Ink and Intrigue at Ivy Tree Inn: An Ariadne Winter Mystery by Ellen Butler
About Ink and Intrigue at Ivy Tree Inn
Ink and Intrigue at Ivy Tree Inn: An Ariadne Winter Mystery
Historical Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Publisher : Power to the Pen
(October 2, 2024)
Print length : 323 pages
ASIN : B0D9ZLTG5D
Stumbling across a dead body could be the making … or breaking of an aspiring reporter.
During 1958, when the workforce is predominantly male, societal norms dictate women should be compliant, fashionable housewives. To Ariadne Winter, the sole tradition she aims to embrace is that of being fashionable. Amidst the ambiance of Ivy Tree Inn, where she's been dispatched as a writer for Ladies’ Lifestyle Magazine, her focus wavers as she grapples with an interview assignment concerning a Hollywood starlet on the cusp of royal matrimony—an event hailed as the "Wedding of the Century." While Ariadne dutifully attends to her task, her heart yearns for the pursuit of her collegiate ambition: to be an investigative reporter for a renowned newspaper.
However, fate intervenes when she discovers a dead body and recognizes the opportunity it presents to write her way into the role she desires. Yet, as Ariadne delves deeper into the lives of the inn's inhabitants, she uncovers a labyrinth of intertwined relationships and long-buried secrets among guests and staff alike, yielding a plethora of suspects. With a murderer on the loose, her magazine deadline looming, and the inn cordoned off by authorities, Ariadne faces a race against time to untangle the web of deceit and solve the murder before she loses more than just her job.
About Ellen Butler
Ellen Butler is the international bestselling author of the Karina Cardinal mystery series. Her experiences working on Capitol Hill and at a medical association in Washington, D.C. inspired the mystery-action series. Multiple books in the series have hit #1 on Amazon bestseller lists in the US and abroad. Book critics call the Karina Cardinal mysteries, “intelligent escapism." Butler is also the author of the award-winning historical suspense novel, The Brass Compass. The Brass Compass has won multiple awards for historical fiction including: 2022 Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Award, 2018 Indie Reader Discovery Award, 2019 Readers’ Favorite Silver Medal Winner. Butler started writing in the romance genre and won the The Romance Reviews Readers’ Choice Award 2015 with her novel Planning for Love. Her 12th book Operation Blackbird, a Cold War Spy novel, was published in October 2022 and won a Next Generation Indie Book Award gold medal for historical fiction.
Interview
Where are you from?
That is an
interesting question for me. Right now, I live in the tourist town of
Williamsburg, VA. We moved here recently. For over thirty-five years, I lived
in the Washington, DC metro area, and I often think of Northern Virginia as my
home.
Tell us your latest news?
The first book in my new Ariadne
Winter series, Ink and Intrigue at Ivy
Tree Inn, has just been released. In 1958, Ariadne Winter, craves to break away from gender norms by
becoming an investigative reporter. On her first assignment for Ladies’
Lifestyle Magazine, she discovers
a dead body and realizes this could be her chance to obtain the role she
desires. However, unraveling the inn's secrets, puts her in the crosshairs of
the killer.
When and why did you begin writing?
I had a story
rambling around in my head for almost three years. It was time to put pen to paper
and see if I had what it takes to be a novelist. The book came out in 2014. Ten
years and fourteen books later . . .
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When my first novel was published by a small press. It was exciting to see a story that I wrote, out there in the big world.
Do you have a specific writing style?
Sometimes, I wish I was a faster writer, so I could get more books out. However, I self-edit as I go. I realize this slows down my writing process. Sometimes I will work on knotty plot problems for days or even weeks, instead of plowing through and coming back to it. However, because I need to write stories in a chronological fashion, I can’t move forward without fixing the problem. I’ve met writers who I call “chunkers”. They write their stories in chunks, a scene here, some dialog there, and then they fit it all together to make a cohesive story. I’ve tried the chunking method. It didn’t work out for me.
How did you come up with the title?
Ugh, I hate the
titling process. It’s a lot of words crossed out in my spiral notebook. Visits
to thesaurus. Opinion polls on the top 3. Then finally, I chose one. Sometimes,
I fall back on a different name. Most of the time, when the decision is finally
made, I run with it. I’ve never had a title that I’ve kept from day one of
sitting down at the computer. A title tends to come last for me.
As for Ink and Intrigue at Ivy Tree Inn – I decided to include the inn’s name in the title, and ink and intrigue describe my character’s investigation and her job as a journalist.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
It is made obvious from the storyline, that Ariadne faces gender bias when she visits newspaper offices after graduation. In 1958, the newsrooms tended to be male dominated.
What would you like my readers to know?
If you like Agatha
Christie books, and movies like Knives Out, you’ll enjoy Ink and Intrigue at Ivy Tree Inn. My character is
as fashionable as Mrs. Maisel (i.e. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) with the
smarts of Benoit Blanc.
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