Welcome, M.S. Spencer! If that title doesn’t grab you, the cover art and the blurb for your latest book’s blurb sure does.
What was your inspiration for Orion’s Foot?
My son had gone to Peru during his junior year in college, and I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t get to travel much anymore when a friend remarked, “Well, why don’t you go visit him?” Aha. I said. I shall set forth. So I hopped a plane and eleven hours later he met me at the Lima airport. Just like Petra Steele, my heroine in Orion’s Foot, we had a whirlwind tour of Lima, the capital city, a flight to Iquitos, a city set in the midst of winding waterways and dense jungle, and a boat ride deeper into that jungle.
Like Petra, I was greeted by a menagerie of exotic creatures, including capybaras, tapirs, pink dolphins, and monkeys—hundreds of monkeys! It was a great adventure. A lot of it is described in Orion’s Foot.
Scientists search for a mythical creature of the Amazon, but are distracted by murders, fossils, strange creatures…and a surprising love affair.
Petra Steele is wallowing in self-pity after being dumped at the altar, when her brother Nick invites her to come to the Peruvian Amazon. Before she even sets her suitcase down, she's confronted with a murder victim. In a research station peopled with a quirky assortment of scientists, she is drawn to Emory Andrews, a gruff, big man with a secret past. That is, until his beautiful ex-wife shows up. More murders, more secrets, more mysteries ensue, all in the deeply romantic, sizzling jungle.
Buy Links:
Wild Rose Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. ITunes, KOBO, Google Play, Indigo, Indie-bound
Any new projects on the horizon?
I’m working on a story now set in Maine—in the same town as The Penhallow Train Incident /link/. I am not much into series, but I love the denizens of Penhallow and Amity Landing so much I had to let them live on in a new story.
The working title is Mrs. Spinney’s Secret. The story opens with Cassidy Jane Beauvoir, proprietor of Mindful Books and chairman of the Board of Overseers of Amity Landing, confronted with a Hollywood cabal that wants to make a movie in her tiny village. Her objections are overridden by the townspeople, and her initial misgivings must vie with a growing attraction to the film’s director Jasper MacEwan. Unfortunately, both the movie and their romance are hindered by a series of incidents—some fatal, some simply painful. The two must set aside both their differences and their romance to search for answers to the mystery, and for a long lost hoard of English gold.
Amazon inspiration: the author with a Toucan, a piranha, and sunset over the Amazon River.
Excerpt: Lure of the Amazon
She held up Emory’s phone. “And to record any bird sounds we hear.”
Aguirre spat. “The hoatzin are easy—they sound like feral swine.”
Nick tossed the line onto the dock. “I don’t think we need to go by their calls—I hear you can smell ’em a mile away. It’s like passing a dairy farm on a sultry summer afternoon.”
“It’s true. That’s why we call them stinkbirds.” Winston took the tiller, and they headed north. A few miles up, the Pacaya fed into the Amazon proper. As it had the first time Petra came down from Iquitos, the vastness of the channel awed her. The water—though not quite as silty as its tributary—still ran olive brown, giving the impression that the river carried a bit of everything in its currents: plants, animals, diseases and their cures, all the colors of the spectrum. Even the dreams of explorers were lifted and propelled ever deeper into the jungle on the mighty Amazon.
Explorers. That’s where I heard the name Aguirre! Let me see…a movie…that’s right. It was an old movie—black and white—about a Spanish explorer. Aguirre—Wrath of God. A conquistador named Aguirre had gone to Peru with a band of men to search for the lost cities of gold. Instead they dealt with hostile natives, swarms of mosquitoes, and carnivorous caimans. As his followers fell away—dead of fever, poisoned arrows, or predators—he soldiered on, clinging to a raft on the river and hurling invectives at his god.
She looked at the fellow’s namesake. His sharp, black eyes were riveted on the shoreline, his hawk-like nose raised as if waiting to catch the scent of his quarry. His body was taut, and his hands clenched the rail, the knuckles white. He is driven. A true scholar? Or a madman?
