A Child Lost: Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel by Michelle Cox
Publisher: She Writes Press (April 28, 2020)
Category: Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Romantic Suspense
Tour dates: Feb-March, 2020
ISBN: 978-1631528361
Available in Print and ebook, 408 pages
Description Child Lost by Michelle Cox
A spiritualist, an insane asylum, a lost little girl . . .
When Clive, anxious to distract a depressed Henrietta, begs Sergeant Frank Davis for a case, he is assigned to investigating a seemingly boring affair: a spiritualist woman operating in an abandoned schoolhouse on the edge of town who is suspected of robbing people of their valuables. What begins as an open and shut case becomes more complicated, however, when Henrietta—much to Clive’s dismay—begins to believe the spiritualist’s strange ramblings.
Meanwhile, Elsie implores Clive and Henrietta to help her and the object of her budding love, Gunther, locate the whereabouts of one Liesel Klinkhammer, the German woman Gunther has traveled to America to find and the mother of the little girl, Anna, whom he has brought along with him. The search leads them to Dunning Asylum, where they discover some terrible truths about Liesel. When the child, Anna, is herself mistakenly admitted to the asylum after an epileptic fit, Clive and Henrietta return to Dunning to retrieve her. This time, however, Henrietta begins to suspect that something darker may be happening. When Clive doesn’t believe her, she decides to take matters into her own hands . . . with horrifying results.
Praise Child Lost by Michelle Cox
“Michelle Cox’s delightful storytelling has a bewitching charm that will keep readers glued to their seats with a perfect blend of absorbing historical facts, intriguing mystery, and thrilling romance.” – Readers Favorite
“A Child Lost is undoubtedly a novel that should not be missed—the story is genius, flawlessly written, and wildly entertaining! A thrilling five stars!” — The Red Headed Book Lover
“Once again, Cox delivers the passion and intrigue of Henrietta and Clive with a story that leaps right off the page. A Child Lost is a true thrill… — Paperback Paris
“…vivid descriptive prose and historical accuracy – Publishers Weekly
““There is not a dull moment in this book. Cox’s characters are so well portrayed in their physical traits, their manner of speech, their actions, their personalities as well as through their dilemmas and moments of joy. Cox sure knows how to create characters that are memorable and distinct.” – Library of Clean Reads
Interview With Michelle Cox
TR: What draws you to this genre?
MC: A number of things, really.
First of all, I’ve always had a thing for the past. I was the kid always sitting in the corner at family parties, listening to the grandparents and great grand-parents and aunts and uncles tell stories. Wonderful stories about a life long gone, many details of which I squirreled away in some remote part of my brain.
Secondly, I read lots of stories about the past—Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women et. al, and tons of biographies about great heroes and heroines of the past. I also read all of the Happy Hollisters and whole Trixie Belden series, multiple times, which are not only set in the past, but are also mysteries. Hence, my genre was born.
When I got to high school and college, I started almost exclusively reading the classics, a predilection that lasted until around age forty with the birth of my third child. Suddenly at that point, my brain could no longer handle reading such weighty tomes, so I turned to historical fiction as the next best thing. I was still delightedly reading about the past, but in stories penned through the lens of contemporary entertainment. I do enjoy other genres, but I have to say my love of the past fuels most of my reading and writing selections. After all, they say to write what you would like to read.
TR: I always enjoy looking at the names that authors choose to give their characters. Where do you derive the names of your characters? Are they based on real people you knew or now know in real life? How do you create names for your characters?
MC: Interestingly enough, the character of Henrietta is based on a real woman whom I met while working in a nursing home in Chicago. She was a real firecracker and would follow me around, telling me stories of her days as a “bombshell,” working in Depression-era Chicago. “Once upon a time,” she would frequently tell me, “I had a man-stopping body, and a personality to go with it!” Even then, that made me laugh. So, when I was fishing around for an idea for Book 1 of the series, A Girl Like You, I decided to base the character of Henrietta on her, though I did change her name.
I chose “Henrietta” because it’s wonderfully old-fashioned and can be manipulated in various ways to serve the story. Clive, of course, calls her by the very proper Henrietta, but her siblings aptly call her “Hen,” as she is like a mother hen to them, and the lesbians at the club sometimes call her “Henry,” when they’re not calling her “sweets” or “gumdrop.”
My real secret to coming up with character names, however, is to go to the Social Security website and look up the top names of each decade. It’s a fabulous resource! For surnames, I often use my friends’ or cousins’ names, or even common surnames from the little town where I grew up. That or I have researched various census reports from small midwestern towns from early in the century for inspiration.
TR: Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead character from your most recent book?
MC: That’s a question I get asked all the time, but one for which I don’t have a good answer! To be honest, I sometimes see Cary Grant and Rita Hayworth as Clive and Henrietta, which is a perfect indicator of how I’m not really living in this decade. I suppose my next set of go-to actors would be Matthew MacFadyen and Amy Adams—that’s kind of who I had in mind as I was writing, but I think they might be too old at this point. Maybe someone like James Norton, Lily James, John Hamm, Clive Owen, Chris Evans, or Eleanor Tomlinson, but they’re probably too old at this point, as well!
As you can see, I’m not up on the latest celebrities, so I usually ask my book clubs this question. It’s fun to hear their answers.
TR: Tell us about your cover. Did you design it yourself?
MC: No, my cover was designed by the fabulous art director at She Writes Press, Julie Metz. Julie designs all the covers at SWP, but unlike a traditional press, she welcomes input from the author. In fact, authors are required to fill out a pretty lengthy questionnaire about the story itself, the target market, and any existing cover comps that we envision the book being similar to. She does her best to accommodate the author’s vision but also puts her own unique spin on it.
For A Child Lost, I knew I didn’t want any people on the cover, and I wanted it to be somewhat chilling and mysterious. A spiral staircase was one of the things I had in mind. They sent over several mock-ups with creepy spiral staircases, but they also sent one with a pair of vintage, battered baby shoes. I was really drawn to that image, but in the end, I went with the staircase because I felt it blended better with the rest of the covers of the series and also because a baby is not the only child “lost” in the book.
TR: How long did it take you to complete ‘A Child Lost’? Did it take you as long as it took for the first book in the series, ‘A Girl Like You’?
MC: A Girl Like You took about six months to write, A Ring of Truth (Book 2) took 68 days to do the first draft, A Promise Given took about three months, A Veil Removed took over a year, and A Child Lost took three months to get the first draft out.
The amount of time varies based on what else I was doing at the time. I was able to produce books 2 and 3 very quickly because I had almost a year and a half between the ti.me I signed the contract for book 1 and its publication date, so I used that time to just exclusively write.
By the time I sat down to write Book 4, however, I was deep in marketing and promoting the first three books and doing a lot of traveling. Also, I think the first three books are almost like their own little trilogy, so when it came time to write book 4, I had to really think about what new direction I wanted the series to go in.
I was back on track with book 5 because I challenged myself that year to write 2 books (A Child Lost and my first standalone). I gave myself three months to write the first draft of each and three months to edit each, and I’m happy to say I did it! But I don’t advise this – it was pretty rough!
TR: What do you do when you are not writing?
MC: Nothing!
No, seriously, not as much as I used to. There was once a time when I had hobbies, like gardening, baking, and board games, but sadly I have very little time for those things these days. My life is sort of divided into two parts, that of a writer and that of a wife/mom/house manager. My writing life is then further divided into time spent on the actual writing/editing of a manuscript (about one hour) and marketing and promotion (about seven or eight hours).
Sometimes I get a couple of hours to binge watch the latest period drama or maybe a few minutes a day to read, which is a cruel irony, really. One of the reasons I ended up as an author was my love for books, but now that I’m an author, I don’t have any time to read! Maybe once the kids are gone, I’ll have more time, but I don’t want to wish away my time with them, so I just have to take what I can get when I can. I usually force them to play at least one board game with me every weekend, though, so at least I have that!
TR: What are you currently working on? Are you continuing the series? If so, what do you think will be in store for Henrietta and Inspector Howard next?
MC: I do plan on continuing the series, but I’m not exactly sure when the next book will come out. I’m currently working on querying agents with two other historical fiction novels I’ve written. They are stand-alones, completely separate from the series and from each other. The first one is out with agents right now, and I’m working on edits for the second one. So as soon as I get both of them out the door, so to speak, I’ll turn my attention back to Henrietta and Clive.
As to what’s specifically in store, I at least have to pick up the threads I’ve left dangling at the end of A Child Lost, such as the Elsie/Gunther/Anna story (though I’m sensing maybe a spin-off series here) and the Stanley/Rose story (not sure yet whether they’ll make it to the altar or not). There are so many other story lines and characters that I would love to bring to the forefront and examine more closely, such as:
- Julia and Randolph Cunningham
- Madame Pavlovsky and her strange predictions
- The wayward Eugene Von Harmon, not to mention all the other Von Harmon brothers shipped off to boarding school on the East Coast. (Imagine the mysteries that could be found there!)
- Wallace and Amelie in the crumbling Castle Linley
- Antonia and Bennett (Dare I suggest?)
And what of the stars of the show—Henrietta and Clive? A Child Lost ends with Clive suggesting a return to Europe, so that’s probably where Book 6 is headed. Do they become entangled in some pre-Nazi plot? Art fraud? A jewelry heist? Whatever the case, I’m looking forward to jumping back into that world!
TR: I have been reading your recent blog posts. I love the stories. Where did you get the idea to post stories to generate interest in your books? It certainly made me want to read all the books in the series! Have you received feedback about this from others?
MC: The blog was born amidst much kicking and screaming on my part. When I first signed the contract for Book 1 of the series, A Girl Like You, I also hired a PR firm to help me launch my social platforms and to start to build my brand, both of which were challenging tasks, as I was starting from zero. I was instructed to create a website, a blog, and a newsletter, among other things—all very daunting for the newbie author who had only recently turned her hand to this new career.
We did the website. Check.
We did the newsletter. Check.But I really resisted creating a blog. I never read blogs before I started writing, and, honestly, I didn’t understand the purpose of them. Surely the world doesn’t need yet another blog about writing was my recurring thought. But at my PR rep’s gentle urging, I finally began to dip my toes in the water, sending over various drafts of essays, all of which were rejected as being too long or too un-blog like.
It somehow occurred to me, then, that perhaps I could use all of the stories I’d collected when I worked in social service in a nursing home. I’d always wanted to do something with them, and it seemed that these true stories of the past would fit nicely alongside my novels. I proposed this idea to the PR company and received an excited yes.
At first, I kept them very short, as directed—under 400 words—but as I got more confident, I threw this advice out the window and made them as long as I wanted them to be.
I started posting them every week, and in the early days used to boost them on FB for a bit of money to try to make them go farther. I also asked various Chicago history FB sites for permission to share to their pages and was accepted by quite a few. In this way, I was able to build a rather large following for the blog. I have to say, people love these stories, and now I have fans of the blog separate from fans of the series! Of course, there’s some overlap, but it thrills me that the blog has its own following. I really love writing and sharing them with people who enjoy them as much as I do.
About Michelle Cox
Michelle Cox is the author of the multiple award-winning Henrietta and Inspector Howard series as well as Novel Notes of Local Lore, a weekly blog dedicated to Chicago’s forgotten residents. She suspects she may have once lived in the 1930s and, having yet to discover a handy time machine lying around, has resorted to writing about the era as a way of getting herself back there. (Her books have been praised by Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and many others, so she might be on to something.)
Unbeknownst to most, Cox hoards board games she doesn’t have time to play and is, not surprisingly, addicted to period dramas and big band music. Also, marmalade.
Website: http://michellecoxauthor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michellecoxauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/michellecox33
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michellecoxwrites/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-cox-ab8700193/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/michelle-cox
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/michelle-cox-610476432
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