The writing calms and redirects a "chattering mind". Owen describes her books as one part autobiography, one part lamentation, one part personal salvation. To this fictional inner sanctum, Owen adds domestic touches of a rosewood door, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Chesterfield couch, a ginger cat called Billy, a Tiffany lamp and an ornate fireplace. "The concept of having a storeroom in your mind, especially for merchants, where you keep a mental catalogue of everything you have sold, everything you have bought and all the money people owe you, essentially your whole business – that's where I got the idea of the phrenic library." When not picking over skeletal remains for clues, or stressing over a boyfriend's absence and betrayal, Dr Pimms takes short excursions into a library created in her mind. "From when I was quite little I would get to sit with him while he spoke with his wonderful Welsh accent and read to me out of old tomes of archaeology."įrom Quick came one of the books' stylistic curiosities. Her grandfather, Meirion Quick, was an "armchair archaeologist extraordinaire". "Whether in the end my picture is accurate or not, it's the absolute best one I can put together," Owen says.
Five days into last year's Kickstarter campaign she was contacted by Angela Meyer of Echo Publishing, which has now published both books back-to-back.Īs research, Owen reads deeply academic texts and papers until she builds a complete picture of the civilisation in which she is interested. Warned by friends of the long odds of finding a publisher in the sub-genre of cosy crime, she self-published, raising $10,000 by crowdfunding. I just wasn't doing anything about it."īy Christmas 2014, Owen had a manuscript of 70,000 words her first attempt at creative writing completed while working full-time in the public service. I could see the plot, I could see the characters, I could see the story world. "He said, 'I want to see a draft by next Christmas.' I think I had driven him and a lot of people quite mad by talking about it. "Enough talking about it, enough thinking about it, just write it now."
That's what I should write about'."īut she prevaricated until her partner sat her down one Christmas and said. I was trying to be sensible so I said, 'Here's all the things I know about archaeology, the library stuff, all these languages and other cultures. "I thought what I want to do is create another world that people who are like me can go into and explore and find it interesting and be entertained. well, other writers will understand what I mean, but there's a kind of compulsion or obsession that grows inside you that you've got to write," says Owen. "I'd done all this endless study, I learnt all these languages and I was becoming quite.
Like Pimms, Owen, known as LJ by friends and family, is a trained archaeologist, a qualified librarian, has a PhD in palaeogenetics – a study of genetic diversity in surviving dental records from Iron Age and Roman England – and has studied Spanish, Welsh, Chinese and French.
The second, Mayan Mendacity, introduces readers to the court of Lady Six Sky, a long-forgotten leader of the Mayan Empire.
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