Have you ever made a life-changing decision? How did it work out?
Many of us are descended from people who were immigrants from somewhere else. Probably most came out of a conviction that coming to the Americas was preferable to staying where they were. People who are comfortable don’t usually uproot themselves.
I did not have to travel in steerage and go through Ellis Island or set out across the prairies in a wagon train. I drove from Seattle, Washington to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I credit my late life writing career to that change.
In 2008, after living in Seattle for forty-one years, I was no longer enjoying it. My mother, my last close family, was dead. None of my surviving relatives lived nearby and I was tired of Seattle’s worsening traffic, rain, high prices, and sinus infections. I was never going to be able to retire in Seattle.
A good friend decided to move to Albuquerque, so I moved, too, and it was easy and economical, as we could share a house.
Lower prices. Pretty good weather. No more sinus infections. Bliss. In my first few years in New Mexico, I attended more cultural events and activities and visited more national parks and monuments than I’d done in forty years in Washington State.
In those same years, I wrote a coming-of-age novel and began one about a career criminal. I’d sold two crime stories to Robert Bloch (author of Psycho) in the 1980s/1990s so this wasn’t a total change for me. I’d been writing almost since I could read, though without much success. But art of all sorts is in the air here.
One day after having re-read all of Georgette Heyer’s novels, I decided I’d try to write the same kind of historical romance: adventure but no explicit sex. I had some background: I’d read a lot of pre-1850 English literature and I’ve never been in a museum I didn’t love, even the little ones staffed entirely by volunteers. Reenactment groups and costume events? Great fun!
It took three years to write An Unsuitable Duchess, even with the Internet’s almost instant access to any information I needed. A year of editing followed before its release in 2017. Since then, I’ve written eleven more. The most recent, A Murder of Convenience, will be released on March 24, 2025. It’s a murder mystery with some romance, set in 1740.
Excerpt:
Wallace spoke with him privately before they left for the inquest as they would be travelling in the earl’s carriage. “I asked the coroner to suppress the detail about the room being locked if he could, but there may be no way to conceal it.”
“Even if he tried, the Cuthbert Hall servants know and will speak of it to their families and friends.”
Wallace rasped out a laugh. “What a gift for understatement you have, Hugh. I fully expect someone, or perhaps several persons, to come before me claiming the Cuthbert Witch has sickened their child or killed their cow or caused their wife to miscarry.”
“Then you will charge those persons to up to a year’s imprisonment under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Is it not convenient when miscreants report themselves to you?”
“How many of the common people do you suppose have heard of the Act, Hugh? Even if some have, they may think it a foolish error on the part of Parliament and thus best ignored. Well, well, wait and we’ll see.”
The inquest’s findings should have been limited to the identity of the decedent, the place and approximate time of her death, and the verdict predicted by Wallace Seaton: murder by a person or persons unknown. However, though they could not suppress the fact of the door being locked, all but the coroner and those present at Cuthbert Hall were left to assume it had been locked from the outside or else the decedent had locked it after regaining consciousness briefly. The coroner, a wizened elf of a man, had agreed that revealing the mystery of the locked room would not serve the public interest.
“Talk of witchcraft and demons,” he grunted. “Half will panic and accuse the other half of summoning devils or riding on broomsticks. Ha! They’d claim that was how the murderer escaped. No, no. We’ll have no talk of someone able to walk through walls or fly.”
PS: I just learned that the Historical Fiction Company gave A Murder of Convenience a five star “Highly Recommended” review, which should be on their site this week.
~*~*~*~
One day after coming home from first grade, Kathleen Buckley set about writing her own dictionary but quickly realized it would take too much time, so she read a book instead. ossibly Space Cat.
After a career which included customer service, light bookkeeping, working as a paralegal, and a stint as a security officer, she began to write as a second career, rather than as a hobby. Her first historical romance was penned (well, word processed) after re-reading Georgette Heyer’s Georgian/Regency romances for the tenth or twelfth time and wondering if she could do something like that. Apparently she could, as her eleventh will be released on 3/24/2025. As a change of pace, it’s a murder mystery, but still set in the mid-1700s.
Warning: no bodices are ripped in her romances, which might be described as "powder & patch & peril" rather than spicy romance or Jane Austen drawing room. They contain no explicit sex, but do contain the occasional den of vice and mild bad language, as the situations in which her characters find themselves sometimes call for an oath a little stronger than "Zounds!"
Thank you so much for visiting the Window. I enjoyed your post. Good luck with your new release!
I've never visited New Mexico, but my kids have, and they loved it. Maybe I'll make it there yet. Best wishes with your writing and especially the new book releasing soon. And congrats on the great review!
It sounds like you made the right decision to relocate. Congratulations on your review!
Congrats on your upcoming new release, Kathleen. I wish you much success!
Congrats on the book launch and the success that resulted from your "life-changing decision." I'm a Philly-based person through and through, and we folks never move too far away, but I love to travel, and I did live in France for a semester in college!