Wondering What the Next Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Is About?

My editor and I have spent the better part of the last two days tweaking the cover copy for WHEN FALCONS FALL, sending versions back and forth, agonizing over every little word. For those not familiar with the term, the "cover copy" is the blurb on the cover that tells readers what a book is about. So without further ado, here is the copy for WHEN FALCONS FALL (in stores March 2016).

The tragic death of an enigmatic young stranger draws Sebastian St. Cyr and his wife, Hero, into a perilous tangle of passion and intrigue in this breathtaking new mystery from the “best historical thriller writer in the business.” 

Ayleswick-on-Teme, 1813. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has come to this seemingly peaceful Shropshire village on the Welsh borderlands to honor a slain friend and on a quest to learn more about his own unknown ancestry. But when the body of a lovely young widow is found on the banks of the River Teme, a bottle of laudanum at her side, the village’s inexperienced new magistrate turns to St. Cyr for help.

Almost immediately, Sebastian realizes that Emma Chance did not, in truth, take her own life. Less easy to discern is exactly how she died, and why. For as Sebastian and Hero soon discover, Emma was hiding much about her real identity, and her purported sketching excursion to Ayleswick concealed a far more grave intention. Also troubling are the machinations of Lucien Bonaparte, the handsome, estranged brother of the megalomaniac French Emperor Napoleon. Held captive in the neighborhood under the British government’s watchful eye, the younger Bonaparte is restless, ambitious, and possibly involved in sinister intrigues.

Sebastian’s investigation takes on new urgency when he discovers that Emma Chance was not the first, or even the second, beautiful young woman in the village to die under suspicious circumstances. Home to an ancient, hauntingly ruined monastery, Ayleswick reveals itself to be a dark and dangerous place of deadly secrets that have festered among the villagers for decades—and a violent past that may tell Sebastian more than he wants to know about his own unsettling origins.  And as he faces his most diabolical opponent ever, he is forced to consider what malevolence he’s willing to embrace in order to destroy a killer.

Reading Myself

I've always made it a practice to never read my own books after they're published.

I still remember the rapture of receiving the very first copy of my very first published book, Night in Eden, nearly 20 years ago now. Bubbling over with excitement, I opened it, and my eye immediately fell on a typo. Eek! Then I flipped a few pages and found a mistake inserted by some well-meaning person after I'd seen the galleys (they italicized First Fleet, evidently thinking it was the name of a ship). I slapped the book closed, and that was it.

As a result, I haven't read What Angels Fear since I read the galleys back in 2004. And when you're writing a series, that's not a good idea. So a few weeks ago, I took a deep breath and sat down to start reading my own series, from book one on through.

In some ways, it's been fun. But in other ways, it's painful. There are things I know now that I didn't know I didn't know ten years ago. (It's the things you don't know you don't know that get you every time; if I know I don't know something, I look it up.) Those mistakes make me cringe.  And while I started out keeping continuity notes, I've since realized I didn't write down everything I should have, and I haven't been very good about keeping them up, either. It's one of those things I tell myself I'll do later, except by then I'm deep into the next book. (Yes, I'm doing it now.)

The one thing that made me laugh is a change my editor requested in the first book. You have to understand that I had been thinking about the backstory and personal story arc of this series for years before I ever started writing it. As originally envisioned, Sebastian fell in love with Kat when he was 21 and just down from Oxford, and Kat was 16. He was in the army six years, and by the beginning of Angels had been back in England since the previous spring, making it seven years since he'd first fallen in love with her. Well, my editor wanted me to make Kat seventeen, because while sixteen would have been just fine back in the nineteenth century, she (or perhaps someone else in the publishing house) worried that it might offend modern sensibilities. So I changed it, although I wasn't happy about it, and it messed things up a bit, reducing the time he was in the army to five years, and requiring him to have been down from Oxford a year before he met her, which didn't work so well, either.

And then, obviously because I had always thought of the story my way, I promptly forgot the changes. (I also never changed the continuity notes I'd already made on that book.) I found one place in the middle of When Gods Die that is consistent with the years given in Angels (that's probably where I was in the manuscript when she asked me to make Kat older). But in every book I've read since (I'm just starting Maidens), I slid back into the timetable I originally envisioned. It was a serious shock to be reading Angels and see seventeen... five years....  I literally said out loud, "Oh, hell! How did I forget we did that?"

Which leaves me with something of a quandary. Because the lovely thing about modern publishing is that you can change a book after it's published. True, you can't change the ones that are already out there in print, but you can change the ebook. Any subsequent editions can also be changed (Angels has gone back to press half a dozen times or more). Obviously, my preference is to change the timeline in Angels back to what it originally was, rather than change all the books since then. Of course, my editor might not like that (I've yet to point out the shift to her). But given that she slid right over the sixteen in all the later books, it must not have offended her after all?

New Sebastian St. Cyr Audio Book: WHEN GODS DIE

Recorded Books has just released the audio version of the second book in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, WHEN GODS DIE. Once again the narrator is Davina Porter.

I know that Recorded Books has gone back and bought the rights to the earlier books they didn't produce, so they will all be available eventually. But I don't have a clue what their production schedule is. In fact, the first notice I get that one is in the works is when the cover shows up in my email inbox, usually just days before the release.

But I must say, I do like this cover.

The Evolution of a Cover

I'm in the process of having my website redesigned and overhauled, which means coming up with new images. Now, images for a mystery set in the Regency are tricky, largely because so many of those images are linked in the popular imagination with Jane Austen--who doesn't exactly evoke a sense of mystery, threat, and death. It occurred to me that it would be cool to use the guy from the WHY KINGS CONFESS cover, but.... (There's always a BUT.)

Legalities require me to get permission from that cover's illustrator, Gene Mollica. I was a bit nervous, but it turns out that in addition to being a fantastic artist, he's also a great guy. Not only did he give me permission, but he also sent me a  HRes file of his original painting for the cover. This is something I'd never seen before, and I suspect you'll find it as fascinating as I did.

Neat, huh? Here's a closeup:

Gene also told me a few other things I didn't know, such as that he did the MERMAIDS and SERPENTS covers, too (by far my favorites, along with the original ANGELS). And he told me that for the photo shoot for the cover of WHEN FALCONS FALL they actually made the model's costume, based on examples from old prints and paintings I've been sending them over the years. I've seen the stills from that photo shoot, but the way, and I'm happy with the new "Sebastian." (For those who missed it, the previous model joined the Navy!)

Gene tells me the photo shoots are mine to use, too, so once the new cover is available for reveal, I'll be able to show you the entire evolution of a cover, from photo shoot to painting to actual cover. It's a fascinating process.

Oh, and if you have any suggestions from my big website overhaul, I'd welcome them!