I always intended to be a writer – and to begin ‘tomorrow’. Tomorrow took a long time coming and meanwhile I worked as a director in a London publishing firm, William Kimber, editing military, theatrical and other memoirs together with a fiction list of ghost stories and romances. I learned a lot about the world of writing there, but not much about what it was actually like to be a writer – I was too busy being a publisher.
Tomorrow did eventually come. I married my American husband James Myers and for some years we had a commuting marriage between Paris, where he then worked, and London, where I did. Crazy looking back on it, but it seemed a good idea at the time – particularly as it was there that I dreamed up my first series detective, Auguste Didier, a half French, half English master chef Victorian and Edwardian times. His cases are now available as ebooks, as are many of my other novels. I’m now a full time writer, and I’ve returned to the kitchen with my current Tanton Towers series. Cara Shelley runs a café in the grounds of this stately home and when murder strikes in Murder in Tanton Towers she turns detective.
Let me introduce you to Harriet. Harriet was a pseudonym who unexpectedly came into my life when I needed to differentiate between my crime writing and my writing of sagas, historical novels and suspense. She took me by surprise, but grew to have a much loved identity of her own. She was saddled with two sisters in the way of pseudonyms, Alice Carr and Laura Daniels. But the changing times have brought about changing names too, Alice and Laura have disappeared and Harriet herself is resting on her laurels, though many of their novels are still available as I now use Amy Myers for all my writing.
I also write reviews of crime novels for Shots, the crime and thriller ezine. If you don’t already know this wonderful site, visit www.shotsmag.co.uk
Times have certainly changed since I first dreamed up Auguste Didier. So have publishing and writing. I haven’t the slightest idea where either of them is heading, but I know where I’m heading now. Back to see how Cara Shelley is getting on with her current case at Tanton Towers.