Linda Schroeder, author of Artists and Thieives, is my guest today! Linda is on a virtual book tour and is giving away a Kindle Fire! Woot! To enter, click here.
Ten Things About Artists and Thieves You May Not Know
By Linda Schroeder
1. The peacock which occurs throughout the book is a little time traveler. It links the ancient past to the present. It begins the book and ends the book.
2. Mai drives a Jaguar because a lot of fictional detectives, especially English, drive Jaguar’s. My favorite is Dirk Gently. His Jaguar barely runs. Mai’s is a zippy convertible.
3. The town of Locke on the Sacramento River is a real historic Chinese town built in 1915 by Chinese and lived in only by Chinese immigrants who worked the levee farms.
4. Angelo’s studio and Coconut Gallery on Fisherman’s Wharf are fictional places. Fisherman’s Wharf is real. So is the clam chowder and ice cream.
5. There used to be a diving bell on Fisherman’s wharf which you could go down in. It scared the heck out of my son when we took him down in it. I wrote a scene using the diving bell but had to cut it because it didn’t advance the plot.
6. Sardines is not a real jazz club in Cannery Row but it should be. It’s great. Cannery Row is a real location. A bit too much John Steinbeck there now.
7. I lived in Monterey when Cannery Row actually had canneries. When the fishing boats were in, the fishermen hung the nets to dry and the whole town smelled of fish. Mai always smells fish when she’s in Monterey.
8. Sutro Baths was a real playground–indoor swimming pools–for San Francisco’s wealthy in the early 1900’s and Hollywood stars had their pictures taken there, but it burned down in 1966. The ruins are still there and the climax of Artists & Thieves takes place in the ruins.
9. The song that Mai sings has these elements from Chinese poetry: red tears are tears which flow through the rouge on a sad woman’s cheeks; the number 10,000 in Chinese tradition represents a maximum number–ten thousand kisses means the most that could be, ten thousand lonely nights means all the nights there are; moonlight reflects loneliness.
10. One style of Chinese brush painting requires that a painting be completed “in one breath,” that is, in one sitting. When Mai paints the birds in Chapter 4, she is painting in this style.
About the Author:
Linda Schroeder divides her time between the bright sun of California and the high mountains of Colorado. She has a Master’s degree in English and one in Communicative Disorders/Audiology. In addition to her novel, Artists & Thieves, she has published a college text.
Her early interest in English expanded to include language disorders and she began a second career as an audiologist and aural rehabilitation therapist working with deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults.
Currently, she studies and practices Chinese brush painting, celebrating the vitality and energy of nature. She follows art and art theft blogs and writes her own blog about art and sometimes includes reviews of novels. She is working on two more novels, a second Mai Ling novel about the Diamond Sutra, and a Sammy Chan art mystery about the forgery of a Goya painting.
You can visit her website at www.artistsandthieves.com.
