Growing up, I never imagined myself as a writer, but I’ve had a life-long love affair with crafts, particularly appliqué. It started when I was seven years old. My aunt, Kathy, gave me this small wall hanging that she had made with scraps of material and bits of embroidery floss. I’ve always cherished that little cloth picture. Something about its colours and its simplicity, is just so beautiful. And it has emotion. It’s a little work of art.

How did you research your book?

They say that you should write what you know, and I think that this is either good advice or bad, depending on the circumstances. If writers wrote only what they knew, we’d have no Lord of the Rings, no Chronicles of Narnia, and precious little science fiction. (We might not even have the Bible.)

On the other hand, the things you know best are apt to contain the most powerful forces in your life. Why not harness them?

“Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me.” 

                                    — Emily Dickinson

Eleanor Wish got gunned down in Hong Kong.

Eleanor was the ex-wife of Harry Bosch, the LAPD detective at the centre of Michael Connelly’s absorbing series of crime novels, and though her murder was hardly the typical fate of the wives and girlfriends of homicide detectives and private eyes in crime fiction, it’s still true that many women, maybe most, who hook up with sleuth figures don’t find especially happy endings in their relationships.

No, this isn’t a real-estate blog, but the familiar mantra is just as relevant to fiction, where the setting can be as central to a novel as one of the characters. As a reader, I love books that transport me to foreign settings, whether they conjure up memories of places I’ve been before or introduce me to somewhere new. And I’m far from alone. There’s a reason writers like Jo Nesbo, Ann Cleeves, and Mark Billingham are so popular with North American readers, just as Michael Connolly and Louise Penny are beloved in Europe.

Purple Palette for Murder is the eighth book in the Meg Harris Mystery series, which began with the publication of the first mystery, Death’s Golden Whisper. When I started out on this journey with Meg, I had no idea where she would take me. I wasn’t even certain if it was going to be a series. But by the time I finished writing Death’s Golden Whisper, I knew I wanted to continue with Meg and see where life led her.

The spotlight shines on the magician’s stage. In the box lies a lady, her torso sliced in two by a shiny, razor-sharp blade. In the audience, breathing stops. Beads of sweat trickle down temples, palm are damp. Can she have survived her ordeal? Is she still alive? Suddenly, the magician speaks: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait a while before you find out what happened.”

It’s funny how one or two statements uttered in a casual conversation can lead to the genesis of an entire book project. I suppose that’s both the curse and joy of those who continually court the writing muse. Everything is fruit for a story or writing project. In fact, I find that there are days where I might often toss out as many as a half dozen ideas.

“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question I am often asked.

I’ve always found it challenging to answer that, because, for me, the answer is simple.

Everywhere.

Unless you’ve spent the past few weeks living in an internet-free cave in Afghanistan, you are probably aware of the “cultural appropriation prize” fiasco. In short, attempting to explain the expansive creativity of contemporary indigenous writers, Write magazine editor Hal Niedzviecki suggested a learned ability to appropriate. “Buffeted by history and circumstance,” he wrote, indigenous writers must borrow and engage with cultures not their own, and “so often must write from what they don’t know.” As a joke, he suggested a “cultural appropriation prize.”