You probably don’t know this, but you’ve been on my mind from the day I typed “The Art of Betrayal, Chapter One.”
It’s perfectly true. I remember thinking before I’d published my first book that all I really wanted was for people to read and enjoy my stories. I wanted to entertain and enlighten. I still feel that way. As I put words on the page, I ask myself questions: Will readers be able to picture this scene? Will they laugh at the wit? Get the irony? Will they see the clues, both genuine and red herrings, so that in the end they can honestly say, “I never saw that coming,” followed quickly by, “But, of course. It had to be.”
My favorite part of writing is creating a world—taking my readers somewhere they’ve never been, introducing them to people they’ve never met, and immersing them in a plot that keeps them turning pages. That’s why I read. The world I’ve created in the Kate Hamilton Mysteries is the world I grew up in—the high-end antiques trade. Kate is an American antiques dealer who finds herself spending time in the UK, where eccentricity is a virtue, akin to strength of character and moral courage. I want readers to experience life in a small Suffolk village, where history is never more than an inch deep, where a hundred miles is a very long way to drive, and where the local pub is a place to rub shoulders with the entire strata of society, from the clerk at Tesco and the local constable to the Lady-of-the-Manor.
Writing is a collaboration between writer and reader—no profound insight there. Readers need writers to write books. Writers need readers to read them. We’re in this together.
So thank you for picking up my book.
I wish I could ask how that happened. Were you drawn in by the cover? Did you read the blurb on the inside cover and decide that a murder mystery set in an English village with a backdrop of antiques and Anglo-Saxon history was for you? Or did you read the first line?
The fourth of May was one of those glorious spring days in England that almost convince you nothing evil could ever happen again.
Whatever it was that prompted you to pick up my book, I thank you—and look forward to sharing more adventures with you in the future.
With love, Connie Berry
The Art of Betrayal
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