Chatting With Roxanne Dunn

 Wild Women Authors is pleased to have author Roxanne Dunn stop by for a chat today. And, she’s going to tell us about her work in progress.

So . . . Rox, what are you working on? It’s titled [for the moment] The Queen of Persia Heist.

Cool. What’s it about? When smart, young, Parisian investment advisor Chloe Duval steals the Queen of Persia diamond from Alexander’s Museum of Ancient Art in Istanbul, she becomes entangled in the hidden world of cultural treasures trafficking and loves the high-stakes game. But when she’s accused of murder and the one person she holds close to her heart is kidnapped, she must decide which is better, love or diamonds, before it’s too late.

With two books for Wild Rose Press under your belt, where did the idea for this novel come from? Chloe came to me in the middle of the night, fully formed, and demanded that I tell her story.

Is there anything particularly difficult about writing this book? Three things. First of all, I have no control over what Chloe does. I have to wait for her to reveal what she’s going to do next.

Secondly, there is a dangerous, lucrative trade in stollen cultural goods, and police forces around the world are dedicated to finding and repatriating such property. I love learning about various law enforcement agencies and their jurisdictions, but it takes time.

The third challenge is that it is set in Paris, and poor me, I’ve had to make a couple of trips to ensure accuracy. My latest fact-finding mission included a two-hundred-euro high tea in an expensive hotel. I wanted to observe people who came and went, the staff, their uniforms and manners, and the discretely-dressed security detail.

Going to Paris for high tea. Must have been tough. When might this story about Mademoiselle Chloe be completed? I’ve given up predicting the day I’ll be able to send it to my editor. Chloe will tell the story when she’s ready, and she hasn’t realized yet that she has some tears to shed before it’s over. Nor does she know she is about to be accused of murder.

Do you need any help convincing her to start behaving? Here are three questions I’d love to have readers answer:

1.   1. Which title would you be more likely to pick up in a bookstore: The Queen of Persia Heist, or Murder Richly Deserved?

2.   2. Knowing what you do about Chloe, which title is more fitting?

3.  3.  Do you have favorite books with characters like Chloe, and if you do, what makes you like them?

You can answer right here on the blog by clicking on “comments,” or send answers to me via my website: https://www.roxannedunn.com/contact

 

Like the champ she is, Roxanne brought along an excerpt to help readers choose the new title:

Honoré St. Lazarre propped himself up on one elbow and brushed his fingertips down my arm. “You are not sleeping.”

“No.” I hardly ever slept before three, but he didn’t need to know that.

He smoothed my hair back off my face. His breath whispered across my cheek. “A problem, perhaps?”

“No.” The fact was, I felt more alive at this time than at any other part of the day.

“Financial difficulties?” He dropped a kiss on the end of my nose. “I can understand. It takes a large amount of money to maintain an apartment, especially one so spacious, with such a view.”

I turned onto my side, my back toward him, to hide my smile. “Honoré, you are fishing.”

“Fishing? Is that an American term? Canadian, perhaps?”

He spoke French beautifully, but if he was Parisian by birth, as he claimed, so was the man in the moon. I laced my fingers through his. “You know perfectly well what I mean.” I, at least, was French Canadian.

My mother came from a small, very French village south of Montreal. As a teenager, she was so thin a man with normal-sized hands could span her waist, and she had a slight limp, which made her an unlikely suspect when guests at big conventions “lost” their jewelry. At the age of thirty, single, a talented cat burglar with a young daughter and the Quebec police hot on her trail, she took a job at the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island; about as far away from Quebec as she could get without leaving the country. She married an American dentist she met in the gift shop and moved to Washington State, taking along a suitcase full of purloined diamonds, sapphires, and pearls.

I already knew that I would follow in my mother’s footsteps.

Honoré nuzzled my neck. “You wound me, Chloe Eugenie Duval.”

“Désolée—sorry.” Not. Although, for a moment, I was tempted to share my secret with someone besides Baguette, my dog. But I’ve learned the hard way that giving in to temptation carries the risk of long, disapproving stares from the judge and even longer nights locked up in a cold, gray, concrete cell.

A bit about today’s guest author:

The author of Murder Unrehearsed and Murder Undetected, Roxanne Dunn has studied writing in Paris and Seattle and writes the galley column for Pacific Yachting magazine.

She lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest where she volunteers as a writer for Wild Orca, an organization committed to saving the endangered Southern Resident killer whales and leads weekly beach cleanups.

 

Her previous books are:

Murder Unrehearsed, the story of Heather Shelton as she learns the pain of betrayal, the price of truth, and the mystery of love.

Murder Undetected, the story of two women, one driven by selfish desire, the other by selfless love.

 

Links to website and where to buy:

https://www.roxannedunn.com/works.htm

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=roxanne+dunn&i=stripbooks&crid=I2K38XWTFKZB&sprefix=Roxanne+Dunn%2Cstripbooks%2C323&ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_12_ts-doa-p

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/roxanne%20dunn

 

Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/roxanne.dunn.127

https://www.instagram.com/roxannepebblesdunn/

https://twitter.com/roxanne_dunn

 

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