Ellen Crosby--Deeds Left Undone

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am such a fan of Ellen Crosby's books, and I await the publication of a new novel in her Virgina Wine Country series with eager anticipation, so you know I devoured the latest, DEEDS LEFT UNDONE, as soon as I got my copy! And this cover! Don't you just want to dive into it?

I love Lucie Montgomery and her family and friends, and I'm fascinated by the details of the winemaking business. Not to mention that no one propels you into a mystery like Ellen, and DEEDS LEFT UNDONE is no exception! Ellen presents her characters, and the reader, with a moral dilemma. Here she tells us more.

Writing about Moral Gray Issues

by Ellen Crosby

Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but almost every book I’ve written has its origins in either something I’ve heard (a story on NPR, for example) or something I’ve read in a magazine or newspaper—so the story is always rooted in truth and reality. Deeds Left Undone gets its title from a quote by Harriet Beecher Stowe: The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. And the first chapter is based on a February 7, 2004 front page article in The Washington Post, my hometown newspaper, titled ‘A Radical Plan to Save a Rural Oasis: Don’t Pave the Roads.’

My wine country mysteries are set in a real place—Loudoun County, Virginia and, more specifically, the village of Middleburg, a quintessential Norman Rockwell small town that is located in the well-to-do heart of Virginia’s horse and hunt country. It is charming, bucolic, and picture-postcard. The streets are named for the signers of the Declaration of Independence who were friends of the man who founded the town in 1787. The fight to keep the rural roads unpaved in Loudoun is a fierce one. Locals—especially anyone who rides, hunts, or owns horses, which includes a lot of folks—want to keep this unspoiled paradise the way it has always been since before the founding of the town. Developers and other locals—quite often people who recently moved to the area because they fell in love with its beauty and charm—argue that the anti-pavers are standing in the way of progress. Also, unpaved roads can be impassable in bad weather, cause flat tires and broken axels, and result in too many trips to the car wash.

The pro-paving group cites the example of another Virginia county—Rappahannock County—where the board of supervisors has stubbornly refused to allow any commercial development. The result has been services cut to the absolute minimum, a housing shortage, and a stagnant economy. The anti-pavers point to adjoining Culpeper County where that board of supervisors is allowing a 116-acre data center housing 2.2 million square feet of massive structures with concrete walls up to 70 feet high to be built on farmland adjacent to Civil War battlegrounds. Two more enormous data center sites have already been approved.  When completed, they will suck up more than 10 times the entire county’s current electricity usage. Cooling the plants will put a strain on the area’s water supply. Already the wells of local homeowners are starting to go dry, there is not enough electricity to go around, and Culpeper’s once-beautiful vistas are slowly being erased. Nevertheless the chairman of the Culpeper Board of Supervisors is unrepentant: the county needs the tax dollars which are essential for the region’s economic development.

This battle—with soaring tempers, angry words, and a lot of money at stake—is clearly fertile ground for a murder or two; doing the research for Deeds Left Undone was especially fascinating. The arguments in favor of economic development and paving the roads were obvious. But to understand why the non-pavers believed as they did, a ninety-two-year-old friend with the energy of someone half her age and known to most of the horse-and-hunt community as Grammy brought me to a steeplechase race, an event called “Twilight Jumpers” and one of the largest cattle auctions in the region. As expected, one of the big reasons was “because we like it this way and it’s better for the horses.” Also, the unspoiled beauty of this lovely part of Virginia was a major part of its attraction and charm. Why ruin it? Did Loudoun want to turn into another Culpeper County, selling out for easy money but destroying everything that had made it such a desirable place to live to begin with?

I don’t know the answer to the question whether the roads should be paved or unpaved, whether there’s a middle ground that will appease both sides, and who should get to define “progress”—whatever that is. But I do like writing about moral gray areas and exploring both sides of an issue so that my readers can think about it and perhaps decide for themselves how they feel.

So I’m curious about what you Reds readers think: pave the roads because you can’t stop progress forever or leave them unpaved to preserve their unspoiled natural beauty? And why?

DEBS: Here's more about DEEDS LEFT UNDONE--

When Paul Merchant, the husband of Lucie Montgomery’s winery manager, is found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool, the police rule it an accident. But Paul’s wife insists he was murdered because of his leadership of Don’t Pave Paradise, a conservation group lobbying to keep the region’s beautiful country roads unpaved. Plus, six weeks ago Paul’s predecessor also died under mysterious circumstances. As Lucie takes on the work of the conservationists, she discovers a link to the recent deaths and the death of a beautiful heiress in a fire eighty years ago. Plus she learns firsthand there are individuals who will do anything—including committing murder—to, as the song goes, pave paradise and turn it into a parking lot. 

And about Ellen!

For many years she worked as a freelance journalist in the US and while living overseas in London, Moscow, and Geneva, Switzerland before turning to writing fiction full time. Her last job as a stringer was as a regional feature writer for The Washington Post, covering many of the places where her Wine Country mysteries are set. 

DEBS: I have so many questions for Ellen. She just spent the week teaching at Chautauqua and I hoping she'll share some highlights. She's posted some fabulous photos on her socials!

And of course I'm always nagging her for news of an new Sophie Medina book...

I'm sure, dear readers, that you have questions, too!

Rancho Pillow--Round Top, Round 2

DEBORAH CROMBIE: When my daughter and friend and I went to Round Top for the first time back in 2017, I was just getting stuck in writing A BITTER FEAST, Kincaid/James #18, and it was only by accident that we did something that would end up playing a big part in the book.  It so happened that we'd bought tickets to a dinner at a place called Rancho Pillow, a ranch property now run as a very quirky motel a few miles outside of the tiny town of Round Top. Here's the view looking over the fields from the ranch. So peaceful!

The guest chef for that 2017 dinner, Robert Lyford, was actually local to us here at home in McKinney, so we were very excited to see what Robert had in store for us.

It was a fabulous dinner, and Robert's menu was a huge inspiration for chef Viv Holland's charity lunch menu in A BITTER FEAST.

Here's a little snippet from the book describing some of the food:

Even with the quirky presentation, the food, Gemma had to admit, had been divine. From the creamy, smoky trout spread, to the delicate salad with roasted pears, caramel, and a local blue cheese, to the meltingly tender lamb and white beans served in camping tins, it had been of absolute star quality. What, Gemma had to wonder, was a chef so talented doing in this tiny village?

She nibbled at the last bit of her pudding. The little jam jar she’d chosen had held a mixed berry crumble with a tangy layer of crème fraiche—a dessert she suspected she’d find herself dreaming about. All around her, spoons were being laid down and empty jars examined in hopes of finding a smidgen more.

So this year, when Kayti and I had a chance to book tickets for the Rancho Pillow Feast in the Field again, we jumped at it.

Here we are pre-dinner, toasting our trip. 

And resting our poor feet after a day of shopping at Marburger Farm.

(I should probably interject here to say that half the fun of the whole Round Top event is playing dress up. It's cowboy boots (my vintage Wranglers!), hats, denim, and skirts or dresses. And lots of turquoise jewelry. Believe me, it's a thing, and we did it up properly.)

Kayti demonstrates!

The Feast in the Field dinners have grown considerably since our first one, when there was only one long table. Now there are three!

So festive, with eclectic table settings that I borrowed for the book from the previous dinner as well. (The yurt is part of the motel accomodation!)

This year the chef was a woman, Karla Subera-Pittol, from the LA restaurant Chainsaw, and all the food was smoked or cooked over open fires. 

Here's Karla cooking.

And some mystery ingredient we never identified.

What do you suppose that was? Below are pinapples and cabbages smoking, and the big smoker where the meat was cooked.

It was all delicious, and we had a great time, the best part of which was the communal dining and making new friends. We don't sit down with strangers often enough in our everyday lives. It turned out the husband of the couple who sat across from us graduated from Austin College, my tiny north Texas university whose enrollment tops out at about 1200 students, the same year I did! Alas, we didn't know each other back then. He was psychology and I was biology and our paths didn't cross, but it was a lovely coincidence that evening.

As Ellen Crosby mentioned earlier this week, writers have to do more than write. It's getting out in the world and experiencing things that gives us grist for the mill. I don't know that this dinner will play a specific part in a book (unless that mysterious ingredient comes into one somewhere...) but you never know. I am open for it!

REDs and writer friends, have chance adventures become major parts of books? And readers, have you had memorable communal meals?

 

Ellen Crosby--I Am What I Write?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is always a huge treat to have the lovely and talented Ellen Crosby visit here on JRW! I am a big fan of her Wine Country mysteries, but I love everything she writes, and her Sophie Medina books, featuring Washington, DC photojournalist Sophie, rate up at the top of my "jump up and down with excitement" list! Sophie's latest adventure, DODGE AND BURN, does not disappoint!

I AM WHAT I WRITE?

 Ellen Crosby

The week before last I drove out to Slater Run Vineyards, a beautiful, bucolic family-owned vineyard in the village of Upperville, Virginia to tape an interview for Write Around the Corner, a television show that airs on Blue Ridge PBS in southern Virginia. 

Slater Run Vineyards

The show—which the producers will film anywhere as long as it’s not a television studio—features interviews with Virginia authors and has been on the air for seven seasons. We are a prolific bunch here in the Old Dominion, which is why there will be a Season 8—among our tribe are such well-known names as David Baldacci, John Grisham, Barbara Kingsolver, Donna Andrews, Art Taylor, John Gilstrap. Alan Orloff, Tara Laskowski, Angie Kim, G.M. Malliet, Ed Aymar, S.A. Cosby, Beth Macy, Adriana Trigiani, Kwame Alexander, Maggie Stiefvater, Nikki Giovanni, Elle Cosimano, Brendan Slocumb, and Jeanette Walls—to name but a very few. (Everyone I neglected to mention please forgive me).

From left: Carol Jennings, Ellen, and Rose Martin, from Write Around the Corner

The first thing Rose Martin, the well-prepared program host, said to me was this: You’ve led a fascinating life traveling all around the world and so much of your life is in your books. Will you tell us about it?

Huh?

I write a mystery series about a woman named Lucie Montgomery who owns a vineyard in Virginia (I don’t) and another about Sophie Medina, an international photojournalist who lives in Washington, D.C., has a former CIA operative husband, and becomes embroiled in solving crimes (not me, either, though I have worked as an international journalist). But as I thought about Rose’s question, I began to realize that she was right: snippets of me and my life have somehow made their way onto the pages of all my books. Songs I was listening to, events that were happening in the world, where we took our summer vacation, what mattered to my three sons at the time, conversations I had with my husband.

In Dodge and Burn, my fourth Sophie Medina book which will be out on May 7, an insignificant but beautiful Ukrainian icon is stolen from the home of Robson Blake, a wealthy philanthropist, while his collection of Old Master paintings is left untouched. When Sophie shows up to take his photo, Blake is dead and his state-of-the-art alarm system is turned off. Who stole the icon, who murdered Robbie Blake—and why? My late husband’s mother was half-Russian and half-Ukrainian, plus we lived in the former Soviet Union when André’s job as a journalist brought us to Moscow thirty-five years ago, so it’s a pretty short line connecting the dots between my interest in the war Ukraine is fighting against Russia and plundered art as a spoil of war.

Sophie is also asked to take pictures of a soccer camp being hosted by an organization that offers support to homeless individuals when the Real Madrid soccer team comes to Washington for a “friendly” game with D.C. United. I suspect the idea for the soccer camp for homeless kids came to me as I was writing and also listening to World Cup soccer games being played in Qatar in the background during “WhatsApp Watch Parties” my oldest son, who lives in Germany, organized for himself, a cousin in Paris, and my husband in Virginia.

In the acknowledgments for Dodge and Burn, I mentioned that many of the instances involving art theft that I wrote about were taken from news accounts of crimes that actually happened in 2022 and 2023 while I was writing this book. Stolen, looted, and plundered art is the fourth most trafficked item after money, drugs, and arms--and once I Googled “stolen art” to begin my research I quickly fell down the rabbit hole. I won’t spoil the plot, but the crime and criminals in Dodge and Burn ended up being based on a true crime that I read about—which hadn’t been my original plan.

So Reds, here’s my question for you: do you consciously or unconsciously insert yourself or your life into your books? And, readers, do you think reading a book by a favorite author offers insight into his or her personal life? Do you ever think about the person writing the book, or do you just focus on the story?

DEBS: Oh, such good questions, Ellen.  And so hard to answer. I am always curious about the author, but I don't necessarily think they've actually experienced all the things they write about. We crime novelists would be in big trouble, if so...

Readers, do you separate the story from the person?

And I have to say I am gobsmacked by the number of fabulous writers clustered together in little Virginia!

 

Here's more about DODGE AND BURN: 

When billionaire philanthropist and art collector Robson Blake hires Sophie Medina to take photographs for him, she doesn't expect to show up and find her client dead. It seems he was the victim of a burglary gone wrong. But why was his state-of-the-art security system turned off . . . and why, in a house full of priceless Old Masters, is the only thing missing a beautiful but insignificant Ukrainian religious icon?
Before long, Sophie finds herself in the crosshairs of a D.C. homicide detective who suspects she knows more than she is saying about Blake's murder - and he's not wrong. To Sophie's mixed delight and horror, she's recently learned she has a half-brother . . . who might also be an international art thief, with eyes on Blake's collection.

As the police get closer to finding Blake's killer, Sophie is certain someone is trying to frame her for his murder. Can she find the real killer in time - even if it means turning in her own brother to prove her innocence?

Photo by Bailey Shyburgh

ELLEN CROSBY is the author of the Sophie Medina mysteries, the Virginia wine country mystery series, and MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone mystery. Her books have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award; THE FRENCH PARADOX was chosen as one of The Strand Magazine’s Top 20 Mysteries of 2021 Previously she worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and as an economist at the U.S. Senate. She is currently busy writing the next Virginia wine country mystery due out in 2025. 

 

Ellen Crosby--Have You Met Your Twin?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have long been a huge fan of my pal Ellen Crosby's Sophie Medina books. (Ellen also writes the Virginia Wine Country mysteries, which are terrific and much lauded as well.) But photojournalist Sophie is one of my very favorite heroines and I've recommended the first two Sophie books, MULTIPLE EXPOSURE and GHOST IMAGE, repeatedly, so I was thrilled when I learned Ellen had written a new Sophie book, BLOW UP. It's a twisty, high-stakes plot based on a fascinating premise, and here's Ellen to explain!

HAVE YOU MET YOUR TWIN?

In 2019 the CDC reported that 32 out of every 1,000 babies born in the United States was a twin. But did you know there are also lookalikes who are not identical or fraternal twins and are not related to each other by blood? The name for these individuals is a doppelgänger: a biologically unrelated lookalike or double of a living person.

How common are doppelgängers? Is there an almost-you running around in the world somewhere whom you’ve never met? A new scientific study reports the answer is more likely to be yes than we might imagine—though with some qualifications and caveats.

Scientists who study DNA and genetics say that each of us shares 99.5 percent of our DNA with every other human being on the planet, meaning a tiny one-half of one percent is all that makes us different from each other. Which is why it is possible—and even likely—that somewhere in the world there is at least one other person who looks almost exactly like each of us, even though we are totally unrelated. What is even weirder is that our doppel­gänger can be a total stranger who lives thousands of miles away and is someone we might never know.

I became fascinated by the idea of using a doppelgänger in a novel after reading The Likeness by Tana French and The Death and Life of Bobby Z  by Don Winslow. (Two terrific books, by the way). As implausible as it seems, in both stories someone gets away with convincing people who know her (and him) well—even intimately—that they are that person in order to help solve a crime. It makes for a tense, gripping story because the ticking time bomb that keeps you on the edge of your seat is how long it’s going to be before the doppelgänger slips up and gets caught—and what that mistake will be. Because you know something has to happen.

The idea that a doppelgänger might actually meet their look-alike—and what the consequences of that meeting might be—became an integral part of Blow Up, my newest mystery featuring Sophie Medina, an international photojournalist. In Blow Up the two individuals could not be more different in their backgrounds, which made me wonder as I was doing my research, what made doppelgängers so similar. Was it nature or nurture?

As it turns out—and fortunately for my story—many of the similarities are genetic, or more nature than nurture. However they’re also a matter of random chance, according to Dr. Manel Esteller, a researcher in Barcelona, Spain and the author of a 2022 study on doppelgängers. “In the world right now, there are so many people that eventually the system is producing humans with similar DNA sequences,” he said. “With the Internet, it’s a lot easier to find them.”

When my family was living in London in the 1990s and my husband, a former journalist with the Voice of America, traveled often to Northern Ireland to cover the peace talks he always came home and said to me, “I see you everywhere on the streets of Belfast.” Which I found both intriguing and a bit scary since my maternal grandmother came from Ireland.  Did I have a doppelgänger in Belfast? More than one?

So I’m curious: first, has anyone ever met someone who could be their identical twin? And second—I hope you say yes!—are you willing to suspend disbelief and go along with the premise of Blow Up: that two doppelgängers could meet in real life?

With explosive consequences.

 

DEBS: Here's more about BLOW UP:

International photojournalist Sophie Medina and her old school friend Father Jack O'Hara are out for a run on Capitol Hill when they find the body of Associate Supreme Court Justice Everett Townsend lying in an alley, barely alive. When Townsend, a diabetic, later dies in the ER from complications due to hypoglycemia, his death has repercussions for Sophie after Javi Aguilera, a homeless man who is Sophie's friend and was at the hospital when Townsend was admitted, is murdered.

The night before he died, Javi told Sophie a shocking story about Townsend that could have a devastating impact on the nation's highest court if word got out. Unable to persuade anyone that what she learned is true and on the run from whoever is protecting Townsend's dark secret, Sophie searches a collection of her photographs of Washington D.C.'s homeless community, looking for evidence before everything blows up in her face.

 

ELLEN CROSBY is the author of the Sophie Medina mysteries, the Virginia wine country mystery series, and MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone mystery. Her most recent book, BLOW UP, is the 3^rd Sophie Medina mystery. Her books have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award; THE FRENCH PARADOX was chosen as one of The Strand Magazine’s Top 20 Mysteries of 2021. Previously she worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and as an economist at the U.S. Senate. She is currently writing DODGE & BURN, the 4^th Sophie Medina mystery.

DEBS: Here's more good news--Ellen's publisher is giving away TWO copies of BLOW UP to lucky commenters on the blog, so tell us if you've ever seen your doppleganger!

 

 

Ellen Crosby--Bitter Roots (and Happy Endings)

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is spring, and gloriously, time for weddings. How perfect that Ellen Crosby's 12th Virginia Wine Country Mystery, BITTER ROOTS, which revolves around a spring wedding, is out just in time to get us in the mood.

This special fictional wedding echoes a treasured personal moment for Ellen, too, and I'm happy she's sharing it with us today!

ELLEN CROSBY: Forty years ago this October on the day before Halloween my husband and I were married on a gorgeous Indian summer evening in Washington, D.C. Our reception took place under a perfect harvest moon when it was so warm our hosts threw open the French doors to the ballroom of the historic mansion where we were celebrating so everyone could dance by candlelight and moonlight outside on the terrace. Afterward our guests helped gather what remained of the buffet dinner and our wedding cake to bring back to our apartment. The next day we threw an all-day party of leftovers for friends and family who had traveled from New York and New England to be with us. All these years later when I think back on our wedding weekend what I remember most is joy.

In Bitter Roots, the twelfth Virginia wine country mystery, Lucie Montgomery and Quinn Santori are finally getting married—an event that has been evolving over the last few books. First they got engaged. Then they moved in together. They were in no rush to set a date, so they didn’t. (Yes, I heard about that!). Then they did set a date. And finally, they began making wedding plans.

Lucie wants the perfect outdoor spring wedding: the happily-ever-after fairy tale with the dress, the flowers, the intimate ceremony in their garden, the reception with family and friends celebrating at the vineyard, the romantic first dance—all of it.

Unfortunately, she’s not going to get it. Any of it.

A huge swath of withered, dying grapevines is spoiling an otherwise perfect setting for the wedding. Lucie blames the nursery that sold them the diseased vines; so do other vineyard owners dealing with the same problem. The nursery owner pushes back: the dying vines are the result of climate change and the blame game heats up.

Then Eve Kerr, a stunning blonde who works at the nursery, turns up dead less than a week before the wedding and everyone wonders if someone’s anger over the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars pushed them too far. For Lucie Eve’s death is personal: Quinn had taken Eve’s side that the nursery wasn’t responsible for the vineyards’ losses and had secretly agreed to meet her the day she disappeared. Their meeting never took place and Quinn tells Lucie he doesn’t know why Eve, a fellow Californian, wanted to see him. Lucie, however, has a few suspicions of her own. With Quinn now a suspect in a murder investigation, Lucie wonders what else her soon-to-be-husband isn’t telling her about his relationship with Eve.

The search for Eve’s killer and the wedding plans come to an abrupt halt when a violent storm with hurricane-force winds—a derecho—blows through the vineyard one night. The storm, which no one was prepared for, leaves a massive trail of destruction from Atoka, Virginia to Washington, D.C. There is no electricity, no water, no phone or Internet service, no 911 to call for help, no nothing. The garden where the ceremony was to take place is destroyed, the reception site is unsalvageable, and the wedding dinner will almost certainly be thrown out because there is no refrigeration.

With their plans in ruins, Lucie and Quinn turn to each other and decide they’ll improvise, figure things out, make do with what they’ve got. They’ll have a wedding anyway.  But as they make new plans, the knowledge that Eve’s murderer is probably someone close to home—a friend or neighbor—perhaps even a wedding guest, hangs over the preparations. With the Sheriff’s Office closing in on finding the killer, everyone’s anxiety ratchets up: who killed Eve? But the resilience that gets this close-knit community through the devastation of the derecho is going to get them through this tragedy as well.

Despite the heartache and sadness of the last few days, Lucie realizes that while she isn’t going to get the wedding she wanted, or thought she wanted, she and Quinn are going to have the wedding they need. An unforgettable, spontaneous celebration surrounded by everyone they love most, a time to heal from losses, a new beginning.

And, mostly, there will be joy.

DEBS: I know from my experience with Duncan and Gemma that pulling off a fictional wedding is almost as hard as planning one in real life! Quite a few of us REDs have written fictional weddings, interestingly enough, so they will know that a lot of thought goes into getting it just right.

REDS and readers, do you have a great wedding story? Or a favorite fictional wedding? 

Ellen Crosby is the author of the Virginia wine country mysteries, two mysteries featuring international photojournalist Sophie Medina, and MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone. Before writing fiction, Crosby worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, an economist at the US Senate, and Moscow reporter for ABC Radio News. She lives with her husband in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. after spending many years living abroad in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and the former Soviet Union. Visit her website at www.ellencrosby.com and follow her (very) occasionally on Facebook at EllenCrosbyBooks, sometimes on Twitter at @ellencrosby, but mostly on Instagram at ellencrosbyauthor.

 

Ellen Crosby--The Loon and Me

DEBORAH CROMBIE: You know how sometimes you just fall in love with a book, or a series? (I'm sure that's NEVER happened to anyone here, right?) Well, that happened to my daughter and me when we read Ellen Crosby's first two Sophie Medina books. These books had everything, a great protagonist, mystery, suspense, travel, fascinating bits of history and science. We couldn't wait to read more of Sophie's adventures! 

AND THEN THERE WERE NO MORE BOOKS! This just seemed so wrong, Sophie's stories so unfinished, and every time I've seen Ellen since, I've nagged her. I'm sure she got quite annoyed hearing, "When is there going to be another Sophie book???"

But wishes do sometimes come true. Not only will there be another Sophie Medina, readers who've missed the first two books (or want to reread them!) now have the chance to catch up! As Ellen will explain!

The Loon and Me

 Ellen Crosby

Last spring a Common Loon landed in a small man-made pond in a subdivision about fifteen minutes from where I live in Fairfax County, Virginia and you would have thought—as someone said—that Brad Pitt had been spotted walking down the street. To begin with, loons don’t usually fly very far inland, but what made this loon even more unusual was that it stuck around this tiny suburban pond for a whole week. Within days it had its own Facebook page, plus The Washington Post sent a reporter (twice) to cover the loon and its many followers who were becoming known as the“loonarazzi.”

Before long folks started worrying that the reason the loon hadn’t left to continue her journey north to New England and the Great Lakes was because she (yes, it was a female loon) couldn’t leave. You see loons, which are large, heavy, awkward birds, need a long runway for takeoff and this little pond was, well, little. So a plan was hatched (not sorry, it’s the right verb!) to sneak up on the bird in the middle of the night, throw a bag over her head, and move her to a larger pond. It took two nights because making sounds like baby chicks calling their mother fizzled, but on Night #2 there was success with an iPhone app that made a sound like a male loon.

Lately I have been thinking about this loon and her predicament because I am writing book three in a series in which the last book will have come out eight years ago—seven, if you count the paperback—by the time the new one is released in 2023. And I am wondering how long a runway I need for my new book to take off and fly.

The series, about an international photojournalist named Sophie Medina, has always been close to my heart. Before I started writing fiction full time I worked as a freelance journalist in the US and overseas. Thanks to my husband’s assignments—he was a radio and television journalist—we lived in Geneva, Moscow, and London, three fabulous posts. I’m also an avid amateur photographer. So writing this series seemed like the perfect fit for me. I wrote two books—Multiple Exposure and Ghost Image—which came out in 2013 and 2015, respectively. And then . . . I stopped.

My new publisher wanted more books in the mystery series I write about Lucie Montgomery, who owns a vineyard in Virginia. So I did what any author would do: I wrote them. In fact, I wrote 6 more books and the 12^th, Bitter Roots, will be out in the US on April 5. It’s already getting great reviews, so I’m thrilled.

Last summer when I turned in the manuscript to my editor at Severn House, she asked if I’d consider writing another vineyard book. I thought about it for a while before I said:  no, thank you. I felt I needed to take a break as I’d done in 2015 after I wrote the first six books in that series. I also said I’d really like to write another book about Sophie Medina. To me the series had always seemed unfinished: there were more stories to tell. I’m really lucky to have an editor who has so much faith in me, because after some discussion about the potential perils involved—i.e., the time between books—she said, “Okay, go for it.” The icing on the cake was that my agent (who is Superman because he can do anything) got my rights back for the first two books, which Severn House not only promptly acquired, but then almost immediately reissued with gorgeous new covers on February 1. So anyone who wants to catch up on the series before Book 3 comes out can do so.

Still, it is going to be tricky to reintroduce a series where there has been such a long hiatus between books. Do I age Sophie? Has she lived through a pandemic? What if I decide to, say, kill off a well-liked character who was prominent in the other books, which is always tough to do? Will readers be more forgiving since it was so long since the last one?

Those are questions about the story itself, but then there’s this: am I nuts to walk away from a popular series that’s done so well and (re)try something else? I’m betting it all on the answer being no, but I’m wondering what you guys think. Reds, have any of you ever done something like this? Other authors please weigh in, too. And readers, what about you? Would you follow an author to a new (sort of) series?

The stranded loon, by the way, managed to take off and leave from the larger pond where she had been relocated. As for me, I still have a year to test out my runway.

Which gives me lots of time to make sure it’s plenty long enough. And to hope you all will come along for the journey.

 

MULTIPLE EXPOSURE: When Sophie Medina’s husband oil executive and covert CIA operative Nicholas Canning is kidnapped from their home in London, Sophie fears the that Nick is dead. When he is spotted a few months later in Moscow, his CIA handlers tell Sophie that not only is Nick a murderer, but also a thief who vanished with valuable logs revealing the discovery of oil in a remote part of Russia. No longer able to tell friend from foe, Sophie enters Nick’s shadowy world as she races to prove her husband’s innocence before those who are after him catch up with her as well.

   

                      

            GHOST IMAGE: When Brother Kevin Boyle, controversial environmentalist and Franciscan friar, is found dead on the grounds of a magnificent monastery in Washington, D.C., photojournalist Sophie Medina is certain it was no accident: Kevin was murdered. Before he died, Kevin hinted at a discovery he’d made potentially worth billions to the pharmaceutical industry. The search for Kevin’s killer takes Sophie from Capitol Hill to London as she seeks to learn what her friend found in an ancient botanical encyclopedia before the information falls into the wrong hands—and his killer finds her.

DEBS: Aren't those covers terrific? Here's more about Ellen:

For many years I worked as a freelance journalist in the US and while living overseas in London, Moscow, and Geneva, Switzerland before turning to writing fiction full time. My last job as a stringer was as a regional feature writer for The Washington Post, covering many of the places where my wine country mysteries are set.

DEBS: To answer at least part of Ellen's questions, I will happily follow an author I like from one series to another, and am certainly not deterred by a gap between books in a series that I love. 

What about you, REDS and readers?

P.S. I loved the loon story, Ellen. We've had something similar here in the Dallas area with a pair of nesting bald eagles. Their nest in a cottonwood tree at a popular lake was the subject of much media coverage and so many visitors gawking that the city had to barricade the area. Then last week in a ferocious windstorm, the tree blew down and both nest and eggs were lost. This was headline news! But to everyone's relief, the pair seem to be rebuilding nearby. Hopefully with better luck this time!

Ellen Crosby--The French Paradox

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  I adore novels that interweave a contemporary mystery with an historical thread, and my friend Ellen Crosby is a master (or mistress!) of the form. Her Virginia wine country mysteries have intertwined the rich heritage of Virginia with the complexities of a modern-day vineyard in fascinating ways, but in her latest novel, THE FRENCH PARADOX, I think she's outdone herself! Jackie Kennedy! Paris! "Old Mistresses" paintings! I couldn't wait to pick this one up! Here's Ellen to tell us how she put it all together.

ELLEN CROSBY:  It still surprises me to realize that THE FRENCH PARADOX is the 11th book in my Virginia wine country mystery series, mostly because I never planned to write more than one book: THE MERLOT MURDERS. Sixteen years later, I am almost finished with book #12 due out in 2022 and the series has moved to its third publisher: Severn House in London. It seems right to have come full circle and to be back in England because that’s where this series began. I had written my first book, MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone loosely based on my time as a foreign correspondent in the former Soviet Union, while I was living in London. My UK literary agent wanted to know what was next and had been intrigued by my tale of a day trip to a couple of Virginia vineyards on a summer holiday back in America.  In fact, she was so intrigued she thought a vineyard would be the perfect place to set a new book. When I explained that I wanted to write something with a foreign setting after living overseas for many years, she said to me, “Ellen, you live in London. Virginia is a foreign setting.”

While I have learned more than I ever expected to know over the last twenty-plus years about the fascinating business of growing grapes and making wine—and how wine and murder seem to go together like, I dunno, wine and cheese—what has really hooked me about writing this series is history. Kirkus Reviews, one of the major trade reviewers, once very kindly wrote that my series “often pairs fascinating historical mysteries with clever modern ones.” I am admittedly a history nerd and it just so happens that my adopted state of Virginia has history galore, dating all the way back to our colonial days and the Founding Fathers. As Kirkus wrote, I like the idea of taking a significant event that happened long ago and weaving it into the present-day life of Lucie Montgomery, who owns a small vineyard near the little town of Middleburg, Virginia. With, of course, a murder thrown in.

Virginia wine country

What fascinates—and occasionally frustrates—me is solving the puzzle of how to connect two unrelated events. Invariably it involves research to get the history right, but that’s fine by me because as a former journalist I’m also a research junkie. My one hard and fast rule is that the solution I come up with has to be organic and logical.  

THE FRENCH PARADOX was one of those books where figuring out that connection was more challenging than usual. I had long ago planned to write a book about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who had been coming to Middleburg to ride and foxhunt since John F. Kennedy’s presidency in the 1960s. (There is a small garden with a pavilion dedicated to her just off the main street in town). Then an artist friend who is a member of the Advisory Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. suggested I might consider writing about the “Old Mistresses”—female artists who were contemporaries of the Old Masters, but whose paintings were never exhibited in museums precisely because they were women. What I couldn’t figure out—my husband has lost count of how many times he has heard me moan about this with every book—was how I could combine Jackie and the Old Mistresses to come up with my plot. 

Just when I was beginning to think I’d pushed the envelope too far this time, Ann Mah, an author friend, wrote a travel article for The New York Times on Jackie’s junior year abroad in Paris in 1949. Where she studied art history. 

And just like that everything fell into place. It wasn’t hard to imagine that Lucie’s French grandfather, who had appeared in earlier books, had met Jackie seventy years ago when she came to France and maybe they fell in love and maybe he took her to all of Paris’s wonderful museums and art galleries on their dates. And maybe Jackie bought some paintings by one of the Old Mistresses in a Parisian bookstall for a few francs because in those days the artist was a complete unknown.

And now Cricket Delacroix, one of Jackie’s school friends who inherited those paintings and lives in Middleburg, is about to celebrate her 90th birthday by donating the paintings—which are now worth a fortune—to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. 

So things are going along just fine until Parker Lord, a prominent landscape designer who is designing the garden for Lucie’s upcoming backyard wedding, is found dead in her vineyard where he was inspecting some ailing vines. While Parker’s death might be related to a controversial book he wrote on climate change, it turns out he also knew Jackie long ago. 

Now Lucie is starting to wonder if Parker’s murder had something to do with Jackie and those paintings. She’s also worried that her grandfather, who is flying to Virginia for Cricket’s birthday, might be involved. And she has a few questions for him as soon as he arrives in Middleburg.

Beginning with how he managed to keep an affair with one of the most glamorous, iconic women of the twentieth century a secret for seventy years.

Because Lucie is dying of curiosity.

Who wouldn’t be?

 In 1949, during her junior year abroad in Paris, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bought several inexpensive paintings of Marie-Antoinette by a little-known 18th century female artist. She also had a romantic relationship with Virginia vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery’s French grandfather - until recently, a well-kept secret.

Seventy years later, Cricket Delacroix, Lucie’s neighbor and Jackie’s schoolfriend, is donating the now priceless paintings to a Washington, DC museum. And Lucie’s grandfather is flying to Virginia for Cricket’s 90th birthday party, hosted by her daughter Harriet. A washed-up journalist, Harriet is rewriting a manuscript Jackie left behind about Marie-Antoinette and her portraitist. She’s also adding tell-all details about Jackie, sure to make the book a bestseller.

Then on the eve of the party a world-famous landscape designer who also knew Jackie is found dead in Lucie’s vineyard. Did someone make good on the death threats he’d received because of his controversial book on climate change? Or was his murder tied to Jackie, the paintings, and Lucie’s beloved grandfather?

 ELLEN CROSBY is the author of the Virginia wine country mystery series; her latest book, THE ANGELS’SHARE,has been longlisted in the fiction category for the 2020 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. THE FRENCH PARADOX, the next book in the series, will be released on the UK on January 29, 2021 and in the US on April 6, 2021. Her books have also been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award; THE RIESLING RETRIBUTION won the 2009 Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best US Wine Literature Book. Crosby has also written two mysteries featuring international photojournalist Sophie Medina and MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone mystery. Previously she worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and as an economist at the U.S. Senate. Learn more at http://www.ellencrosby.com. 

 

DEBS: Oh, I know so well the frustration of trying to fit those disparate pieces together--and the elation when they click.

 

Do follow the link to Ann Mah's piece in the New York Times on Jackie Kennedy's time in Paris. It sets the stage perfectly for this story! 

 

 REDS and readers, were you fascinated by Jackie, too?

 

HARVEST OF SECRETS: A VISIT FROM ELLEN CROSBY

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RHYS BOWEN:  Ellen Crosby and I have been friends for quite a while and I was delighted to catch a short visit with her when she came to the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale on Saturday. Here we are with store owner Barbara Peters.

Of course she was there to talk about her new book, HARVEST OF SECRETS, the latest in her Virginia Wine Country mysteries. And now she'll share some secrets with us. Welcome, Ellen:

ELLEN CROSBY:  A wise person once told me that we are all entitled to a private life, but living a secret life will get you in trouble. When I heard that it was like an earworm without the music: every now and then something would happen that made it pop back into my head and refuse to go away. So I knew sooner or later that bit of wisdom would find its way into one of my books. Harvest of Secrets is a story of family secrets, the heartache and trouble they cause, and the consequences of revealing a secret that will destroy someone’s private life.

A couple of winters ago a friend and I spent the morning at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., a field trip to view an exhibition we both wanted to see. As we were standing in front of one of the paintings, she casually mentioned that she had subscribed to one of the find-your-ancestors services without telling anyone and got more than she bargained for when she received her results: an older half-brother she never knew existed. Not only that, he had been looking for her for years. When the two of them finally connected, her “new” brother told her that although he had been given up for adoption at birth, he had been raised by loving parents who had given him a wonderful, happy life. But after his adoptive parents passed away he knew he needed to find out who his biological parents were and what their story was. Because it was his story, too. Through the same DNA testing service my friend used, he found his mother—my friend’s mother—but couldn’t learn anything about his father, nor the circumstances surrounding his biological parents’ relationship and his birth. And only one person in the world could answer those questions.


Their mother.


To this day my friend’s mother still does not know that her son and daughter have met and become close. “What do I do?” my friend asked me that day at the National Gallery. “When my mother gave up my brother for adoption sixty years ago she had every expectation that her secret would remain a secret for life. She signed papers she believed guaranteed her privacy when she gave him up forever. Do you think she would want to meet him now? Did she ever tell my father about him? Was she raped or was it a consensual relationship? Should my brother and I tell her about our relationship? And what about my sister?”


There are no easy answers to those questions; I’m not even sure there are right or wrong answers. But it was enough to start me thinking about what happens when we find out things we didn’t know about our parents or grandparents or long ago ancestors, and how we deal with that new knowledge. How it changes us and what we do going forward if we discover, say, we’re related to a serial killer or we’re not actually Jewish or Native American. Unlike medical DNA testing, I’ve heard these advertised-on-television services referred to as “recreational genetics” because for $99 anyone can find out who else is hanging on their family tree. Even in their family forest. And you might not always like the people you find on those branches. (And, yes, I spit in a vial and sent it off to some lab because it was book research. And no, no surprises).


In Harvest of Secrets, Lucie Montgomery discovers the skull of a young woman buried just outside the family cemetery where all of her ancestors have been laid to rest since the late 1700s. The skull dates from the Civil War and Lucie is certain the woman is related to her. When she learns the woman had been bludgeoned to death, Lucie figures there are two possibilities: either the woman was a relative . . . or the killer was.

Like my friend, Lucie had been curious to learn more about her family’s heritage and secretly sent off a DNA sample to be tested. Also like my friend, Lucie’s results revealed something shocking, a secret she never expected to uncover. And now she has to deal with knowledge no one expected her to have.


Just as the long-ago past comes back to haunt Lucie, so does the recent past when a neighboring vineyard hires Jean-Claude de Merignac, a winemaker from a wealthy aristocratic French family who happened to be Lucie’s first big crush when she was a teenager. Like everyone else, Jean-Claude has secrets that he believed were safely buried in France. But before long his past catches up with him and he’s found stabbed to death with a pair of pruning shears. Suspicion falls on an immigrant worker—an easy target—but Lucie’s Hispanic farm manager tells he’s innocent, warning that if she will not help prove that someone else is the killer, none of her field hands will show up in the next few days to pick grapes during harvest.


It’s now imperative for Lucie to find out who murdered Jean-Claude, and she also wants to know what happened to the woman buried outside her cemetery. Finally, she needs to come to terms with what she learned about her own family.


What she finds in each instance is messy, complicated, and nothing she was expecting. But as she says in Harvest of Secrets, “When I opened Pandora’s Box and explored my DNA and my family’s history, I couldn’t stuff what spilled out back inside.” What Lucie finally realizes—as I have while writing this book—is that even though we each might be entitled to our privacy, in this day and age of the Internet, cameras that watch us everywhere, smart home devices, recreational genetics, and social networking, privacy is something that is becoming ever more elusive.


And like losing your virginity, once it’s gone, you can’t have it back.

ELLEN CROSBY is the author of the Virginia wine country mysteries, including HARVEST OF SECRETS, featuring vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery, which will be released by Minotaur Books on November 6, 2018. Her books have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award; THE RIESLING RETRIBUTION won the 2009 Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best US Wine Literature Book. Crosby has also written two mysteries featuring international photojournalist Sophie Medina and MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone mystery. Previously she worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and as an economist at the U.S. Senate. She is currently writing the 10th wine country mystery; learn more at http://www.ellencrosby.com.