 |
| Susan Elia MacNeal |
Now I am pleased to celebrate the annoucement of the third installment enttitled His Majesty's Hope releasing May 14th with a Q & A with author Susan Elia MacNeal. As you read this Q & A I think you will discover why I became so drawn to her writing and why I am such a fan of A Maggie Hope Series.
Q & A with Susan Elia MacNeal
Q- You have said in interviews that the first book you remember reading was Louisa May Alcott's Little Women because of the character, Jo and her strong-willed and tomboyish ways. What other books have inspired you along the way? As a mother what books do you read to your son, which ones are you looking forward to reading with him?
Susan- I learned to read at age three, and don't think I've ever stopped. I've always loved books with strong women characters, so: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, North and South- those are some of the classics that I love.
I've read a lot of the books I loved as a child with my son, including The Water Babies, The Railway Children, and The Secret Garden. Of course, he gravitates more to Captain Underpants and the like! But we're both huge fans of the Harry Potter series. And he's introduced me to a lot of great books,like Rick Riorden's Percy Jackson series, and Adam Gidwitz's A Tale of Dark and Grimm.
Q- In your Q & A on your website you explain the decision to write about Maggie Hope, stemmed from an ad for the War Rooms in an issue of Time Out London that a friend gave you. After seeing this ad, you decided to visit the War Rooms (Cabinet War Rooms aka Churchill War Rooms) and felt compelled to write about this period. However, you knew then you did not want to just write about the soldiers, sailors and pilots, you wanted to write about the civilians with black out curtains and women. You seemed especially drawn to writing about the women and their transition outside of the home. How would you compare women of the 1940s in the home and working world to today's women? Do you feel your work helps exemplify the importance of feminism?
Susan- I in no way think feminism started in the 1970s, with Gloria Steinem (as many people today seem to think). Mary Wollstonecraft was writing Vindications of the Rights of Women in 1792, for heaven's sake! Women were fighting for the right to vote around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.
While Maggie is in many ways unique because she was raised by her Aunt Edith, who's a chemistry professor at the all-women's Wellesley College and grew up in a somewhat rarified environment, I don't think she's the only woman who chaffed at limited roles and being judged on looks.
If you want to think of a feminist who's a contemporary of Maggie's, you only need think of Eleanor Roosevelt.
I hope that reading about Maggie's experiences in the 1940s might make people curious about the history of feminism and early feminists, the ones who paved the way for women such as Gloria Steinem.
Q- The Maggie Hope series falls under historical fiction, and as a follower of your work, I find that you have done extensive research into the period, including speaking with Churchill's secretary, Elizabeth Layton Nel, and even wandering through old vintage shops to study the clothing and old perfume bottles for smells. Can you explain how this process has helped you create the story? (Do you document the smells, clothing styles onto index cards or notebooks, or do you use it to envision pieces of the story?)
Susan- I really try to tell the story first and foremost, but I admit to being a history geek—
and I love doing things like looking at vintage clothes and sniffing vintage perfume. It makes the time feel very real to me. I can only hope that it makes it real to the reader, too.
Q- What teachers or mentors have inspired you along the course of your career?
Susan- I was lucky to work in publishing in New York for quite a number of years, and was priviledged to work with a lot of amazing authors. For example, Judith Merkle Riley, who wrote such novels as The Vision of Light and The Oracle Glass, became a personal friend and mentor. She also inspired the character of Maggie Hope. Judith was very much like Maggie— brilliant, funny, and with a low tolerance for willful ignorance.
I also really miss Judith's sense of humor and her guidance. She read Mr. Churchill's Secretary and gave notes on various drafts. She also read Princess Elizabeth's Spy, but by that time was too ill with cancer to really give notes.
She did give me some amazing advice about dealing with being published and all of the craziness that ensues right before she died. I miss her, but she's so often in my thoughts as I write about Maggie, that in some ways I do feel like I carry a part of her with me.
Q- Can you describe what it has been like to juggle being a wife, a mother and a writer?
Susan- In a word: Insanity! But I love it and wouldn't change it for the world. You know, a lot of current incarnation of Mr. Churchill's Secretary was written when my son was a baby and then toddler, and my husband would be on really long business trips. So, I'd try to get writing time in while he'd nap — about three hours in the afternoon. Of course, when he got to school, things became a bit easier to juggle.
Q- The Maggie Hope Series are not your first published books, you have also written Wedding Zen: Calming Wisdom for the Bride and Infused: 100+ Recipes for Infused Liquors and Cocktails. A reviewer on Goodreads referred to you as a Renaissance Woman covering WWII with Maggie Hope and also being a liquor martini expert, how would you describe your other writing subjects?
Susan- Ha! Ok, that's really funny. Well, I'm honored by the title "Renaissance Woman," but it's hard to take that seriously, because I basically think of myself as a sort of geeky bookworm who can pass as a competent adult if absolutely necessary. I'll go make a cocktail and meditate on this question and then get back to you...
Q- Winston Churchill Day was April 9th, how did you honor this day? Did you celebrate by having the famous Churchill Drink? If there is one Churchillism you could share on this day with anyone, what would it be, ie, OMG, KBO or KPO?
Susan- You know, Winston Churchill day this year was also the one-year anniversary of Mr. Churchill's Secretary being published. It's been a wild year, with two books out and a third, His Majesty's Hope, waiting in the wings for May. Actually, I spent a lot of that day thinking about Judith Merkle Riley, and all the funny things she'd probably be saying, It was, in some ways bittersweet.
(Oh, and here's the "insane" part of being a wife/mom/writer — my husband took our son out that night, so I could finish writing a magazine piece. I ordered Thai food and promptly got food poisoning. So, by the time my husband was back home wtih champagne, ready to toast both Winston Churchill Day and the one-year anniversary of Mr. Churchill's Secretary's publication, I'd already gone to bed. It's a glamorous life, let me tell you...)
And my favorite Churchillism is KBO — what a great motto. (And I'm fine with the "B" instead of the "P"!) ***Side note for those of you unfamiliar with Churchillisms OMG (oh my God!), KBO (keep buggering on) and KPO (keep plodding on). KBO Churchill used to when talking to men, KPO he used when talking to women as he felt KBO was not appropriate.***
Q- Rebecca Lane Beittel has just written the first review on the third installment to the Maggie Hope Series: His Majesty's Hope, she described you as, "not shying away from showing humanity at its most flawed...but always giving us the element of hope," where do you think this stems from?
Susan- I've gone through, as Mr. Churchill would say, some "stern times" over the years — and I think there has to be a way that you can absorb them, and learn from them, and yet resist the urge to become bitter, cynical, and closed-off. To retain your empathy. It's hard sometimes, it really is. But I look at my husband, my son, the people I love — and there's no way I could give up hope, not while there's still goodness in people and moments of joy in the world.
Q- Do you have any new books in the works?
Susan- Yes! I'm currently working on the fourth book in the Maggie Hope series, called The Prime Minister's Secret Agent. It will take place in Edinburgh and the west coast of Scotland, as well as London, Washington, D.C., and Pearl Harbor.
Q-What advice would you give to writers who have been rejected by publishers?
Susan- I would quote Mr. Churchill and say, "Never give in — never, never, never, never." And, I'd also add, surround yourself with people who believe in you and your writing. I'd reached a personal limit of rejection (in the midst of health and other life crises) and wanted to pull Mr. Churchill's Secretary from submission to publishing houses and self-publish instead. But when I said that, my intrepid agent, Victoria Skurnick of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, said, "That's fine — but I have just one more editor I want to send it to." Thank goodness she made that last pitch!
Q-In this installment in the Maggie Hope Series you have included children characters, how influential was your own son, in developing these characters?
Susan- In His Majesty's Hope, one of the Nazi programs I write about is the so-called Children's Euthanasia program, later named as Action T4. It was an absolute nightmare to write, because my son was born with torticolis, literally twisted neck. In our present day, of course, it was diagnosed and he received physical therapy from age nine months to age five, and he's fine.
But, back then, and in Germany, he would have been considered crippled, and at risk of being murdered. Also, when I was in the middle of research and writing, I'd look at my friends' kids — some differently abled, some autistic, some deaf, some Jewish or half-Jewish — and think, "My God, if they'd been born in Nazi Germany, they would have been taken away and murdered, too."
For these reasons, writing His Majesty's Hope was difficult. I felt the ghosts of the children and their parents. I became horribly depressed for a while, just trying to absorb the horrific facts, in order to tell the story.
Q- In His Majesty's Hope you address the issue of "compulsory sterilization" aka known as the controversial concept of eugenics, often when this is mentioned in historical fiction, it addresses young adults and teens, you chose to show how demonstrative this action was on children in Nazi Germany, what led you to take this direction? (As a side note, I was unaware of this sterilization ever being called eugenics until I came across it while doing a research paper in college on birth control in 1920s America, in your research for this, was it referred to as eugenics or just sterilization?)
Susan- You know, history really dictated my using Action T4, as I wanted to set the story in the spring and summer of 1941, and that was the big issue of the time, including the reaction of many in the Catholic Church.
I was horrified by Action T4's link to the Holocaust, and how, in many ways, it was a "dress rehearsal" of sorts for the extermination camps. The Nazis had to shut down the T4 killing centers (at least publicly), but the lessons they learned about what worked and what didn't were all used in the death camps later on.
What I came away with was, just as a single sociopath starts with small victims (animals and so forth) and moves on, so did a group of sociopathic Nazis, such as Hitler and Brandt and Heydrich, start small and then — convinced no one would question their methods —
grew in arrogance and evil until they were just killing on an enormous scale.
Q- You are so brilliant in captivating the readers' attention by creating such a grasp of sense of place and with such an intriguing mystery...and I find you do this with concise description that also lends so much important historical reference...is it this concise from the beginning or do you do lots of editing?
Susan- I do a lot of editing. I can always hear Judith Merkle Riley's advice: "Just flick at the historical details, don't bonk the poor reader over the head with them!" So I really do try to find the best detail and go with that. But it's a struggle, because I love all the details...And it's interesting, some readers respond to a lot of details and some don't. So I really do try and find a middle ground in terms of historic detail.
Seriously. I try very hard.
Well her hard work, certainly pays off. Mr. Churchill's Secretary was nominated for the Edgar Award, the Dilys Award, and the Barry Award. While Princess Elizabeth's Spy was winner of the 2012 Booky Award and was selected as Oprah's Mystery Book of the Week on Oprah.com the week of October 15, 2012. Listening to the advice of Winston Churchill, "never give in-never, never, never," certainly aided MacNeal into creating a successful series. I only hope that you take the time to check it out yourself! A Maggie Hope series is a great selection for a book club or to tote in your beach bag and enjoy a fast-paced mystery all summer long.
Order all three installments as a Mother's Day gift, there are some really novel ways you could package this gift (think vintage, antiques and clever spies = old typewriter case, purse, or wrapped in a knitted scarf, keeping in mind that you would need to leave a note to say there is another piece to this mystery arriving in two more days...and it would be His Majesty's Hope...because can't we all use some hope?). You could also gift these books in a nice basket alongside some wartime memoribilia, British teas & biscuits, and a Keep Calm and Carry On tea towel. For ordering options for the Maggie Hope series, see below.
@Barnes & Noble:
@IndieBound:
http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0345536738
@Apple
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=His+Majesty's+Hope-EL--SusanEliaMacNeal-9780345538758&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780345538758%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30
Order Princess Elizabeth's Spy:
@Barnes & Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/princess-elizabeths-spy-susan-elia-macneal/1108022870?ean=9780553593624
@Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Elizabeths-Spy-Maggie-Mystery/dp/0553593625/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367869352&sr=1-1&keywords=princess+elizabeth%27s+spy
@IndieBound
http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0553593625
@Apple:
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=Princess+Elizabeth's+Spy-EL--SusanEliaMacNeal-9780553907575&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780553907575%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30
Order Mr. Churchill's Secretary:
@Barnes & Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mr-churchills-secretary-susan-elia-macneal/1100643331?ean=9780553593617
@Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Secretary-Susan-Elia-MacNeal/dp/0553593617/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367869229&sr=1-1&keywords=mr.+churchill%27s+secretary
@IndieBound:
http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0553593617
@Apple:
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=Mr.+Churchill's+Secretary-EL--SusanEliaMacNeal-9780553907568&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780553907568%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30
Special thanks to Susan Elia MacNeal for this wonderful opportunity! You are such an inspiration, and I truly hope others see what an amazing character you have created with Maggie Hope. I wait with much anticipation for The Prime Minister's Secret Agent.
Also, I want to thank MacNeal's publicist, Lindsey Kennedy, from The Random House Publishing Group, for providing me with the pictures of MacNeal and His Majesty's Hope, as well as, all the links to order the books. Thank you!
Q & A with Susan Elia MacNeal
Q- You have said in interviews that the first book you remember reading was Louisa May Alcott's Little Women because of the character, Jo and her strong-willed and tomboyish ways. What other books have inspired you along the way? As a mother what books do you read to your son, which ones are you looking forward to reading with him?
Susan- I learned to read at age three, and don't think I've ever stopped. I've always loved books with strong women characters, so: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, North and South- those are some of the classics that I love.
I've read a lot of the books I loved as a child with my son, including The Water Babies, The Railway Children, and The Secret Garden. Of course, he gravitates more to Captain Underpants and the like! But we're both huge fans of the Harry Potter series. And he's introduced me to a lot of great books,like Rick Riorden's Percy Jackson series, and Adam Gidwitz's A Tale of Dark and Grimm.
Q- In your Q & A on your website you explain the decision to write about Maggie Hope, stemmed from an ad for the War Rooms in an issue of Time Out London that a friend gave you. After seeing this ad, you decided to visit the War Rooms (Cabinet War Rooms aka Churchill War Rooms) and felt compelled to write about this period. However, you knew then you did not want to just write about the soldiers, sailors and pilots, you wanted to write about the civilians with black out curtains and women. You seemed especially drawn to writing about the women and their transition outside of the home. How would you compare women of the 1940s in the home and working world to today's women? Do you feel your work helps exemplify the importance of feminism?
Susan- I in no way think feminism started in the 1970s, with Gloria Steinem (as many people today seem to think). Mary Wollstonecraft was writing Vindications of the Rights of Women in 1792, for heaven's sake! Women were fighting for the right to vote around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.
While Maggie is in many ways unique because she was raised by her Aunt Edith, who's a chemistry professor at the all-women's Wellesley College and grew up in a somewhat rarified environment, I don't think she's the only woman who chaffed at limited roles and being judged on looks.
If you want to think of a feminist who's a contemporary of Maggie's, you only need think of Eleanor Roosevelt.
I hope that reading about Maggie's experiences in the 1940s might make people curious about the history of feminism and early feminists, the ones who paved the way for women such as Gloria Steinem.
Q- The Maggie Hope series falls under historical fiction, and as a follower of your work, I find that you have done extensive research into the period, including speaking with Churchill's secretary, Elizabeth Layton Nel, and even wandering through old vintage shops to study the clothing and old perfume bottles for smells. Can you explain how this process has helped you create the story? (Do you document the smells, clothing styles onto index cards or notebooks, or do you use it to envision pieces of the story?)
Susan- I really try to tell the story first and foremost, but I admit to being a history geek—
and I love doing things like looking at vintage clothes and sniffing vintage perfume. It makes the time feel very real to me. I can only hope that it makes it real to the reader, too.
Q- What teachers or mentors have inspired you along the course of your career?
Susan- I was lucky to work in publishing in New York for quite a number of years, and was priviledged to work with a lot of amazing authors. For example, Judith Merkle Riley, who wrote such novels as The Vision of Light and The Oracle Glass, became a personal friend and mentor. She also inspired the character of Maggie Hope. Judith was very much like Maggie— brilliant, funny, and with a low tolerance for willful ignorance.
I also really miss Judith's sense of humor and her guidance. She read Mr. Churchill's Secretary and gave notes on various drafts. She also read Princess Elizabeth's Spy, but by that time was too ill with cancer to really give notes.
She did give me some amazing advice about dealing with being published and all of the craziness that ensues right before she died. I miss her, but she's so often in my thoughts as I write about Maggie, that in some ways I do feel like I carry a part of her with me.
Q- Can you describe what it has been like to juggle being a wife, a mother and a writer?
Susan- In a word: Insanity! But I love it and wouldn't change it for the world. You know, a lot of current incarnation of Mr. Churchill's Secretary was written when my son was a baby and then toddler, and my husband would be on really long business trips. So, I'd try to get writing time in while he'd nap — about three hours in the afternoon. Of course, when he got to school, things became a bit easier to juggle.
Q- The Maggie Hope Series are not your first published books, you have also written Wedding Zen: Calming Wisdom for the Bride and Infused: 100+ Recipes for Infused Liquors and Cocktails. A reviewer on Goodreads referred to you as a Renaissance Woman covering WWII with Maggie Hope and also being a liquor martini expert, how would you describe your other writing subjects?
Susan- Ha! Ok, that's really funny. Well, I'm honored by the title "Renaissance Woman," but it's hard to take that seriously, because I basically think of myself as a sort of geeky bookworm who can pass as a competent adult if absolutely necessary. I'll go make a cocktail and meditate on this question and then get back to you...
Q- Winston Churchill Day was April 9th, how did you honor this day? Did you celebrate by having the famous Churchill Drink? If there is one Churchillism you could share on this day with anyone, what would it be, ie, OMG, KBO or KPO?
Susan- You know, Winston Churchill day this year was also the one-year anniversary of Mr. Churchill's Secretary being published. It's been a wild year, with two books out and a third, His Majesty's Hope, waiting in the wings for May. Actually, I spent a lot of that day thinking about Judith Merkle Riley, and all the funny things she'd probably be saying, It was, in some ways bittersweet.
(Oh, and here's the "insane" part of being a wife/mom/writer — my husband took our son out that night, so I could finish writing a magazine piece. I ordered Thai food and promptly got food poisoning. So, by the time my husband was back home wtih champagne, ready to toast both Winston Churchill Day and the one-year anniversary of Mr. Churchill's Secretary's publication, I'd already gone to bed. It's a glamorous life, let me tell you...)
And my favorite Churchillism is KBO — what a great motto. (And I'm fine with the "B" instead of the "P"!) ***Side note for those of you unfamiliar with Churchillisms OMG (oh my God!), KBO (keep buggering on) and KPO (keep plodding on). KBO Churchill used to when talking to men, KPO he used when talking to women as he felt KBO was not appropriate.***
Q- Rebecca Lane Beittel has just written the first review on the third installment to the Maggie Hope Series: His Majesty's Hope, she described you as, "not shying away from showing humanity at its most flawed...but always giving us the element of hope," where do you think this stems from?
Susan- I've gone through, as Mr. Churchill would say, some "stern times" over the years — and I think there has to be a way that you can absorb them, and learn from them, and yet resist the urge to become bitter, cynical, and closed-off. To retain your empathy. It's hard sometimes, it really is. But I look at my husband, my son, the people I love — and there's no way I could give up hope, not while there's still goodness in people and moments of joy in the world.
Q- Do you have any new books in the works?
Susan- Yes! I'm currently working on the fourth book in the Maggie Hope series, called The Prime Minister's Secret Agent. It will take place in Edinburgh and the west coast of Scotland, as well as London, Washington, D.C., and Pearl Harbor.
Q-What advice would you give to writers who have been rejected by publishers?
Susan- I would quote Mr. Churchill and say, "Never give in — never, never, never, never." And, I'd also add, surround yourself with people who believe in you and your writing. I'd reached a personal limit of rejection (in the midst of health and other life crises) and wanted to pull Mr. Churchill's Secretary from submission to publishing houses and self-publish instead. But when I said that, my intrepid agent, Victoria Skurnick of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, said, "That's fine — but I have just one more editor I want to send it to." Thank goodness she made that last pitch!
Q-In this installment in the Maggie Hope Series you have included children characters, how influential was your own son, in developing these characters?
Susan- In His Majesty's Hope, one of the Nazi programs I write about is the so-called Children's Euthanasia program, later named as Action T4. It was an absolute nightmare to write, because my son was born with torticolis, literally twisted neck. In our present day, of course, it was diagnosed and he received physical therapy from age nine months to age five, and he's fine.
But, back then, and in Germany, he would have been considered crippled, and at risk of being murdered. Also, when I was in the middle of research and writing, I'd look at my friends' kids — some differently abled, some autistic, some deaf, some Jewish or half-Jewish — and think, "My God, if they'd been born in Nazi Germany, they would have been taken away and murdered, too."
For these reasons, writing His Majesty's Hope was difficult. I felt the ghosts of the children and their parents. I became horribly depressed for a while, just trying to absorb the horrific facts, in order to tell the story.
Q- In His Majesty's Hope you address the issue of "compulsory sterilization" aka known as the controversial concept of eugenics, often when this is mentioned in historical fiction, it addresses young adults and teens, you chose to show how demonstrative this action was on children in Nazi Germany, what led you to take this direction? (As a side note, I was unaware of this sterilization ever being called eugenics until I came across it while doing a research paper in college on birth control in 1920s America, in your research for this, was it referred to as eugenics or just sterilization?)
Susan- You know, history really dictated my using Action T4, as I wanted to set the story in the spring and summer of 1941, and that was the big issue of the time, including the reaction of many in the Catholic Church.
I was horrified by Action T4's link to the Holocaust, and how, in many ways, it was a "dress rehearsal" of sorts for the extermination camps. The Nazis had to shut down the T4 killing centers (at least publicly), but the lessons they learned about what worked and what didn't were all used in the death camps later on.
What I came away with was, just as a single sociopath starts with small victims (animals and so forth) and moves on, so did a group of sociopathic Nazis, such as Hitler and Brandt and Heydrich, start small and then — convinced no one would question their methods —
grew in arrogance and evil until they were just killing on an enormous scale.
Q- You are so brilliant in captivating the readers' attention by creating such a grasp of sense of place and with such an intriguing mystery...and I find you do this with concise description that also lends so much important historical reference...is it this concise from the beginning or do you do lots of editing?
Susan- I do a lot of editing. I can always hear Judith Merkle Riley's advice: "Just flick at the historical details, don't bonk the poor reader over the head with them!" So I really do try to find the best detail and go with that. But it's a struggle, because I love all the details...And it's interesting, some readers respond to a lot of details and some don't. So I really do try and find a middle ground in terms of historic detail.
Seriously. I try very hard.
Well her hard work, certainly pays off. Mr. Churchill's Secretary was nominated for the Edgar Award, the Dilys Award, and the Barry Award. While Princess Elizabeth's Spy was winner of the 2012 Booky Award and was selected as Oprah's Mystery Book of the Week on Oprah.com the week of October 15, 2012. Listening to the advice of Winston Churchill, "never give in-never, never, never," certainly aided MacNeal into creating a successful series. I only hope that you take the time to check it out yourself! A Maggie Hope series is a great selection for a book club or to tote in your beach bag and enjoy a fast-paced mystery all summer long.
Order all three installments as a Mother's Day gift, there are some really novel ways you could package this gift (think vintage, antiques and clever spies = old typewriter case, purse, or wrapped in a knitted scarf, keeping in mind that you would need to leave a note to say there is another piece to this mystery arriving in two more days...and it would be His Majesty's Hope...because can't we all use some hope?). You could also gift these books in a nice basket alongside some wartime memoribilia, British teas & biscuits, and a Keep Calm and Carry On tea towel. For ordering options for the Maggie Hope series, see below.
Order His Majesty's Hope:
@Barnes & Noble:
@Amazon:
http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0345536738
@Apple
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=His+Majesty's+Hope-EL--SusanEliaMacNeal-9780345538758&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780345538758%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30
Order Princess Elizabeth's Spy:
@Barnes & Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/princess-elizabeths-spy-susan-elia-macneal/1108022870?ean=9780553593624
@Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Elizabeths-Spy-Maggie-Mystery/dp/0553593625/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367869352&sr=1-1&keywords=princess+elizabeth%27s+spy
@IndieBound
http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0553593625
@Apple:
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=Princess+Elizabeth's+Spy-EL--SusanEliaMacNeal-9780553907575&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780553907575%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30
Order Mr. Churchill's Secretary:
@Barnes & Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mr-churchills-secretary-susan-elia-macneal/1100643331?ean=9780553593617
@Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Secretary-Susan-Elia-MacNeal/dp/0553593617/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367869229&sr=1-1&keywords=mr.+churchill%27s+secretary
@IndieBound:
http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0553593617
@Apple:
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=Mr.+Churchill's+Secretary-EL--SusanEliaMacNeal-9780553907568&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780553907568%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30
Special thanks to Susan Elia MacNeal for this wonderful opportunity! You are such an inspiration, and I truly hope others see what an amazing character you have created with Maggie Hope. I wait with much anticipation for The Prime Minister's Secret Agent.
Also, I want to thank MacNeal's publicist, Lindsey Kennedy, from The Random House Publishing Group, for providing me with the pictures of MacNeal and His Majesty's Hope, as well as, all the links to order the books. Thank you!
Sarah, your interview offered insight into Susan Elia MacNeal's writing process, life and personality, and illuminated the value of her literary contributions. Thank you for probing, exemplary work.
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Dr. Cooper
I am definitely inspired to read Susan Elia MacNeal's books!
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