An Interview with Cordelia Rook By E. B. Davis

 

Fleeing the press and the public eye after a scandalous divorce, Eliza Crumb runs home to coastal North Carolina. But these aren’t the healing waters she remembers. Someone’s poisoned the well in Story Island.

 

A blogger calling herself Poison Penelope is choking the town with a noxious brew of shameful fact and scurrilous fiction. When the subject of a particularly venomous post turns up dead, an apparent suicide, Eliza is convinced things aren’t as they seem. Armed with old friends, a new beagle, and the Southern sass she thought she’d lost, she’ll stop at nothing to find the one antidote that can save Story: the truth.

 

If she can’t, this might just be where her own story ends.

Amazon.com

 

I was initially drawn to Cordelia Rook’s Story Island Cozy mystery series because it is set on an island off the coast of North Carolina (Story Island), it features a Beagle, and it is on Kindle Unlimited. I live on Hatteras Island, off the coast of NC, my granddog is a Corgi/Beagle, and I already subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. Match! So far, there are two books in this series, Died & Prejudice and The Drowned and the Fury.

 

Cordelia’s other series, the Minerva Biggs mystery series, features a former history teacher/historian, who reinvents and relocates herself in a western NC town where history lives on concurrently with the present. Her historical knowledge enables her to make connections where others don’t, especially the town’s police detective. Those connections lead her to solve murders.

 

Got to love Kindle Unlimited. I’ve read every book!

 

Please welcome Cordelia Rook to WWK.                              E. B. Davis

Thank you for having me!

Story Island sounds a lot like Bald Head Island. Is it?

It is not, in the sense that I sort of started with Bald Head, then made so much stuff up that I’m sure Bald Head would eagerly disavow me. There are bits and pieces of a few coastal islands in there, but Bald Head is the one I drew the most inspiration from, and I’m very grateful to the authorities there for answering some questions for me when I was planning the series.

 

How did the Story Island get its name?

Internally to the books, it was named after a pirate, because of course I was going to work pirates into a coastal Carolinas story somewhere; I only narrowly resisted a sunken treasure plot. Externally, I wanted to do a book theme and the name caught my fancy.

 

Main character Eliza returns to Story Island after a divorce. Instead of using her married name Elizabeth Mather, she reverts to Eliza Crumb. Was that her maiden name? Why did she drop not only her married surname but also the first name?

That was her maiden name, and Eliza was the short form of Elizabeth that she was called as a child. After several years as a stuffy political wife with no identity of her own, she was eager to reclaim her own name as part of reclaiming her old self.

 

Eliza doesn’t seem like a downtrodden woman. She even throws a sexist term back at a realtor, causing him to think twice, and yet she thinks that she’s lost her “sass.” Why?

She’s coming out of a marriage to a heavily controlling man, in a family and an occupation where sass was not allowed, so I think she’s just feeling a bit rusty. She may be getting it back more quickly than she realizes.

 

When Eliza’s house comes complete with a dog from the former owners, why does she decide to keep the beagle? Why does she name him Mr. Tumnus?

Why does she keep him? Well … [blinks a bit, as if she doesn’t quite understand the question] … he’s a beagle.

 

Joking aside, the poor abandoned Mr. Tumnus is just too sweet to resist. The name comes from a character in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Eliza’s family owns a children’s bookstore, and classic children’s books have been an enormous influence on her. Narnia remains one of her favorite escapes even into adulthood.

 

What is the Not-A-Book Club about?

The NAB Club is for those who love reading, but prefer to follow their moods, and don’t like being told what to read when. So rather than reading a book, each month they watch a movie adapted from one. It’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement that many book clubs are as much about the wine and camaraderie as anything else. And the stories, of course, in whatever form!

 

Did Eliza ghost her best friend from high school, Ginger?

I wouldn’t say she ghosted her, exactly. I think they more drifted apart, in that way that often happens with childhood friends. You go longer and longer between texts, and then emails, until it’s down to just a Christmas card, and then maybe not even that. But it also speaks to Eliza’s marriage, as well; in true controlling-spouse style, Kingsley largely isolated her from her own family and friends.

 

Do people in NC say “might could?” Why?

Funny you should ask that, because my dear friend and fellow cozy author Emerald Finn beta reads all my books, and she kept flagging “might could” as an error. She’s Australian, and I guess I only use it myself when I’m talking out loud, because she’d never seen me say it in any of the mediums we normally chat in. She refused to believe it was really a thing we say here in the US South until I posed the question to my Facebook page, where several of my Southern friends and readers called my “might could” and raised me a “might’ve could” and a “used to could.”

 

It’s one of those Southern turns of phrase that I’ve picked up in my years here, and that I appreciate. It’s more economical than “might be able to” and has a better ring than “could maybe.”

 

What purpose would Poison Penelope have for spreading gossip that is only half-based on truth around the island?

Without giving away any personal motives that might spoil the culprit, I think Penelope spreads gossip for a lot of the same reasons anybody does. It makes them feel powerful, and being spiteful toward people they may not like, or in some cases might be a little jealous of, makes them feel better about themselves. In general, I don’t think people who spend their time trying to tear others down tend to be happy or fulfilled people. 

 

The Crumb’s bookstore is for children’s literature. What do the other two specialize in?

There are four in total, which as Eliza notes is a lot for such a small island; too many bookstores is definitely part of my vision of paradise. One is a general bookstore for all categories and genres, one mainly sells blockbusters and beach reads, and one specializes in things with local flavor: history, travel, cookbooks, etc. with a focus on the coast and/or the Carolinas. We haven’t actually been inside any of them yet in the series, although we’ve met some of their owners.

 

Even though the island isn’t named after fiction, the beaches are named after authors. Why?

Story was once, and to some degree still is, home to a number of people in storytelling occupations: writers, movie people, and so forth. So even though it didn’t get its name from the common noun, they just sort of embraced the story theme.

 

Although Eliza’s mom seems very supportive, she can still push Eliza’s buttons. How does she rile Eliza?

Bless her heart, Sylvia means well, but she’s got what you might call a critical eye. She loves her family fiercely, but she simply cannot pass up an opportunity to correct, fix, or advise. This would not, of course, be necessary if they would just come to her in the first place and ask the right way to do a thing. 

 

Caroline, a member of the Not-A-Book Club and another victim of Poison Penelope, has a pie shop named “3.14.” Why did she name it that?

3.14 is the rounded value of pi. Caroline came to the island as an outsider and apparently didn’t get the memo that Story only does literature puns, so she went with the math pun instead.

 

Are Public Safety officers real? What are they?

Much like Story isn’t Bald Head, the Public Safety officers as seen in the books aren’t quite real, because I took any and all liberties I found convenient. Bald Head Island does, however, have a Public Safety Department that served as the inspiration for Story’s, and all their officers are certified in law enforcement, firefighting, and as an EMT or paramedic, as well as being trained in water rescue. I’m honestly a little bit in awe of how much they can do.

 

What was the source of contention Eliza had with Flynn Darrow?

That depends a bit on who you ask, but as Eliza tells it, Flynn once played a very cruel prank on her when they were teens, one she never quite got over. She had a big crush on him, him being dreamy and all, and he humiliated her and broke her heart. As you might expect, Flynn’s version of events varies somewhat from this narrative.

 

Have you ever lived in a place where such emphasis was put on categorizing the populace as “native,” “part-timers,” “guests,” and “full-time retireds?”

I’ve never lived in a beach or vacation community like Story, but I have lived in a city that’s a big tourist destination, and in my youth I did my time in retail at a place frequented by the out-of-towners. So I am aware of how much of a mixed blessing the “summer people,” as my father used to call them, can be.

 

Why does Eliza have a fear of boats?

She was involved in a boating accident when she was a little girl. In my mind, this was entirely her father’s fault, or maybe some rogue uncle’s, because I can imagine no situation in which her mother would have allowed anything but the perfect handling of a boat.

 

To be perfectly frank, I needed a reason for someone who grew up on an island to avoid boating, because I don’t have enough experience with boats to write about them intelligently or convincingly enough for boat people. Boat people can tell.

 

Egad—chopped pickle on deviled eggs? Sweet pickle?

Sweet or dill are both acceptable, or a little pickled jalapeno if you’re into spice. I am bewildered by the people who put bacon on them, though. That’s just fat on top of fat. What you need is a little acid on there!

 

Will there be a book three?

I hope so! I have one plotted out (tentatively titled The Crepes of Wrath), it’s just a matter of when and whether I can get it on my schedule.