the story behind · the movie 27 dresses, where the main character is trying on the twenty-seven...

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The story behind

Closer than you think book inside.indd 1 06/01/2015 11:15Karen backlist titile artwork.indd 1 08/05/2015 15:31


Years ago I became a Law & Order addict, watching the show when-ever I could. One day I was watching the opening credits, where Jack McCoy and his Assistant District Attorney du jour are walking toward the camera with Lenny Briscoe with his partner, and I thought, that’s the series I want to write.

So I did. Two cops, two prosecutors, all working together, their stories intertwined. It was the first time I sat down and planned a series before starting the first book.

HP1477RR_UBelong2me_RI15.indd 471 02/09/2015 08:03

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Where are the



characters now?• Detective JD Fitzpatrick still works homicide. When the job gets

too much to bear, he is soothed by Lucy’s music and the sound of their son’s laughter. He has recently joined VCET, the Baltimore PD/FBI task force led by Joseph Carter, and has been partnered with Special Agent Kate Coppola. In his spare time, he coaches a youth softball team.

• Dr Lucy Trask has returned to the morgue, her maternity leave over. But she works part-time so that she can spend time with her son, Jeremiah, named after her old teacher and mentor, Jeremiah (Jerry) Pugh.

• Gwyn Weaver is still single. She has never gotten over her involvement with a murderer and the darker side of her person-ality is becoming stronger. She wants to make murderers pay, but still maintains enough of her honor and humanity to keep from going vigilante. But she is ready for a huge change, senses it’s just over the horizon, but she doesn’t know what it will be. (I do!)

• Thomas Thorne continues to manage a thriving defense practice, but with the addition of a death scene investigator, he has expanded his practice to include private investigations. Thorne is very happy for Lucy and very worried about Gwyn. He doesn’t take time to worry about himself, but despite all the women who parade in and out of his life, Thorne is lonely.


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Karen Rose

• Daphne Montgomery still works as a prosecutor in Baltimore and is the heroine of Did You Miss Me?

• Stevie Mazzetti continues to work in the police department and is the heroine of Watch Your Back.

• Cordelia Mazzetti stars alongside her mom, Stevie, in Watch Your Back.

• Clay Maynard continues his private investigative work as the hero in Watch Your Back.


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Fun Facts about



• I hadn’t planned for Lucy’s alter ego to be quite so . . . animated. Her leather wearing self was inspired by a few seconds of the movie 27 Dresses, where the main character is trying on the twenty-seven dresses she’s worn as a bridesmaid over the years. One of the outfits was goth and I thought, There. That’s Lucy.

• Lucy’s music just happened as I wrote. A year after the book’s release, a reader sent me a link to a Lindsay Sterling video in which she plays the electric violin in a very cool rendition of The Phantom of the Opera. Her costumes, the energy of her music . . . she is Lucy Trask. How very cool!

• Lucy’s friend, Gwyn Weaver, is a former circus performer who ran away from the circus to sing with a rock band only to find herself working for Thomas Thorne. I thought, ‘Nobody will believe this character,’ and then one day as I was writing, I went for a manicure. The nail tech was new and . . . a former circus performer who’d run away with a rock band. Living in Sarasota, you occasionally meet circus performers. Sarasota, Florida was the winter home for Ringling Brothers Circus and the location for John and Mabel Ringling’s Circus Museum and the Ringling Clown College. Gwyn has a fascinating story – I can’t wait to tell it!

• The name of Lucy’s club, Sheidalin, is taken from CL Wilson’s Tairen Soul series (with her permission, of course). In Wilson’s books, the sheidalin are mystical truthspeakers. In my books Sheidalin is the sum of certain letters from three names, each name representing someone who the three owners has loved and lost. ‘Lin’ is Linus, Lucy’s older brother who she adored.


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