Winner of Three's A Crowd

The winner of an e-book copy of Three's A Crowd is Suzan. Thank you to everyone who celebrated the release of my first mystery with me. I really appreciate it. Mary

Three's A Crowd - Excerpt and Giveaway

Today, I have a post on Austen Authors to celebrate the release of my first mystery, Three's a Crowd in which I am interviewed by none other than the great one herself, Jane Austen. I hope you will stop by for a visit. 

From the back jacket: In Three’s A Crowd, we are introduced to Detective Sergeant Patrick Shea, a rising young star at the Hampden Station Criminal Investigation Department, and someone whose career is being fast tracked by the Metropolitan Police in London. With his eye on an appointment to a Murder Investigation Team with New Scotland Yard, Shea is doing everything by the book. Unfortunately, Patrick’s love life is a bit of a mess and gets messier when he learns that his former lover, Annie Jameson, has been assaulted on someone else’s patch. Will his involvement in the under-the-radar investigation of the attack on his ex-girlfriend put his career in jeopardy and possibly her life as well?

Below is an excerpt from Three’s A Crowd. If you leave a comment, you will be entered in a giveaway for a Kindle e-book of my mystery. BE SURE TO LEAVE YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS.  No e-mail address - no can win. The winner will be announced on June 25.

Chapter 4

As soon as his shift was over, Patrick drove to see Annie at Queen Mary’s Hospital, an ugly box of a building set down in the middle of Putney near Roehampton University. Before going up to her room, he bought a bouquet of flowers from the hospital gift shop, little changed from the last time he had visited it when he was stationed at Renwick. As a detective constable, he had spent untold hours in the accident and emergency room interviewing victims of car accidents, assault, and domestic violence or taking statements from young people who had gone out on a lash, drinking nearly toxic levels of alcohol. While he waited for the medical staff to finish treating the victim and/or suspect, Patrick passed the time by flirting with the nurses, counting on his reddish-blond hair and blue eyes to draw their attention. The endless hours coppers spent sitting in an A and E waiting room were the reasons why so many of them married nurses.

Giveaway and Guest Post on English Historical Authors

I hope you will join me at English Historical Authors where I have a guest post on the history of Scotland Yard as a way of celebrating the release of my first mystery, Three's A Crowd. I will be giving away two Kindle e-books. So please stop by and enter. Thanks.

First Review for Three's A Crowd!

From So Little Time...:

Mary Simonsen has stepped out of the Austen world and into a modern English detective story with Three's a Crowd...  It’s a modern, edgy mystery that I thoroughly enjoyed!

Detective Sergeant Patrick Shea is one hot copper! He works for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in London's Metropolitan Police... 

I adore Patrick Shea! He’s cute, with a smile that would get him almost anything...at least from the ladies, but I didn’t find him at all cocky, just a genuine good-guy. He also has a good sense of humor which is a good thing because with his good-looks and that charming smile, the guys at the station (or nick as it’s called) often found something to poke fun at him with, especially after he receives a rose from a burglar that he has just captured! 

Three's a Crowd is a novella meant to introduce us to Patrick Shea. That does not mean it is lacking in any way; it felt complete. There are a few side stories (routine cases), which keep the story moving along as the main story builds. I found I really enjoyed getting to know Patrick and the rest of the characters in this story. I am looking forward to reading more in this series! 

To read the complete review, please visit Candy's blog, So Little Time...

Mystery Debut - I'm So Excited

Today is a big day for me. I launch my first mystery, Three's A Crowd, A Patrick Shea Mystery, on Candy Morton's blog, So Little Time... where I will be giving away two Kindle e-books. I've wanted to write a mystery for decades. (Yes, I'm old enough to say "decades.") I will also be giving away two e-books on English Historical Fiction Authors on June 15, and later in the month, on my own blog, so stay tuned. If you can't wait for a giveaway, Three's A Crowd is available in e-book format on Amazon for only .99! I couldn't price it any lower because Amazon won't let me. I hope you will give it a try.

Available on Amazon Kindle

Bath - Where Classical Architecture Meets the Druids

During my parade of the Circus in Bath, I met Thomas, a historian who leads tours of the ancient Roman city. He was a fountain of information, including the fact that The Circus was meant to represent the sun while The Crescent was representative of the moon. When I got home, I looked it up. Here is what I learned from The Heritage Journal.

Bath is famed for its neo-classical architecture but what underpins the thinking of the 18th century architect John Wood the Elder when he drew the designs for The Circus is a strange mish-mash of legend and myth, this of course is the age of the new ‘druidism’ that took hold when such figures as William Stukeley called such places as Stonehenge the Druidical Temple.

A Visit to Jane Austen Centre in Bath

Paul and Bath Guide

I arrived at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath on a day where it was umbrella up and umbrella down, umbrella up and umbrella down, etc. It was getting late in the day, and the tours had just ended. This is pretty much how my husband and I travel. We have not toured some of the best known tourist sites in the world. An example: When we were in Paris in 1985, it was Memorial Day weekend, just as in the States. We did not know that everything shuts down in France for the holiday, including the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, etc. It was suggested by a French woman that we visit the Arch de Triomphe where the U.S. Air Force band would be playing. Ah, the irony! (We did visit these sites on our most recent trip. We only had to wait 27 years!)

But back to the Centre. With their doors closing, I only had time to thank the greeter at the door, a handsome man dressed from top hat to Hessian boots, who is possibly the most photographed man in England. We picked up a map of locations of Bath’s great sites and the houses in which Austen had lived (one of them right down the street as it turns out). In looking around the gift shop, we noticed that the Centre was not averse to promoting the film and television adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, etc. Colin Firth was everywhere, including his portrait as Mr. Darcy.

A Personal Story of Decoration Day

My great great grandfather, William Mahady, was the first of my family to arrive in America. He left County Mayo in the northwest of Ireland around 1840, probably sailing from Queenstown (now Cork) in the far south. He made the voyage in a wooden ship with his older sister, Catherine. They arrived in New York City and traveled up the Hudson River where Catherine was employed as a domestic for a family who lived near West Point. William probably went to work on the D&H Canal that would eventually connect the coalfields of Pennsylvania with the Hudson River and New York City.

In 1854, when he married his wife, Mary Loftus, he was one of thousands of workers living in a workers’ camp near to the rails bein layed  for the D&H Railroad. In the 1860 census, he is living in Minooka, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town south of Scranton where all my Irish ancestors from Cork and Galway would also settle. He was one of the first to inhabit this tiny hamlet.

Brighton Pavilion and George IV

I recently visited the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and all I can say is that it is one heck of a place. The interiors are heavily influenced by British concepts of what they thought China looked like. The exterior definitely leans towards India, and the whole thing has the feel of one of those dreams you just can’t explain and wonder how these images ever got into your brain.

As a lover of history, I could not help but think of the vast, and I do mean vast, sums of money spent on this pleasure palace at a time when the country was in a financial crisis. These were the years after the end of the Napoleonic wars. The men who had marched and sailed against the Emperor of the French were now out of a job, and many of them were badly maimed and in need of medical attention and, most definitely, in need of financial assistance. Because England was no longer feeding large armies, prices for corn (any grain) and meat on the hoof had plummeted throwing farmers into bankruptcy and putting laborers on the road. Yet, here was their king acting like a kid with a Regency Era credit card.

Although the Pavilion is within easy walking distance of the beach, because the king’s presence attracted tourists to Brighton, George IV, growing fatter by the day, rarely went out in public. And it wasn’t as if he had an ocean view. His descendant, Victoria, noted that from her rooms only the slightest glimpse of the channel could be seen.

Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Louvre

I recently traveled to Paris with my husband and younger daughter, Kate, to visit the great museums and to walk one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But a funny thing happened on the way to a nighttime view of the Louvre. On May 6, the French went to the polls and elected a new president, Francois Hollande. We were out and about when the election results were announced. Our first hint that something big was about to happen was when car horns started going off. The second was when we were in the Place de la Concorde and found TV camera lights trained on US! We thought, "What a welcome!" But as the crowd grew, we realized that this was not a French welcoming committee. Before you knew it, the three of us were parading with thousands of  Parisians shouting "Vive le France!" We walked merrily along, enjoying the enthusiasm of the crowd, but when the numbers started approaching 10,000, we decided to leave the French to their celebrations. It was quite a night, the merrymaking going on for hours.

Can you find Paul, Kate, and me in the picture? I'll give you a hint. We are center right, just above the white marquee.

Mary Simonsen, Mystery Writer

Dear Friends, I have penned my first story, Three's A Crowd, a British police procedural. Here is a description:

In Three’s A Crowd, we are introduced to Detective Sergeant Patrick Shea, a rising young star at the Hampden Station Criminal Investigation Department, and someone whose career is being fast tracked by the Metropolitan Police in London. With his eye on an appointment to a Murder Investigation Team with New Scotland Yard, Shea is doing everything by the book. Unfortunately, Patrick’s love life is a bit of a mess and gets messier when he learns that his former lover, Annie Jameson, has been assaulted on someone else’s patch. Will his involvement in the under-the-radar investigation of the attack on his ex-girlfriend put his career in jeopardy and possibly her life as well?

Although Three's A Crowd will not be published until early June, I'm so excited that I have finished it that I wanted to share. My daughter and I are still tweaking the cover, so please stay tuned. I'll have more info later in May.

P.S. I'd love to hear what you think about the cover. Thanks.

Post on Austen Authors

Tomorrow, I will be writing about Jane Austen as a good old country girl on Austen Authors. If Jane Austen were a fan of country music, what songs would she listen to? Find out.

Also, in celebration of Mother's Day and the start of the summer season, I am discounting the e-book of Becoming Elizabeth Darcy from $5.99 to $2.99 through the month of May. I hope you will take a look.

Available on Barnes and Noble
Available on Amazon

Anniversary of La Marseillaise

Can you listen to the French national anthem without wanting to jump out of your seat? When you hear its pulsing rhythms, you can picture the men and women at the barricades ala Les Miserables? How about Victor Lazlo singing La Marseillaise at Rick's Saloon incurring the wrath of the Germans? This song causes you to react, which was the point. Below is the history of the anthem taken in its entirety from Wikipedia. (I didn't even bother to paraphrase.)

de Lisle singing his composition
for Mayor of Strousbourg

On 25 April 1792, the mayor of Strasbourg requested his guest. Rouget de Lisle. compose a song “that will rally our soldiers from all over to defend their homeland that is under threat.” That evening, de Lisle wrote Chant de guerre pour l’Armée du Rhin and dedicated the song to Marshal Nicolas Luckner, a Bavarian in French service from Cham. The melody soon became the rallying call to the French Revolution and was adopted as La Marseillaise after the melody was first sung on the streets by volunteers (fédérés) from Marseille. These fédérés were making their entryway into the city of Paris on 30 July 1792 after a young volunteer from Montpelier named Francois Mireur had sung it at a patriotic gathering in Marseille, and the troops adopted it as the marching song of the National Guard of Marseille. A newly graduated medical doctor, Mireur later became a general under Napoleon a nd died in Egypt at age 28.

New Blogger in Town

I am pleased to announce that my dear friend, Jakki Leatherberry, has started her own book review blog: Leatherbound Reviews. Today is her big day, and I hope you will stop by and welcome her to the blogging world.

Happy Birthday, Richard Trevithick - Who?

Trevithick's steam circus.

In 1808, Richard Trevithick (1771 - 1833) publicized his steam railway locomotive expertise by building a new locomotive called 'Catch me who can.' He ran it on a circular track just south of the present day Euston Square tube station in London. The site in Bloomsbury has recently been identified archaeologically as that occupied by the Chadwick Building, part of University College London.

Admission to the "steam circus" was one shilling including a ride and it was intended to show that rail travel was faster than by horse. However, the venture suffered from weak tracks and a lot of black smoke. Public interest was limited.

Trevithick was disappointed by the response and designed no more railway locomotives. It was not until 1812 that twin cylinder steam locomotives, built by Matthew Murray in Holbeck, successfully started replacing horses for hauling coal wagons on the Middleton Railway from Middleton colliery to Leeds, West Yorkshire.

If you look closely at the sketch or click on this link to see the enlarged photo on Wikipedia, you will note that many of the men are still sporting the old-fashioned coats worn by the "fops" and not the more stylish cutaway favored by Beau Brummell, a style of dress that we associate with Mr. Darcy.

Review of Mr. Darcy's Bite

I am pleased as punch at the review I received from Jane Austen Sequels and Prequels for Mr. Darcy's Bite:

There are no angry mob scenes, no rabid wolf attacks but this is a moving love story about, love and understanding conquering even the largest obstacles. Definitely a recommended read.

For the full review, please click here.


Also, I am posting on Austen Authors today. I talk about my journey to becoming a writer of Austen re-imaginings. It's riveting. :)

Napoleon and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy

Napoleon's Generals Conspire

After Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, Napoleon withdrew back into France, his army reduced to 70,000 soldiers and 40,000 stragglers against more than three times as many Allied troops. Paris was captured by the Coalition in March 1814.

When Napoleon proposed that the army march on the capital, his marshals decided to mutiny. On 4 April, led by Marshall Ney, they confronted Napoleon. Napoleon asserted the army would follow him, and Ney replied the army would follow its generals. Napoleon had no choice but to abdicate. He did so in favor of his son. However, the Allies refused to accept this, and Napoleon was forced to abdicate unconditionally on 11 April.

Jakki's Review and Giveaway - P. O. Dixon's He Taught Me To Hope

From the Publisher: What if Elizabeth is promised to another when she meets Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the one man who captures her heart and imagination like no other? As dire as their chance for "happily ever after" seems, there is a measure of hope by way of a strong and enduring bond between them ...

Fitzwilliam Darcy has been many things, angel, werewolf, rock star, and cowboy, but King Arthur? Yes! King Arthur! P.O. Dixon's He Taught Me To Hope is a new spin on a most beloved story. And it works! Because knights were noble men of courage, honor, and dignity, they had to be true to their word, and none of these areas finds Darcy lacking.

I love storytelling. I love being transported to another place and time by the vivid pictures the storyteller’s words create. In He Taught Me to Hope, I felt as if I was like listening to a fabulous tale where the handsome and charming knight comes to the rescue of his lady love.

Was Mr. Darcy Irish?

by Mairie O'Loideain O'Simonsen

When you hear someone’s last name that starts with the prefix, “Fitz,” as in Fitzgerald, Fitzsimmons, Fitzpatrick, Fitzhenry, etc., you probably assume you are speaking to someone of Irish descent. So it is possible that Fitzwilliam Darcy was descended from a Hiberno-Norman family. And who exactly were the Hiberno (Irish) Normans (French) by way of England people? This group came to Ireland at the request of Diarmaid Mac Murchadha, aka Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, who had been given the heave-ho by Tighearnán Ua Ruairc. (Try and pronounce that!) These Hiberno-Normans liked what they saw of the Emerald Isle, decided to stay, and freely intermarried with the Irish and became “more Irish than the Irish.”

Mr. Collins's Cucumber

Need a laugh at the beginning of your workweek? Today at Austen Authors there is a bit of a mystery, Mr. Collins's Cucumber Has Gone Missing.  Who is the culprit? You may first wish to read the post in which we are introduced to the giant gourd in Mr. Collins's Cucumber.