Imagine an August evening in the late 1980s. In an isolated mansion on the Northern California coast, several people are having cocktails. One of them may be a killer.
You'll meet these people in Meditating Murder, the first of my new mystery series. There, you'll join diplomat David Markam in negotiating a path through their maze of secrets.
Studying people is part of David's profession. But what he likes most about being a Foreign Service Officer is the chance to indulge his passion for exploring modern cultures and ancient ruins. India (where he served in the Peace Corps before graduate school) is his favorite foreign post. He also loves a woman, and his longing to reunite with her is always with him.
In Meditating Murder, David goes to California to save his friend and mentor from scandal. In the second book, he'll travel to India where he'll have to find the trail of a killer amid multi-cultural conflicts and the distraction of love.
Next, he'll be in England, dealing with his own past and the long reach of an old murder. A prequel to the series is in progress, too. There, David will be working in the Middle East.
My mentors in mystery are the classical or traditional writers like Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie (for plotting a puzzle to solve) and P.D James, Anne Perry, and Ruth Rendell for their studies of what leads human beings to fateful decisions and disturbing behavior.
Like David, I've lived in several foreign countries. I share his fascination with cultural interactions and ancient ruins. In this blog, I'll be writing about the ways growing up in different cultures shaped my stories and characters and made me who I am.
I hope my writing will inspire others to value their own experience and write from its depths.