A New Travis Eldritch Problem and and Easter Egg

Attraction+TE6+v1Attraction In Stone , the 6th short story in the Travis Eldritch series is now available on Amazon . The idea for this book started when I was thinking about my favorite Dorothy L. Sayers’ book. Most people have heard of her sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, and his love interest, Harriet Vane. My favorite book in the series in Strong Poison, where Peter meets Harriet for the first time after she has been wrongly accused of murdering her fiancé. I decided to introduce a new character and give her the same problems as Harriet Vane.

One of the things I love to do is name my characters and it has been especially fun in the Travis Eldritch series. Since the stories take place on a distant moon I can be as creative as I want with names and, with the exception of Travis, I have tried to give the various characters names as unique as they are. However, Meggie was giving me a problem.

I knew her name was Meggie, but I didn’t know her last name. I thought I would give kudos to Harriet Vane, but I didn’t want it to be obvious. Wikipedia came to the rescue. Did you know Harriet Vane has a wiki page? Neither did I, but it was a wealth of information. Among all the facts about this fictional character was a list of the children she had with Lord Peter Wimsey. The moment I read that their first son was named Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey I knew I had Meggie’s name. Delagardie is a perfect Ausdinian name and a great tribute to Harriet Vane.

I dedicated this book to Laurie R. King, one of my favorite authors, and the woman who brought Mary Russell’s adventures with Sherlock Holmes to life. In A Letter of Mary, Mary Russell runs into her friend, Peter, at just the right moment. She never gives Peter’s last name, but I eventually learned that he was Lord Peter Wimsey. I had never read a book by Dorothy L. Sayers but at that moment I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one. They are truly wonderful and I am grateful to Laurie R. King for introducing me to Peter.

I hope you enjoy Attraction in Stone and the Easter egg I added. As you can tell I enjoyed writing it very much.

“Thank you, Peter, but…” I paused, struck by a thought. “I might, actually, ask for a small favour.”

“But of course – gallant is one of my overabundant middle names. What dragon does milady wish slain, what chasm spanned? A star plucked’t from the heavens, a cherry that hath no stone? Some shag for your pipe perhaps?”

Pgs 214-215 from A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King