OK. This is my final, I do believe, for the bio, and there's no reason I can't post it here. Comments, before I send it?
Biography: Deborah Grabien
Deborah Grabien, author of the new St. Martin's Minotaur "Murder, Music and Ghosts" mystery series, can claim a long personal acquaintance with the fleshpots - and quiet little towns - of Europe. She has lived and worked from London to Geneva to Paris to Florence, with a few stops in between. For the last twenty-two years, she's called San Francisco home.
Herself a musician (guitar, keyboards and bass) as well as a historian, Deborah got the idea for the current series in the early 1990's, after rereading Josephine Tey's brilliant mystery novel, The Daughter of Time. It occurred to Deborah that if the exploration of questionable or even blatantly revisionist history history could be spun into a first-rate novel, then traditional ballad lyrics might also mask a deeper history. A passing thought during a wander through Glastonbury's Abbey Barn ("I wonder if this place is haunted?"), combined with the concept of history distorted for a purpose, became the impetus behind this new series.
The “Murder, Music, and Ghosts” series draws on the collected ballads of Francis J. Child. The title of each novel - The Weaver and the Factory Maid is the first, with Famous Flower of Serving Men and Matty Groves to follow - is also the title of a Child ballad. In each novel, a song lyric hides the truth behind a crime; each crime memorialised in song has led to a haunting. The series' protagonists, Scots guitarist Ringan Laine and his longtime lover, actress/producer Penelope Wintercraft-Hawkes, must find out the truth behind the song lyric, and so lay the ghosts to rest.
Deborah was born in 1954. She spent a lot of time in the company of musicians of a rather less traditional character than Ringan, but has no intention of going into detail, because she doesn't want them coming after her with machetes or lawyers. After publishing four novels between 1989 and 1993 - Eyes in the Fire, Plainsong, Fire Queen and And Then Put Out The Light - she took a decade away from writing, to really learn how to cook.
She specialises in both medieval history (with an emphasis on the Plantagenet line) and Elizabethan drama, although these days, she's far more interested in the collected songs of those periods than in the politics. She's been married to Nicholas Grabien since 1983. Although the only crimes they solve are fictional ones, they do play music together (Nic is a bassist) and share a passion for rescuing cats and finding them homes; at the moment, they share their rambling Victorian house with thirteen of them. Deborah has one daughter, who lives in New York.