The question that writers are asked most often—and the one we dislike the most!—is “Where do you get your ideas?” Writers dislike it for different reasons. Some simply tire of answering the same thing over and over. Others are nervous about pulling aside the curtain to peek too closely at the alchemy bubbling away behind for fear the bright light of day might dissolve its magic. And some, quite simply, do not know. I confess all of the above might be me at different times! But I do know very precisely where I got the idea for my Lady Julia Grey series, and most particularly for the first book, Silent in the Grave.

Some years back, I had a run of very bad luck in my attempts to be published. My agent had spent more than a few years trying to place several books of mine. Over and again we made the rounds of the publishing houses only to have every door closed firmly in our faces. After one particularly grueling rejection, my agent gave me the most terrifying piece of advice I have ever received: stop writing. She told me to take a year away from writing and devote myself to reading. She felt I hadn’t developed my own personal voice as a writer yet, and believed that taking a year off to read would help me to discover it.

I was absolutely gutted. I had been writing consistently since I wrote my first novel at 23. To stop writing felt like amputating a limb. But desperate people will do desperate things, and I took her advice. I spent a year reading, and more than that, I only read books I wanted to read, books that made me happy. I read general fiction, classics, mysteries, nonfiction—the only rule was that I had to enjoy it. If a book did not engage me in the first few pages, I chucked it across the room and started on another.

At the end of a year, I looked back at the books I had read, and I realized they had many things in common: a strong narrative voice, a British sensibility with dry humor, a mystery at the heart of the plot, a historical setting. The deeper I dug, the more pieces I found, and when I assembled them, I had a blueprint for the book I wanted to write.

This book was my attempt at macabre elegance, a whimsically ghoulish murder mystery set within the conventions of Victorian England. Within it are all the elements I love best in fiction: a historical setting, a female narrator who is sometimes oblivious to her own faults, a simmering whiff of sexual tension, and a twisty, unpredictable unknotting of mysterious circumstances. The specific story itself was suggested when I read a single line in a book about poisons. It gave a brief, tantalizing mention of a murderer whose ingenious method inspired me to play every author’s favorite game, “What if…” In uncovering the answers, I wrote Silent in the Grave.

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