books have made bestseller lists, garnered many awards, nominations, and starred reviews. She was born in England and married into a family with historic royal connections. She now divides her time between California and Arizona.

Tony Broadbent was born in Windsor, England. Grew up in Burnham, Buckinghamshire. Attended Burnham Grammar School (as did Tracey Ullman and Jimmy Carr...so the place was obviously a lot of laughs). He graduated from the London College of Printing—rated one of the top design colleges in the world. And then worked as a copywriter and creative director at international advertising agencies in London, New York, and San Francisco—where he then opened his own agency. His debut novel The Smoke won critical acclaim. Booklist named Spectres In The Smoke—the second title in the series..."one of the best Spy Novels of 2006". He is a Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award Winner, a Macavity/Sue Feder Historical Award Nominee and a San Francisco Library Laureate. In addition to 'The Smoke Series' of novels, Tony has written short stories—one a contemporary take on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson; the other, a moment in time for a NYPD bomb disposal officer—and a stand-alone novel that touches upon the early days of The Beatles: The One After 9:09—A Mystery With A Backbeat.

Laurie R. King is the third generation in her family native to the San Francisco area. She spent her childhood reading her way through libraries up and down the West Coast; her middle years raising children, renovating houses, traveling the world, and doing a BA and MA in theology.  King now lives a genteel life of crime, on California’s central coast. Her crime novels are both serial and stand-alone. First in the hearts of most readers comes Mary Russell, who met the retired Sherlock Holmes in 1915 and became his apprentice, then his partner. Beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Russell and Holmes move through the Teens and Twenties in amiable discord, challenging each other to ever greater feats of detection.

Catriona McPherson was born in Edinburgh and lived there, in Ayrshire, in Dumfriesshire and in Galloway before moving to California in 2010. A born swot, she I finally left school at age thirty with a PhD in linguistics from Edinburgh University. Proper jobs have included banking (hopeless), library work in local studies and fine art (marvellous), and a short burst of academia (miserable). She is now a full-time writer and hopes never to have a proper job again. When not writing, she is reading, gardening, cooking and baking, cycling in Davis, running through walnut orchards, getting to grips with this outlandish and enormous country (26 states visited so far) and practizing an extreme form of Scotch thrift*, from eating home-grown food to dumpster-diving/skip-surfing for major appliances. *when "making a living" as a writer, thrift helps a lot.  A former academic linguist, she is now a full-time fiction writer, the multi- award-winning author of the Dandy Gilver detective stories, set in Scotland in the 1920s.  She also writes a strand of award-winning contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist THE DAY SHE DIED and Mary Higgins Clark finalist THE CHILD GARDEN.