An Inexplicable Mystery: A Guest Post by Kate Alice Marshall

When a whirlwind romance stirs questions Theodora can’t ignore, fragments of the past begin to surface. Old secrets may seem frozen in time, but nothing stays hidden forever. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Kate Alice Marshall on writing Our Monthly Pick, A Killing Cold.

A Killing Cold began with an inexplicable mystery: a woman in a place she has never been before, surrounded by strangers, who finds a photo of herself as a child hidden away in a drawer. I didn’t yet know why it was there, or who this woman was, but I wanted to find out. The Idlewood retreat, the rich and powerful Daltons, and Theo—a woman with no memory of her own past, thrust suddenly into uncertainty and danger—grew out of that one, striking moment.

I love writing books where in order to solve the mysteries around her, the heroine first has to delve into the thicket of her own mind to solve herself. Theo has little idea of where she came from or who she is. She has only fragments of memory and dreams to hint at her past, and so she feels rootless and uncertain in the world, and in her relationship with Connor Dalton, a man she loves—but doesn’t know if she can trust. Finding that photograph throws her into a desperate search for the truth. Pieces of that truth are hidden in her own memories, and in the secrets of Idlewood.

When I’m creating a cast of characters, I often start by finding a secret for each of them to hide. Sometimes those secrets are world-shattering; sometimes, they are deeply personal. But we all hide things—from our loved ones, from the world, from ourselves. Only a family with as many secrets as the Daltons could weave the particular web Theo finds herself caught in. Everyone has a piece of the truth, even if they don’t know it.

As she digs through the Daltons’ secrets, Theo is trying to answer basic questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? What happened to me? But there’s a deeper question that haunts her: Was I loved?

Because Theo has no memory of love, care, and family. She doesn’t know how to recognize it now, and so there is a deep fear underlying her relationship with Connor. She can’t be certain if her own desperate need for love is keeping her from seeing some hidden, hideous fault in the man she’s fallen for. Piecing together the Daltons’ history, and how she is entangled with it, becomes the key to mapping her own heart.

Of course, like everyone else at Idlewood, Theo has her own secrets. And readers will discover that she may be more of a match for the Daltons than the wealthy clan could anticipate…