We're occasionally asked how we broke into publication. Our reply is we arrived there sideways by storming the castle around the back, taking advantage of an overlooked ladder to a window carelessly left open. We say this because Fortuna arrived at the postern of Maywrite Towers on three occasions, bringing unlikely and indeed almost unbelievable assistance on our journey to appearing in print .
It is the tragic fact acceptance of my first solo short mystery story was indirectly connected to terrible events on the world stage. When the hostage crisis in Iran began, a friend who accompanied her husband when he took a job there had to leave for Dubai with their children. Their relocation led to her meeting a BBC employee at a jamboree such as expats often organise and from her learning the BBC World Service short story programme accepted submissions from the public. On hearing this I asked myself why not have a bash at it? And thus it came about Aunt Ba's Story was accepted and duly transmitted. Since I cannot leave subscribers wondering what happened to the family mentioned, I'm happy to report they were reunited in Dubai in due course, followed shortly thereafter by their household effects, and returned safely to England.
Fortuna rang a second time some years later when Eric and I began writing short mystery stories together. Since then, if questioned on the matter he inevitably says he couldn't avoid getting involved since we were married. Several other short mystery stories appeared before John sprang in spritely fashion into the literary arena. His first appearance came about after an unexpected call from England It was from editor Mike Ashley to consult us about contributing a story to an anthology to be devoted to historical whodunnits. Naturally we grabbed his hand off. The problem was it had to be written to an extremely tight deadline. As it happened, Eric's interested in Byzantine history and had a number of books devoted to it sitting right there on our bookcase. Justinian and Theodora -- two powerful and colourful personages even if you don't believe half the scandal penned about them by Procopius -- were a natural choice as major characters so we were off to the Hippodrome races in short order. Using the resources mentioned and burning much midnight oil resulted in John's debut in A Byzantine Mystery in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits. There is no doubt we couldn't have met our deadline without those books and now, when quizzed how the Lord Chamberlain short mystery stories came into existence, we smile and reply it's all Mike's fault.
Comes the day when, after the fashion of films in which youthful friends decide to put on a show in the family barn despite inexperience in musical matters, we began to consider writing a novel with John as protagonist. We already had a ready-made cast of supporting actors and at least part of their histories from several of these short stories relating John's investigations and possess imaginations we are not afraid to use.
But hold on! After One For Sorrow was completed a ghastly thought struck us. As mapless newcomers wandering at midnight in the dense forests of novel-length fiction, having no agent meant long odds against our finding a publisher.
Luckily for us Fortuna rang again. Poisoned Pen Press was a new publisher at the time. It had recently released AZ Murder Goes Classic, a collection of papers presented at a conference on the topic of what makes a mystery a classic. When it was nominated for an Edgar Award in the Best Critical or Biographical Work category we jotted the press a note of congratulations and in passing, somewhat cheekily in retrospect, asked if they would be publishing fiction. After all, the French have a saying Fortuna holds out her hand to the bold and as it turned out, editor Barbara Peters had only recently commented on the lack of Byzantine mysteries and was willing to consider ours. We confess it was a Herculean struggle to get the first chapter suitably situated but, as my mother used to say, patience is a virtue and One For Sorrow eventually launched John on his full length literary voyage as the first original mystery published by Poisoned Pen Press.
Not being among those who, as they say in the old country, consider themselves all that and a bag of crisps, we acknowledge we were lucky to be standing at the right literary crossroads at the right times. Our theory is it's as well to be ready to leap into action should Fortuna comes a-calling with an unexpected opportunity. Unlike the postman, she sometimes rings more than twice. Still it's best not to complain about the racket but to answer her summons immediately, because being a flighty sort of gal if you don't she'll doubtless cross the street and ring someone else's door
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