Thank you all for hosting me today. This week my book, Cold Case Discovery released. This is the 6th book in my Harlequin Intrigue Hudson Siblings Solutions series. As you can tell by the title, and all the titles in this series, all 7 books involve a group of siblings who work cold cases together. There is also one cold case that is in the background of the first five books, and takes center stage here in book six—the mysterious disappearance of the Hudson siblings parents some fifteen years ago.
When I first started the series, I didn’t quite know for sure what had happened to the parents myself. I like to let the story guide me towards answers that both make sense and surprise me as I write, but sometime when I was writing the first books, I was on a vacation to South Dakota and we went to Wind Cave National Park. There, I saw a map of all the cave systems in the United States and got a lot of information about caves. It started lots of potential ideas percolating, especially since, years ago, I worked at a state park, and while we didn’t have caves, it was at this job where I learned that Missouri (where I live), believe it or not, is known as the cave state. And I did some work at a different park dedicated to one such cave. So I had some basic knowledge of caves as dangerous places and delicate ecosystems. The perfect place for not just a mystery, but a murder!
Wyoming—where my Intrigues are set—doesn’t have nearly as many caves as Missouri, but there are enough that I knew it could be the backdrop of this mystery (and then the final book in the series as well.)
What better place to hide than somewhere underground and undiscovered? Caves are mysterious and easy to get lost in. They make a great hiding place if you know how to survive. A good thing to know for heroes and villains alike!
For both Cold Case Discovery and the following book, Cold Case Murder Mystery—releasing next month, I had to do some more research on caves—what would it take to hide in one for any period of time? What kind of effect would the ecosystem of a cave have on human remains? I also looked into old stories about bodies found in caves, just to spark some potential ideas.
In the end, the fictional cave system I created was the perfect backdrop for an old crime that turned into a new crime. It also gave me the idea for the heroine in Cold Case Murder Mystery’s job (forensic anthropologist). In the end, that trip to Wind Cave, a combination of my previous knowledge and new research, led me to interesting and surprising places in both Cold Case Discover and Cold Case Murder Mystery.
Have you visited any state or national park caves? Did you think they were interesting…or maybe a little creepy? One random commenter will be entered to win a digital copy of the entire Hudson Sibling Solutions series.
