From a young age, I traveled the world with my cultural anthropologist parents on their research trips and visits to far-flung family. Like Tempest, I grew up in California in a multicultural family. The age when I began writing my first novel. It’s no coincidence that she’s the same age I was when my own life plan fell apart and I had to put it back together. Her original life plan has failed, leaving her on the brink of a huge decision and a burning desire to figure out what’s meaningful in her life. Her maternal grandfather is South Indian, her grandmother is Scottish, her dad is an ethnically ambiguous Californian, and she has roots in all those places like I do.
Tempest is an inquisitive and headstrong twenty-six-year-old woman who’s moved home to live with her multigenerational, multicultural family. I had such fun playing with those elements in Under Lock & Skeleton Key.
My favorites have backdrops of spooky, Gothic elements that make you wonder if a supernatural hand is at work, but then are resolved with a satisfying rational explanation. It’s the ultimate puzzle because not only are you looking for who did it but also how. I’ve always been drawn to locked-room mysteries, the type of mystery in which a crime looks truly impossible. I knew, then, that I could write this book. When I wrote a short story featuring Tempest Raj, she sprung to life so vividly that she demanded I do more with her. But I didn’t yet have the perfect main character who fit the idea. I clearly saw the wondrous architectural creations such a family could build into houses, from sliding bookcases leading to secret libraries to fireplaces built with bricks that hide secrets. The seed of an idea came to me years ago: What happens when a carpenter and a stage magician fall in love? They form a Secret Staircase Construction business to bring magic to people through their homes. This is my twelfth novel, and one that took me a long time to figure out how to write. Family, friendship, and good food, all wrapped up in a Gothic-tinged locked-room mystery that pays homage to deliciously devious classic mysteries like those of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr-that’s what I set out to create with Under Lock & Skeleton Key.
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