A Pinch-Me Moment: A Guest Post by Kristen Perrin
This brand-new heiress is just getting used to estate-living when the past comes knocking at her door. Kristen Perrin’s latest is a charming return to the series that began with How to Solve Your Own Murder. Read on for an exclusive essay from Kristen on writing How to Seal Your Own Fate.
I have a particular love for Barnes & Noble that goes back decades. My very first job was as a B&N bookseller. I was sixteen when I started, and worked there every summer for years, and spent a year or so after college as the Children’s department lead in my store. I remember shelving books and dreaming that one day one of those would be my own. Finding out that my debut murder mystery, How to Solve Your Own Murder, is a B&N monthly pick has blown that dream out of the water, and sixteen-year-old me would be absolutely floored to see where I am now. People often say that your first job shapes you as a person, and I think it’s safe to say that being a Barnes & Noble bookseller took my already growing love of books and catapulted it into a heartwarming obsession.
To get to have not one, but two books grace the shelves of my former workplace feels like a pinch-me moment. The second book in the Castle Knoll Series, How to Seal Your Own Fate follows the adventures of Annie and Frances in their dual timelines as they each take on a new mystery. Castle Knoll is a quiet English village where smiling locals are plentiful but secrets run deep, and murders don’t just happen out of the blue – they’re decades in the making. In this new book, Annie is trying to solve the murder of the fortune teller Peony Lane in the hopes that she can clear herself of the crime. Meanwhile Frances, through her diary entries in 1967, goes digging deep into the past of the illustrious but conniving Gravesdown family to unearth the truth behind a car crash that killed the three most prominent members of that family several years previous. Under Frances’ keen investigative eye, the car crash starts to look anything but accidental. The reader is left to puzzle out how these two cases could possibly intertwine, if they do at all, and is brought along on a journey with a whole host of twists and turns.
As soon as I finished How to Solve Your Own Murder, I was itching to write this sequel. I even had the title and the premise in mind – both of those came to me just after I typed the words “the end” on book one. Clearly, my mind was not ready to leave Castle Knoll, and I hope that those who read my first book felt the same way when they turned that final page. I’m delighted that the paperback release and B&N monthly pick for How to Solve Your Own Murder will introduce new readers to the series, just in time for them to jump straight into book 2 if they, like me, can’t spend enough time in the charming, complicated, layered fabric of Castle Knoll.
