Double header: Rhys Bowen's and Hallie Ephron's BOOK LAUNCHES!

TODAY is the book launch for both Hallie and Rhys! 

Lady Georgie goes to Kenya in Rhys’s Love and Death Among the Cheetahs.

Emily Harlow goes to the storage unit in Hallie's Careful What You Wish For. 

So as we both prepared to hit the road and sign a zillion books we took a moment to have a telephone chats and compare notes:

HALLIE EPHRON: Love and Death Among the Cheetahs—great title, and quite a departure for Lady Georgie, isn’t it?

RHYS BOWEN: This is book thirteen and in the Royal Spyness series I wanted Lady Georgie to have an exciting honeymoon somewhere. So I put it to my fans, where should she go? Suggestions ranged from Minneapolis to India. 

I decided that Kenya would be a great setting. I’ve always been fascinated by the “Happy Valley” set, and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if Georgie, who is the most naïve of people, finds herself among these aristocrats who live the most dissolute lifestyle. That set all had farm properties in Kenya and lots of Kikuyu tribesmen working for them. The way the British spoke about the natives was so offensive, even toning it down I had to put in a forward apologizing and explaining.

HALLIE: So Georgie goes there on her honeymoon?”

RHYS: Georgie can’t believe her luck, that Darcy is taking her to Kenya on honeymoon. But as soon as she gets there she realizes he may have had an ulterior motive. He might be on some kind of undercover assignment. 

Georgie’s lived a very sheltered life, and at the start of the series she doesn’t have much self confidence. In this book she’s starting to feel her value as an equal. At the end of the book she doesn’t wait to consult anybody, she makes a decision that shows that she has guts.

HALLIE: This novel really emphasizes the whole British class differences that you like to feature, doesn’t it?

RHYS: It does. This is aristocrats behaving badly! One of the reasons I write the series is to satirize the British class system. 

(We’re talking on the phone and Rhys’s husband chimes in from the other room, “Nothing wrong with the British class system!”). Sorry. He’s a left-over from the glory days of British aristocrats!

But let’s talk about Careful What You Wish For.  (I love your titles, by the way, because they say suspense and creepy from the outset!).  Your novel is scary in part because the setting is so unexotic. 

HALLIE: Unexotic in the extreme! I try to write books with situations that seem utterly believable. Yes, this could happen to me, I want the reader to think. And shudder. 

My new book’s setting is more Minneapolis than Kenya--a Boston suburb that feels an awful lot like where I actually live. And “Minneapolis” can be pretty scary.

Though we don’t have ‘class’ differences the way the Brits do, we certainly have economic differences that are just as telling. The action takes places in two ordinary houses, one over-the-top mansion, and a storage unit. What professional organizer Emily Harlow is hired to sort out in that storage unit drives the story. Stuff my husband would die for: old books, prints, doorknobs.

Like me, professional organizer, Emily Harlow, is married to a packrat. She’s come to terms with it and knows he’s unlikely to change.

RHYS: The person I’m married to saves everything because we might need it some day. You’re married to the person who’s still looking for that wonderful bargain or that special thing at garage sales and always brings home stuff you don’t need.

Did you find writing a professional organizer made you more conscious of your own organization. Did you find yourself folding your socks?

HALLIE: I did. My socks. My T-shirts. My underwear. And it is very pleasing to open that drawer and find all my things neatly rolled and standing at attention. Not so much fun, putting the laundry away. 

RHYS: It hasn’t spread to this house yet. Probably never will. Do you find when you’re writing you take on the characteristics you’re writing about?

HALLIE: I don’t think so. But I test the believability of whatever I’m having the character do. I don’t become them, but I do try them on. Don’t you do that?

RHYS: Sometimes I even get involved in their lives. For example if I’m writing a scene in the middle of winter, I feel really cold. Even if it’s summer. There are times when I’ve snapped at John and then realized I’m not angry at him, it’s Molly Murphy who’s angry with Daniel.

HALLIE: When we started talking I was thinking how different our books are. You write wonderful, tongue-in-cheek, British flavored historical mysteries. I write domestic suspense set in any-suburb USA. 

But this time out I realize we’re both writing about marriage, and the kinds of compromises and tradeoffs that ensue. 

RHYS: You’re right. It’s interesting that settings can be so different but human problems and dilemmas have always been so much the same. So wishing you every success with the new book, that has already garnered such great reviews. I’ll raise a glass to you at my own launch party tonight at Book Passage in Corte Madera and look forward to seeing some friendly faces as I set out around the country this week.

HALLIE: Toasting you back! And hoping to see some friendly faces from Jungle Red at my book launch events: 

Wednesday August 7 @7PM at Brookline Booksmith in conversation with professional organizer Kathy Vines

and
Thursday August 8 at RJ Julia @7PM in conversation with Lucy Burdette.

Where to find us... 

Rhys’s schedule 

Hallie’s schedule 

Read excerpts from CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Read Chapter 1

Read Chapter 2
Read Chapter 3

Read an excerpt from LOVE AND DEATH AMONG THE CHEETAHS

Read Chapter 1 

Talking about fictional couples whose differences were a driving force in the story, what books, TV shows, movies come to mind? Rhett and Scarlet. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Jim and Pam. And...