The 1890s was a decade when life began to change in urban America. Modern conveniences that we now take for granted came into use; women's roles became less restrictive; and San Francisco, a port city with influences from all over the world, was a lively place in which to reside.
Marcia Muller
Anna Katherine Green wrote about a female inquiry agent, and there were a scattering of female investigators in the 1970s, authored by men, who just didn't ring true. So I thought, 'Well, there's an opening here for something.'
We have a cottage on the Mendocino coast.
About 10 years ago, in an effort to gain a better grasp on McCone's world, I took up the hobby of building fully electrified scale models: first of the legal cooperative where she started out, and then of her own brown-shingled cottage, a pursuit that the more tactful of my friends label unusual, and that the more blunt refer to as obsessive.
Through the misguided notion that writing about flying was easy, I had McCone become a pilot. When I learned that research in books wasn't enough, I forced myself to take lessons.
I don't walk the mean streets.
We writers of series fiction tend to idealize ourselves in our characters, giving them attributes we wish we possessed and ever more interesting lives.
As I sat in a small room constructing what seemed to me awkward sentences and paragraphs, McCone was out having exciting adventures.
Women in mystery fiction were largely confined to little old lady snoops - amateur sleuths - who are nurses, teachers, whatever.
It's very hard to get one publisher to accept an author going over to the other author's company to collaborate.
I actually feel, when I get to about page 200, that it's going to be a book after all! It never gets easier - when you conquer one problem, another one rises up to take its place.
I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.
