[00:00:00] Jane: Happy New Year and welcome to Historical Happy Hour, the podcast that explores new and exciting historical fiction novels. I’m your host, Jane Healey, and we are kicking off 2025 by welcoming back best selling author Fiona Davis to discuss her latest amazing novel, The Stolen Queen, which comes out next Tuesday, January 7th.
Welcome back, Fiona. Thanks for coming.
[00:00:25] Fiona: Thank you for having me, Jane. I am just thrilled to be back, I can’t tell you.
[00:00:29] Jane: So happy, me too. So I’m going to do a quick bio, and as I was just saying to you I’m sure I have like more questions than we can get to. I will take questions from the audience in the second half and I will get through these as many of these as I can.
About Fiona. Fiona Davis is the New York Times best selling author of several historical fiction novels set in iconic New York City buildings, including the Magnolia Palace, the Address, and the Lions of Fifth Avenue. which was a Good Morning America book club pick. She first came to New York as an actress but fell in love with writing after getting a master’s degree at Columbian, Columbia Journalism School.
Her books have sold more than 1 million copies to date and have been translated into more than 20 languages. She is based in New York City. Again, welcome and Happy New Year. Yes, same to you. So talk about the premise for this amazing novel and how Kim Kardashian played a role in its inspiration. I loved that little tidbit.
[00:01:25] Fiona: Not what you’d expect, right? No. Yeah, so the book is, takes place at the Met Museum in New York City, and part of it’s from the point of view of a very serious enigmatic curator in the Egyptian wing. And she gets unwillingly teamed up with a 19 year old over eager assistant to the Met Gala in order to track down a stolen artifact.
And part of the novel is set in 1930s Egypt from the associate curators from her early years. And it has, it’s about mothers and daughters, female friendship. There’s hidden secrets. There’s of course a deadly curse. And I like to say it’s a mix of glamor and mummies. And the whole idea came from reading this article in the New York Times.
I thought about doing a book at the Met, but it was just so intimidating. There’s so many departments and it’s enormous. I just read today that the roof, you could fit eight soccer fields on the roof of the Met.
[00:02:24] Jane: I didn’t know that.
[00:02:25] Fiona: Wow. Yeah. I’m full of Met factoids now, by the way. And so the idea came, I was reading a New York Times article that came out a few years ago, and it was all about at the 2018 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian came and she wore this sparkly gold, tightly fitted dress.
And at one point in the gala, she stood next to this sparkly gold sarcophagus that the Met had just bought the year before for 4 million from Egypt. And the photo was really cool, because there’s two gold shimmery things. And it went viral, and to the point where the smuggler who’d robbed the sarcophagus saw it and complained to an undercover informant that he hadn’t gotten paid, which got back to the Manhattan DA’s office, which is a whole unit about stolen art.
And they looked at all the paperwork and found that the export papers had been they were fake. And so the Met in fact, had to give the sarcophagus away and give it back. And I thought, what a weird mix of pop culture and ancient art all embodied in this one building. And that’s how I knew my way in.
[00:03:28] Jane: Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. I think that was the Marilyn Monroe dress she was wearing at the Met Gala that year, right? Kim Kardashian. I
[00:03:36] Fiona: wonder, I was wondering, I was thinking about, I have to look that up. Cause you’re the second person who asked about that. Cause she changed into it, right? At some point.
I’m pretty
[00:03:43] Jane: sure it was that one. Yeah, the gold sparkle. Yes,
[00:03:45] Fiona: because it was the same cut as the Marilyn Monroe one.
[00:03:48] Jane: Yeah, crazy. So this is your eighth novel and like your others this one features an iconic New York setting, the Met, which I now have to go back to because it’s been a few years.
And, but unlike your other ones, this one is also set in another area of the world. It’s set in Egypt and in both the 30s and the 70s. So talk about that. Like why did you decide to venture outside of New York city this time?
[00:04:11] Fiona: I think I’ve had so many readers say, Oh, when are you going to go outside of New York?
And so many people, when I go on book tour, they say there’s this building in their town and I have to write about it. And there’s so many amazing places. And I thought with the Met, if I wanted to do an Egyptologist. Then I really had to go there, and I read this wonderful book by a woman named Lynn Olson called Empress of the Nile about an early female archaeologist in the, when she was there in the early 1900s.
And it had so many great details that I thought that’s what I want to do. I want to see if I can transport readers back there. But in order to do that, I definitely had to go myself. So it was days we were in Cairo, we went up the Nile, we went to Temple of Karnak, saw the pyramids, saw the Valley of the Kings.
And in that way, I could get a sense of, okay, when You know, there’s a moment where the sand just covers the sun and everything is this weird orange y color. And how do I describe that? And what are the smells? And what are the tastes? And in that way, hopefully the reader gets a journey to Egypt as well.
[00:05:13] Jane: Yeah, those little details are so important. And you had never been to Egypt before that? No, never. Amazing. So talk about the research. I have research questions, of course. And so talk about your research there. And did you have an expert who brought you around? What were some of the sources? Any, anything that changed the trajectory of the story?
Anything like that?
[00:05:34] Fiona: Yeah, the first thing I read was this book by Amelia Edwards, and in the mid 1800s she wrote a book A Thousand Miles Up the Nile. I think that’s the name of it. And it was the first, by a woman, this, what it was like to be in Egypt. And even then, things were completely untouched.
And or mainly untouched. And it was this beautiful account of her sailing on the Nile. And, what it was like then and what the shoreline was like and what she saw and what she did. And then when we went, it was a tour and that was really helpful because we had this wonderful tour guide who knew so much, so many facts.
And I felt really bad for him because after he’d given us all a tour of a temple I would catch him and sneak into a corner and back him up and be like, Wait, what about this? What about this? I was the only person on the tour group with my pen and my pad, writing down everything.
And that was helpful. I knew I wanted to focus on a rare female pharaoh called Hatshepsut, who in the book is renamed Hathor Kari, because I had to fudge some of the details of her life and her, what happened later after she died. And so seeing the mortuary temple that she had built was pretty mind boggling because it’s just, it erupts out of the mountains and it’s beautiful.
And this was 3, 500 years ago that it was built. And yeah, it was really awe inspiring to be there. And, to, we landed at 4 30 in the morning in Cairo and the van picked us up and took us to our hotel, which was very near the pyramids. And so at one point it turned the corner and there were the pyramids huge.
They were pink with the sunlight and, you’ve seen them in movies and TV, but to actually see them to actually touch them, there’s not, it was really, I’m glad I did it. Cause I couldn’t have written this book otherwise.
[00:07:22] Jane: I’m sure I’m so glad you mentioned the two names because I was going to ask how you pronounce them.
So it’s a pharaoh in the book is
Arthur Curry and the pharaoh she is inspired by is
[00:07:36] Fiona: Hatshepsut.
[00:07:37] Jane: Hatshepsut, okay, yes. I
[00:07:38] Fiona: always think it sounds like a sneeze,
[00:07:40] Jane: so another question about research, you, in addition to the research you did in Egypt, you did a lot at the Met itself, and so talk about that, how that was, and did you have certain experts you spent time with?
Did you spend days in their offices? I love, that’s probably one of my favorite museums anywhere, and so that must have been amazing.
[00:07:58] Fiona: It was really great. At first I got a wonderful tour of the building and kind of behind the scenes of the building from the communications director, who was very helpful.
And so you went down to the staff caf and that’s where everybody’s eating the cafeteria in the basement. And then in the basement, there’s these huge, very wide hallways. And there’s signs every so often that say yield to art and transit. So if art rolls down, you flatten yourself against the wall. And so that was really cool seeing those behind the scene areas that, you normally don’t get to see.
And then I got a really great tour by a man named Patrick Bringly. And he had been a security guard for 10 years. And so he gave me a tour from that point of view. And he had all these great stories and he pointed out, every so often you’ll see this kind of. Black patch on a wall around hip high.
And that’s when the security guards have leaned against it for so many years that the polyester suits have rubbed off on the wall and just, again, those little details. And he had great details about past thefts that had occurred and all that kind of thing. And he actually soon after we met and he gave me that tour, he published his own book and it’s a memoir called all the beauty in the world.
And it’s beautiful. I highly recommend it if you love the Met. It just hit the New York Times list as a paperback after being a hard, he it’s a really beautiful book about art and beauty and loss and love. And, oh, so that was a great tour. And then another one I got was with an Egyptologist named Colleen Darnell.
And she led a group of a small group of us through, and, I watched her. She just read the hieroglyphs off the tombs. She was like, Oh that says that he da. And, and she teaches hieroglyphs, like you can zoom with her. I highly recommend checking her out.
[00:09:41] Jane: Wild.
[00:09:42] Fiona: So that, yeah, so that was really fun just seeing all these different perspectives so that I could hopefully lock in to where I wanted to go with the book and not get too, Carried away.
[00:09:51] Jane: Yeah, definitely. And you and the people you talked about that you interviewed and talked to you can see the details that you weaved in from there, which is really cool. And I should also mention, you have a bibliography in the back of the book, too, of some of these great sources that you’re talking about.
So people can find those, too. So Charlotte and Annie are the two main characters, two points of view. Charlotte is 60. She’s a curator at the Met who had lived and worked in Egypt when she was young. I don’t want to give any spoilers. And Annie is 19. Trying to find her place in the world, lost, but ambitious.
Why these two very distinct characters? How did you come up with them?
[00:10:30] Fiona: I knew I wanted to explore, they’re not mother daughter, but I wanted to explore mother daughter relationships, because it’s not something I’ve done before. I don’t have kids. But recently as my parents have gotten older and my father passed away, I just wanted to work on, to play around with that a little bit.
And so I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to have two women who are completely different? So one, she’s in, she’s 60, she’s worked at the Met for years she’s under, she works really hard and doesn’t get any credit for it but she just keeps her head down and is doing what she loves to do.
And then Annie, meanwhile, is 19. She has no experience whatsoever. She’s been taking care of her mom, who’s very high maintenance. She gets this chance to work for as an assistant to Dion of Reland, who was the special consultant to the MET Gala or to the costume collection in the Met Gala in the 1970s.
And she loves fashion, but that’s about all she’s got going for. And so one is really qualified, one is completely experienced, their ages are different. And just to put those two together and see what happened. I like to say it’s. The book is a mix of Thelma and Louise meets Indiana Jones meets The Devil Wears Prada.
[00:11:40] Jane: Oh, nice. I like that. And that works, totally. That’s a good pitch. So I talk a little, my question, next question is actually about Diana Free, Deanna Freeland. Deanna yes. Deanna Freeland I vaguely knew of her and she’s a character in the book who was the organizer of the Met Gala editor in chief of Vogue.
I love the scenes with her because she’s so over the top with everything she does. So talk about how you come across her in your research? How you ended up incorporating her into the story?
[00:12:11] Fiona: Yeah, like you, I had a little, a glimmer of who she was, but I didn’t realize until I started doing the research what a powerhouse this woman was.
She was born in France. Her mother always told her she was ugly. And yet she went on to become this iconic fashion leader running Harper’s Bazaar, running Vogue magazine, running the Met Gala. And she’s the one who single handedly turned the Met Gala from this dowdy fundraiser a star that was held and held in hotel rooms.
To this celebrity filled party of the year, Mick Jagger, Diana Ross held at the Temple of Dennder exhibit, which is in the museum, which is this beautiful room that they basically turned into a nightclub. That was all Diyana Vreeland. And she was really interesting. Cause she was very striking. We’ll see you.
would rouge her cheeks and her earlobes. She wore Vaseline above her eyes. She had pale skin and black lacquered hair. And the things she said, she had these edicts that she’d come out with pink is the navy blue of India. The best thing about London is Paris. And my favorite is Unshined Shoes or the End of Civilization.
[00:13:13] Jane: Oh, I heard, yeah, you had that one in there. That’s a good one, too.
[00:13:17] Fiona: And she has all of these wonderful sayings that I, most of what she says in the book, she really said, because she spoke with such kind of strange, kind of, and you cannot recreate her. She is one of a kind. So I knew I wanted to have her in the book as a force of nature.
[00:13:34] Jane: Yeah, a lot of color added with her. That was really, yeah, so interesting too. One aspect of this story which you already talked about a little bit is the question of the repatriation of Stolen. artifacts from countries and and this is something that still comes up and still be debated. You still see articles about it.
And talk about that, in the book and this is a, like I said, it’s a theme that’s still. Very relevant today.
[00:14:00] Fiona: Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So that the artifact that gets stolen in the book it’s a question about repatriation. Where does it belong? And this has happened for ages, and the Met is struggling with it, as is any major museum, because there’s lots of pieces that are, scattered around the world that, Benin bronzes were taken from what’s now modern Nigeria, In the late 1800s, when the British came and had this bloody and violent occupation, and they just looted anything they wanted.
And so these bronzes, which are beautiful, are scattered all over at different museums. And, the country wants them back. And there’s things like the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum Rosetta Stone. And so the question is, though, what if that country that wants them back doesn’t have a safe place to store them or to exhibit them?
What if security is an issue? What if they might get damaged from humidity? And then what if the government decides that they need money, so they sell them off to a billionaire who then buys them? sticks it in his villa. And that means researchers can’t see them, scholars can’t see them, yet they were forcibly taken from these countries.
And so it’s a, it’s just an ongoing question of what is best practices what should be done, what shouldn’t be done. And I wanted to raise it in the book because it is a huge question today.
[00:15:22] Jane: Yeah. And there’s no it’s not black and white. It’s very gray and really interesting. I have some writing questions.
They’re new because I think you’re here almost exactly a year ago. I have to look it up. And so I’m not going to ask the same ones because you’ve been on before. But I’m going to ask some others. I’m going to start with one that’s similar that I asked you before, because I’m just fascinated with process.
And this is not only like Dual perspectives. It’s also dual timelines and all that. It seems very scary to me. So how did you what’s your process?
[00:15:57] Fiona: I don’t know what I was thinking. Because, they’re hard enough, but this one has. two timelines, and then the first half of the book is from three different perspectives.
So it’s young Charlotte, old Charlotte, and Annie. And then everything merges that after a disaster happens at the Met Gala, which was really fun to write. And then it goes into one, a linear timeline, but going back and forth in point of view from old Charlotte and Annie. And yeah, it was insane. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I knew it.
I knew that’s the way I had to do it in order to bring what I wanted to life, which was how Annie and Charlotte, who are these two characters, who are both grappling with identity, who they are, what they stand for, and they are able to eventually, after a rocky start, turn to each other to figure that out.
And so they both get out of the prison that they’ve placed themselves in many ways. And what I did was I figured it out each timeline separately, as to what had to happen when. And then I wove them together, and then in the second half where it’s one timeline, I just looked at the scene and decided whose voice would be better to have that scene.
Who needs to supply more information that okay, it would make sense for Charlotte to have it. But even then, after I finished I was stuck. It wasn’t the first half, especially just wasn’t clicking into place. And I, my friend, Linda Cohen Leugmann, who we were, I was complaining about it and she said, just send it to me.
And so I sent it to her and within the next day, she sent it back and she said, had each chapter rearranged for the first half of this should go here, this should go, and she was totally right. Oh, he saved me so much, angst. So it’s good to have writer friends. You can count on it. ,
[00:17:36] Jane: it’s huge.
And I just adore Linda. She’s the best. Yeah, I’m not surprised she did that. That’s great. Now, do you use Scrivener or Word? Scrivener is a word processing program that I’ve talked to about on here. Are you like a word girl?
[00:17:48] Fiona: I’m a Scrivener girl all the day. Yeah. I don’t know what I’d do without it because especially with all this information, if I needed a website that, talks about the Met Gala or something.
About Egypt in the 1930s. I have it all right there. So with one click, I’ll have my manuscript on the top and on the bottom, I can look at a photo or, see whatever I need, get whatever information I need. And with these books, as they’re so information heavy, but you don’t want it to read like a magazine.
An encyclopedia, and so to do that, you really have to be able to do two things at once and make it flow and Scrivener. I would do ads for them if I could. They’ve saved me many a time.
[00:18:25] Jane: I completely agree, and especially in organizing research, and they have that great search function.
So you can like I’m not that organized without it. So I could just search for what I need, and it all pops up. And that’s amazing. Yes, exactly. So when considering a story idea. And I think you’ve answered this already, but which comes first, the premise or the characters for you? Or is it just varied book by book?
[00:18:49] Fiona: You know what comes first for me is the building. Oh yeah. Yeah, it’s, I didn’t plan on writing about buildings. It just happened very organically after my first and then the second. And then it was like, oh, I guess I write about buildings, which I love because I can do this deep dive into the history.
And that gives me. Reassurance in a way that I can build a story over it. Yeah. So the first thing is the building. And then I just, I talked to every expert I can, I reach out to people, I do interviews, I do just anything, you worked at the Met Gala in the seventies, let me ask you a bunch of questions.
And from there I start to get characters and plot ideas. And so it’s a, it’s a. Yeah, I don’t start with the theme or what, what I want the ending to be. I just let the research really dictate it and that will eventually tell me where I need to go as well as what to keep as fact and what to make fictional
[00:19:44] Jane: and then
[00:19:44] Fiona: explaining it very carefully in the author’s note why and how I did it.
[00:19:48] Jane: Yep, I can completely, I totally understand that, and I think that kind of leads to my next question because I love historical fiction. I love writing historical fiction or reading it, and I love it, writing it, because I like having a jumping off point, like something to jump off of, or there’s an event or person or place, and so you’ve written historical fiction for a while now.
Do you ever consider writing in another genre? Ooh, I don’t know.
[00:20:14] Fiona: Yeah, I think I would. Sure. I think this is book number Eight.
[00:20:18] Jane: Yeah.
[00:20:20] Fiona: Yeah. Gosh. And yeah, I think, we should be, I think as authors, it’s fun to play around and I think we should be allowed to do that. And I think more and more authors are doing it because I see some authors going to thriller and then to historical fiction and then back to something else.
And I say, why not? It feels like the world is a little more fluid than it was before when it was like, okay, write one book a year and keep it in the and don’t do anything unexpected. I think it’s okay to play around now.
[00:20:46] Jane: I completely agree. I think that before you really had to pick your lane, and it seems like I know a few authors who have ventured into different genres now, which is great.
[00:20:54] Fiona: Yeah, successfully. Yeah.
[00:20:56] Jane: Yeah, totally. Was there a novel that you read growing up that made you think, I have to do this someday, I want to write novels someday?
[00:21:04] Fiona: No, I didn’t ever imagine I would be a writer of fiction or even a writer, I think. Yeah, I, yeah, no, I, not at all. It wasn’t until I went to Columbia journalism school and I really did that after acting for 10 years.
So I wasn’t, I had no experience. And that’s where I like, I learned how to enjoy writing and how to structure something, but that was nonfiction. And it really, it was the book that made me think, Oh, maybe I can do this was a book called The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tesoro. And it’s a book that takes place in France and England and two different time periods.
And I devoured it. I loved that book. And so when I had a building that I thought I might want to write about, that’s, I studied that book like crazy. Okay. How does she do it? What, what happens? When does, when do things happen? What’s the high points? What are the low points in order to learn how to do it?
So yeah, I’d say the perfume collector.
[00:21:56] Jane: Oh, cool. I’m going to write that one down because I don’t think I’ve read that one. But I wasn’t a kid. I was in my 40s. What is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
[00:22:06] Fiona: The Anne Lamott, it’s a real favorite, but don’t be afraid to write a really bad first draft.
[00:22:10] Jane: Ah, so I love her. Yes, totally.
[00:22:12] Fiona: It’s really nice having that permission to, um, to just let it go. So if you’re having a bad writing day, every so often I’ll think, oh, this is awful. I can’t do it. It’s terrible. And then I’ll remember that and think, oh, okay, just finish it. Just get to the end of the scene.
You’ve done it for the day. You’ve got your words in and stay, we’ll be better. And then you can always play with it. I think it’s easy to get stuck on making everything perfect. And you don’t know until you finish the whole rough draft what the point is or where it’s going to go so it’s okay to just Let it be really terrible.
I’ve had people just are nodding the whole time or,
[00:22:45] Jane: shrugging anything else.
[00:22:48] Fiona: He’s going to nod. Yeah.
[00:22:51] Jane: Two more questions. And then I see a bunch of questions for you in the chat and the Q and a that I promise I will try to get to all of them. What are you ready to share what you’re working on now?
[00:23:01] Fiona: Yeah, sure. So I it takes so long between finishing a manuscript and turning it into publication that I love finding something new to work on. So it’s a building that hardly anyone has heard of. It’s called the Morris Jumel Mansion. It’s the oldest home in New York City. It’s, yeah, it’s beautiful.
It’s this huge mansion surrounded by gardens. It’s stunning. And George Washington headquartered there for part of the Revolutionary War. The woman who lived there in the 1800s, this woman, Eliza Jumel, she was born in Rhode Island, the daughter of a prostitute, and she came to New York and eventually became the richest woman in New York City because her real estate was so good.
Business was so strong. And so she really, rose to great heights. Her second husband was Aaron Burr of Hamilton Fame. Oh, wow. Yeah. And Lynn Manuel Miranda wrote part of Hamilton in Aaron Burr’s bedroom in the house.
[00:23:54] Jane: Oh, that’s very cool. So that, and so you’re going a little back in time this time it
[00:23:59] Fiona: sounds like.
I’m going a little back, but it’ll be modern times from a succession like real estate family. Oh, okay. Point of view of the daughter. And then jumping to Eliza’s point of view, we’ll see how it works, but it’s so far, it’s really fun. And it’s just nice because it’s, the Met doesn’t need me to say, hey, the Met’s great.
The Met is, way beyond anything I could do to affect it. But the Morris Duhamel Mansion is like a little museum that needs some love. And I thought it might be fun to try and shine a spotlight on it.
[00:24:25] Jane: Oh, very cool. That’s exciting. And when do you, like 2026 sometime?
[00:24:29] Fiona: Yeah, summer 2026.
[00:24:31] Jane: Amazing. How can readers best stay in touch with you?
[00:24:35] Fiona: Yeah, I do a newsletter once or twice a month that kind of lets people know what I’m up to. And that’s at fionadavisbooks. com. That’s my website. And there you have all the tour info. We’re doing a really fun tour this month. So if I’m coming to you, please come and join us.
[00:24:51] Jane: Yes, one of the questions is are you coming? Audrey Tiedemann asked, will you be doing any events in the Boston area? We were just talking about this. So
[00:24:59] Fiona: not yet, but I think we’re going to see if we can get something on the books. Cause I’d love to, I’d love to get there. So yeah,
[00:25:05] Jane: not
[00:25:07] Fiona: yet, but we’re planning on it.
Yeah. And then I’m on Instagram and Facebook as Fiona Davis author.
[00:25:14] Jane: Excellent. Okay. So let me get to some of these questions because I don’t want to take up. Your whole night. Christine Mott. Hello, Christine. How do you get picked for book of the month club? I read an early copy and loved it and can’t wait to get my physical copy.
Congratulations. Congratulations on book of the month club.
[00:25:28] Fiona: Thank you. Yes, the book is an add on this month, which is really awesome. You just I don’t know how they do it. But yeah, the my Magnolia Palace I think was a book of the month pick and then Spectacular was an add on and so is this book.
And yeah, they’re just wonderful. It’s a great group of people. They bring you in they interview you. It’s just it’s wonderful. They’re very cool. I love the way the company’s run. But yeah I don’t know quite what the process is. I’m not sure. I’m not sure what it is,
[00:25:56] Jane: but that’s great.
You got picked. That’s awesome. What? Oh, Christine O’Shea is here. Hello, Christine. Yay. What trinkets did you buy in Egypt to remind you of your journey? So what exactly do
[00:26:07] Fiona: you do when you’re
[00:26:08] Jane: out in the
[00:26:08] Fiona: country? Good question. That is a really good question. I did buy, they’re known for their cotton, so I bought a button down cotton shirt, which I absolutely love.
And then in terms of trinkets, I bought some bracelets that are really beautiful and they sell them, everywhere. There’s vendors everywhere. And I think that’s it. And just a huge shout out to Christine, cause she’s one of the best people ever.
[00:26:28] Jane: The best. She also asked what part of Egypt.
that was in your book required you to do extra research to write about it? Was there a certain aspect of it that you really needed to dig deep?
[00:26:40] Fiona: Yeah, the Hatshepsut story, what her story was as a pharaoh after her death, her recent story of her, I like to say she was revered and then erased. And then reviled, and then finally restored.
And all that happened over, from the time she was ruling to today. Only recently have they discovered her mummy, which I recreate in the book. And having to learn as much as I could about her and, what her life was like, and also all the scientific things around where her mummy was discovered, how they determined it was her mummy, is really fascinating.
And that needed a, kind of a scientific dive to, so I could understand that.
[00:27:20] Jane: Yeah, definitely. Anissa Armstrong. Hello, Anissa. Do you, do your characters lead you or do you lead them? And if they lead you, have they changed your book along the way?
[00:27:30] Fiona: Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah, I would say at first I lead my characters.
I figure out who they are. I do, I don’t know if you do character sheets where you answer all these questions. So you, And that helps me get to know them. I pick famous people who I think they look like. For example, in this book, Charlotte Rampling, the French actress I feel is a great Charlotte.
And Merit Weaver would be Annie. And and that helps me just to figure out what they look like, how they move in the world physically, all that kind of thing. But then no question, I don’t know about you, Jane, but after a certain point, they start making all the decisions and you have to reign them in and be like, no, don’t do that.
It’ll screw everything up. And then sometimes you just have to let them go and see what they come up with. It is true. It’s the, it’s like you start channeling some other spirit.
[00:28:15] Jane: Yeah, that’s one of the things, when things are flowing, that’s, yeah, it’s a nice feeling, doesn’t happen that often, but when it does it’s great.
[00:28:23] Fiona: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Jane: I want to make sure I didn’t miss some of these questions, that oh, is it ever, one of the questions here, and I’ve got to find where it was, some of these buildings that you write about, are there sometimes just too many true stories to share in the books? I thought that was, oh, Sharon Person asked that, that’s a good question.
[00:28:40] Fiona: That is, the Chelsea Hotel. That is full of ghosts and it’s full of stories. And so you could do a punk rock story. You could do a beat poet story. You could, there are so many options to go there because it’s been around for so long and had so many famous people go through it. Yeah, I’d say the Chelsea Hotel is one that was It’s just, oh, chock full of ideas.
You could write 20 stories just from that one building.
[00:29:05] Jane: Yeah, that’s a good one. I wanted to ask too, because I always ask the question about like movie interest. Has there been any movie interest for this book or any of your books? Yeah, we’ll see.
[00:29:15] Fiona: There’s been a little bit lately, so we’ll see what happens.
Historical fiction is expensive to do, but I think we’ve seen with Bridgerton and, queen’s Gambit. There, there’s a real interest. I think there’s a huge appetite from viewers for it. So hopefully they will start playing around. I think it’d be great.
[00:29:31] Jane: Yeah. I think that it’s been a good sign with some of like Masters of the Air and some of these other season, series on Apple lately.
I’m like, it’s, But yeah, I’ve heard the same thing. It’s just very expensive. So Marjan Kamali was on and her book, The Stationary Shop was like, had the whole Netflix deal going and then that fell through. So she’s, I think it’s going to happen, but maybe somewhere else. Yeah, it’s just, yeah.
[00:29:54] Fiona: And then, of course, I pick, Egypt to, for a place to film. So that makes it a little harder, too. I’m not making it easy, let’s say.
[00:30:01] Jane: But then you could be like a producer and go like advise on set and have another trip to Egypt. You have to dream about that. Let me make sure. Oh, Susan Seligman asks, hello Susan, what is your favorite part of the process?
This is a great question, Susan. Research, the actual writing, editing that’s, okay, so two part question. So what, answer that one part first.
[00:30:26] Fiona: Yeah so my favorite part is, I think, the research phase because you’re just ingesting everything you can about the building or the people or the time period.
And at that point, it’s the perfect book, right? Cause you haven’t made any decisions. So it’s, you just are getting ideas and it could be this, it could be that. And so that to me is my, the best part for sure.
[00:30:46] Jane: Yeah. And you could, I feel like it’s fun. And like you said, everything’s fresh and new and you could go on, you could keep researching forever.
Cause yeah, you’ll always, there’s always something new to discover.
[00:30:58] Fiona: For
[00:30:58] Jane: sure. Susan, oh yeah, Susan had another part. Do you have difficulty saying goodbye to your characters as you finish the novel and prepare for the next thing?
[00:31:08] Fiona: It’s interesting. It’s funny the way it works because you finish the novel and by then you are so sick of these people, right?
You are, I do 10 different revisions. So it’s okay, put them to bed. And then you’re getting copy edits and proofreader and, tweaking all the way. And so then you turn to another project and you’re working on that and then it’s time for the book to come out. And it’s really fun.
I find because you’ve put it away for four or five months. And so then it’s like revisiting old friends. When you start getting questions about it and remember, Oh, cause it’s been a while now. It’s been a couple of years since I started writing it. And that’s what I love that, I feel like they all live with me.
[00:31:46] Jane: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And was it always called the stolen queen? That was another question someone asked and I actually.
[00:31:57] Fiona: I’m not very good with titles. So my agent, my editor tend to get together and come up with it. And we thought this was a great one because it embodies both the item that’s stolen, which is this fragment of a Queen’s face, which is at the Met, which is really beautiful. And then it refers to Charlotte, who’s this woman who’s had a lot stolen out from under her in a way, and is lost and struggling.
And and then you have Hathor Karré or Hatshepsut who are queens who had their reputation. She had her reputation basically stolen and scholars figured out who she was and how amazing she was. And that wasn’t until the 1920s. Yeah so it works on so many levels, I thought. Yeah. Perfect.
[00:32:37] Jane: Totally.
Titles are so hot. It does. And do you have much say in the cover? Because your covers are always very unique and they celebrate the building that you’re writing about. And and this one has a lot, this cover has a lot of layers too, I think. I really like it.
[00:32:50] Fiona: Yeah. Yeah, I loved it. They came up with this PR I think right away and we were all just over the moon.
The, we changed things like the Pharaoh in the sky the image in the sky there. She shifted a little bit and they tweaked it a little bit, but not much. It really, the met at night, it looks like a palace. And then you have that beautiful night sky and the constellation. So yeah. Yeah, we’re happy.
[00:33:14] Jane: Really nice. This was delightful, Fiona. Thank you so much for coming back on. I’m so thrilled for all your success and everyone should go out and buy the book. It’s coming out February 7th. Pre orders are always awesome for authors. I always say that. And and yeah, please keep in touch. Let me know if you’re coming to Boston.
I would love to, to do it in conversation or whatever you want.
[00:33:35] Fiona: Oh, I would love that. That would be great. Just to sit and talk shop with you would be. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and thank you everybody for coming and so many familiar names. It’s really, it’s such a family and that’s really part of the real fun of being an author at our age, I think, because it’s like you get a whole new set of friends and it’s wonderful.
[00:33:54] Jane: I was just saying that to my husband. It’s really wonderful. There’s so many wonderful supportive readers and friends and author friends and so So yeah, thank you, everyone. And it’s so nice to kick off 2025 with you, Fiona. Happy New Year to everyone. And I will see you next with Robert Dugoni. So take care.
Have a great night. Thanks everybody. Bye bye.
