I’m a wife of 16 years, homeschooling mom to 2, writer since way back, cover designers, and editor for WhiteFire Publishing who has a serious love for coffee and chocolate (the two major food groups, right?).

Ack, this is hard!! Let’s see… Mysterious, compelling, romantic, historical, and THIEVES! (Not exactly a describing word, but you know, LOL.)

Well while getting started on the third book of the Ladies of the Manor Series, I realized I was quick running out of projects, so I started brainstorming something new to pitch to Bethany House. Some research I had done for that first Edwardian series taught me that King George V changed his last name during WWI from the German Saxe-Coburg to the English Windsor—which made me wonder if anyone else of German descent might have done the same. That combined with some other super fun historical facts about how artists were recruited to help in the war effort, and finally with the idea of incorporating a family of thieves into the book, and voila!

4. I love how research for something else can spark inspiration for another! Speaking of the Ladies of the Manor series, I'm a huge fan. What are some similarities or differences between them and A Name Unknown?

They happen in the same story world, so though you don’t ever see the characters from Ladies of the Manor in a scene, you’ll find an occasional mention of them! They both have some mystery, some suspense, and of course some romance. But rather than focusing on the nobility with a servant perspective, this series is more about the great divide at the time between the rich and the poor, and doesn’t have any pesky nobility titles to contend with. 😉

Oh, this is tough! But I think it’s probably one of my big middle scenes, where a character is shot . . . with an arrow. I had fun making it an unlikely weapon of choice for that era, primarily so that the enraged victim could say things like:
“Of all the blighted, archaic things—a dashed arrow? Are you Robin Hood, you blazing coward?”

I haven’t personally done any ancestry research, but my English cousins have! When I was in college, my great-uncle was contacted by our family still in England, verifying that his father was the brother of this branch’s father. Until then, I didn’t realize that the Higson family (my maiden name) was so newly-arrived in the US!

Oh my gracious. Can you imagine doing all that research with no internet?? Peter, my hero, happens to have a library overflowing with books his grandfather had collected, and it’s his grandfather’s history he’s looking for, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. His primary goal was to locate his opa’s journals somewhere in the mess of books. Quite a daunting task, given the state of his library…

8. Character visits! Which book/story of yours would you think make a great connection for your characters in A Name Unknown if there's such a thing as book jumping?

Oh my, I think it could have been fun to pit my cold-hearted Russian magnate, Andre, from A Lady Unrivaled against my gang of thieves! He was an interesting semi-villain to write, and though he would consider himself as moving in a very different class of criminals than my thieves, I think Rosemary and her crew could have taught him a thing or two!

9. O, I think I can imagine that! And which character of a book will you think would make a great "faraway best friend" to one of your characters?

Peter has a huge correspondence list, so I can imagine him being a pen pal with my other character who tends to write insightful letters—Brice from The Reluctant Duchess.

I had no idea what they’d come up with, but my only request for the cover was, “BOOKS!” I absolutely adore the result! The look on her face, the library shelves, the colors are all perfect. I think this is probably my all-time favorite cover. Because books!

I actually just received the cover for the second book, A Song Unheard! I love the colors, the perspective down the violin. I can’t possibly adore it as much as those BOOKS (ha ha), but I think they found a clever way of incorporating the violin, and the expression on Willa’s face makes it pretty clear that she’s watching more than the music on the stand…

For book 3, I’m hoping to have some fun clockworks and gears on the cover (we have clockmaking in that one), and I’ll be crossing my fingers for both hero and heroine, though we’ll see if I get that request. 😉
  

12. Yes, I also love the cover of book 2, A Song Unheard, but as you said, nothing can top that cover of books for this book nerd! LOL. Speaking of books in the series, what can we expect in the next books? 

In book 2, A Song Unheard, we follow Rosemary’s adoptive sister Willa to Wales, where she’s sent on an assignment to find a cypher key in the possession of a famous violinist. For the first time in her life, this unlikely violin prodigy gets to rub elbows with other musicians…and try not to be charmed by the infamous Lukas De Wilde. Lukas, son of a mathematician and cryptographer, barely escaped Belgium with his life when Germany invaded—and has no idea where his mother and sister are. He fears they’ve paid the price for the work of his father’s that everyone wants…and that his efforts to find them may be too little, too late.

In some ways it’s definitely this one, because Peter is a novelist. He writes a different kind of story than I do, but it was so much fun to have him thinking about his story as I thought about his! In other ways though, it’s A Lady Unrivaled. Eternally-optimistic Ella is more like me than any other character I’ve ever written.

14. Since we're on the topic of you, what book of yours would be a great start for new readers of this genre or just simply new to your books?

I would probably start a new reader with The Lost Heiress—my first Edwardian title, and a true book of my heart. I wrote the first draft of that story when I was 12! So it’s traveled with me a long time, through many revisions, and I love how it turned out.

Cornwall!! I had the blessing of going to England last fall for research/my 15th anniversary trip, and I so enjoyed seeing the gorgeous, rugged landscape where A Name Unknown is set! 

Anywhere quiet, LOL. Most of the time I’m stationed at the kitchen table, but honestly, the “where” doesn’t matter to me, so long as I can have some peace and quiet (hard to come by as a homeschooling mom at the kitchen table…)

Oh, let’s see. I struggle to eat my vegetables. I wear a size 3.5 on my ring finger, which led the jewelry store to disbelieve me and not place the order for my wedding band because they thought it was a mistake. I was a tour guide in college—a fun exercise for an introvert! I love hats but rarely wear them. And we have a 1994 Jeep Cherokee, my husband’s daily driver, with 420,000 miles on it, and it’s the most dependable vehicle in the family!