An Amazing True Story

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Happy Saturday! . And you are about to hear some amazing stuff.  We’re delighted to have Victoria Thompson with us again, (here we are at Malice when she was Guest Of Honor!). And wow-- what she has to tell us today is so timely.

You probably know her as the author of the Gaslight Mystery Series, set in turn of the century New York City with midwife Sarah Brandt and detective Frank Malloy.  (If you don’t, whoa, you are in for a treat!) But grab your coffee or tea--and listen to this.

VICTORIA THOMPSON:  I’m thrilled to be invited back to Jungle Red because I get to tell you about the first book in my brand new Counterfeit Lady Series, City of Lies, which will be out on November 7. 

(Now, before anyone panics, this will be my second series, and I’ll continue to write the Gaslight Mysteries as long as readers will read them, but now my fans will have two books a year from me instead of just one.)

I’d been wanting to write a second series for a long time, so I’d been researching the early nineteenth century in hopes of finding inspiration.  One day, almost miraculously, all that research (and a few odds and ends I hadn’t even considered part of the process) suddenly fell into place and the idea for City of Lies and my heroine, Elizabeth Miles, came to me, full blown.

In the research, I’d learned a lot about the Women’s Suffrage Movement that they don’t teach in school. I learned that in 1917, women had demonstrated outside the White House every day for the right to vote. Every day! By November (that’s right, November 1917, exactly 100 years ago from when the book comes out!), President Wilson was getting annoyed, so he started having the demonstrators arrested. He thought that would scare them off, but it only made them mad, and even more women came to demonstrate. Finally, he had them sentenced to three months in a workhouse where they were physically abused and served rancid food full of maggots.  They went on a hunger strike and endured abuse for weeks until a judge finally released them.

The stories of the suffragists were amazing, but I’d never heard them before, and nobody I knew had ever heard them before, either. I wanted to put them in a book, but these honorable ladies hardly seemed likely to commit a crime worthy of a mystery novel.  How could I tell their story in an interesting way?

This is where the “odds and ends” came in.  When a writer does research, she often comes across interesting information she can’t use on that particular book, so she files it away in a “just in case” folder, or at least I do.  I thought it might be interesting if a woman joined the demonstrators outside the White House just as they were being arrested in order to escape someone dangerous. Who could this woman be and who was chasing her?

Years ago, I’d researched con men for another story, and I had several books in my library on the subject.  Were there con women, too?  Not many, it turned out, but a few, and Elizabeth Miles was born.  Elizabeth lies well and knows exactly how to pretend to be someone she is not, so she pretends to be a lady and a suffragist. Her deception ends up lasting much longer than she’d planned, however, when she and the others are sentenced to the workhouse.  How long can she be a counterfeit lady?

Like every woman in every age, Elizabeth must pretend to be what others want to see in order to safely navigate her world. She must risk everything—the respect she has earned from the women she admires, the new love she has found, and the one safe place where can finally be her true self.  And, she must trick all these honest, upright citizens into helping her run a con to save her very life.

Remember I told you I learned a lot about the Women’s Suffrage Movement?  One important thing I realized when I saw the date when the 19^th Amendment passed is that when my mother was born, women didn’t have the right to vote!  That’s how recently women achieved this precious right.  Women have come a long way in a hundred years, but in many ways we often still pretend to be something we are not in order to be safe, just like Elizabeth did.

I hope my fans enjoy City of Lies as much as they have loved the Gaslight Mysteries.

HANK: Well, indeed! I can say first hand that this book is terrific! I loved it, and (just between us) was envious of Vicki’s brilliant idea and the execution of it.

So do you think now, 100 years later, and after all that, we take voting for granted? I can say I have never missed an election. Even our little town elections. And I was so angry last November (whoa) when they ran out of I VOTED stickers! I love the see the diligent election workers, and the devoted people with signs, and I love to mark the ballot.

How about you, Reds and readers?

**************

Victoria Thompson:  Edgar®  and Agatha Nominated author Victoria Thompson writes the Gaslight Mystery Series, set in turn-of-the-century New York City and featuring midwife Sarah Brandt. Her latest, Murder in the Bowery, was a May 2017 release.  City of Lies is the first book in her new Counterfeit Lady series, a November 2017 release from Berkley.  She also contributed to the award winning writing textbook Many Genres/One Craft. Victoria teaches in the Seton Hill University master's program in writing popular fiction. She lives in Illinois with her husband and a very spoiled little dog. 

Visit www.victoriathompson.com or follow her on Facebook at Victoria.Thompson.Author or on twitter @gaslightvt.  (That’s not a typo!)

for suffragette magazine: Copyright: gameover / 123RF Stock Photo