What is your calling? A quiz from Oprah’s collection:
Who Are You Meant to Be? – Self-Assessment Quiz (oprah.com)
On this page I’ll be posting images of themes that the Ria Quinn Mysteries has ventured into as a series, along with anything that has inspired me to choose a character or a plot point, including the gorgeous and haunting Hudson River Valley.
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HIDDEN IN STONE
An amateur archaeologist finds a new life, a sheriff who’s easy on the eyes, and a dead body in the snow in the small town of Shokan Falls…
Ria Quinn, amateur archaeologist, gets caught up in a mysterious prehistoric stone circle in the woods, calls in the night, a set of quirky townspeople with too many secrets, and an impossible connection between the stone circle and a girl’s boarding school from thirty years before. For respite amidst it all and to center herself, she reads Old English and it calms her. She’s pretty sure she lived a past life when Beowulf was around… (Translation from Beowulf courtesy of Dr. Benjamin Slade, Linguistics, University of Utah).
About the paperback cover for Hidden In Stone, Ria Quinn Mysteries Book 1: The wonderful design and image was created by Brenda Clarke, a marvelous digital artist in Australia—Brenda has done most of my covers in other genres. I love this, for it captures the story and setting so perfectly.
Merlin is the sage, the wizard, the magician…and mystic advisor to King Arthur…in Hidden In Stone, the owner of the Merlyn Inn—Deidre—creates elaborate quilts based on Merlin and the Arthurian legends…
To this day how the massive Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England was built remains a mystery. Without technology, the bluestones of the inner circle of the monolith were transported over 180 miles from Wales. Even more incredible is that the lintels placed above the stones 5000 years ago weigh at least 50 tons each! To explain this, legend has it that Merlin went back in time and raised the lintels through his mystical powers…
Aletha’s Other Worlds shop in the town of Shokan Falls looks very much like this as I imagine it…
This marvelous collage shows Neolithic artifacts and monoliths in places Ria would have explored when living in England–I have visited many such areas–too fine!
In Hidden in Stone Ria often thinks about movies she has seen while working as a lowly researcher for a film studio inn London. She adores film and is especially and happily surprised to discover Harriet did, too, for in her bedroom are photos from one of Ria’s favorite movies–a 1935 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Max Reinhardt, with Academy Award-winning cinematography by Hal Mohr.
Here is an excerpt of some of Ria’s Old English that she loves to read…
MESSENGER OUT OF TIME
Ria’s adventure in sleuthing ends on New Year’s Eve in Book 2 of the Ria Quinn Mystery Series!
During holiday festivals in Shokan Falls, Ria discovers a prehistoric peat bog on the outskirts of town, near an abandoned state hospital, once known as an insane asylum. When she takes a few steps across the bog, the body of a woman surfaces, one Ria knows has not spent millennia in such a watery grave
The bog Ria comes across is very like this one–I’ve added a photo of the body that was found there, below:
Peat bogs can preserve bodies or thousands of years, as was true with Tolland Man. I is quite remarkable!
