The Grotto's Secret

A popular means of packing up your book to go in medieval times, including the precursor of our modern tablet sleeve. Medieval readers had additional storing options: slipping the book into a box, bag or wrapper.

An open girdle book. Note the tied knot used for easy holding and the relatively small size of the book itself. This girdle book gave me the perfect hiding place for a secret map.

When I was researching the historical side of my conspiracy suspense thriller (The Grotto's Secret.) I found some interesting ways that medieval authors used to carry their books.

Along with the Castor Oil Plant, the Oleander is the most deadly plant in the world. It is also tremendously popular as a decorative shrub where we live in Spain.

When I was thinking of an idea of how to frighten my main character in my conspiracy suspense thriller, The Grotto's Secret, with something terrible the villain does to her family, I came up with the idea of hanging an ear (yes, a human ear) to a wind chime.

Read on to find out just how poisonous the castor oil plant is and you will be shocked!

In the stunning view we have in our new Spanish home, far in the distance I can see this heart shaped mountain.

Nicolas Culpeper' Complete Herbal is still in print today and this inspired the idea that my medieval character was in fact the first to write a herbal journal in The Grotto's Secret.

The origins of Gerard's Herball, famous for its detailed (if sometimes inaccurate) descriptions of plants are controversial.

Remember that horrid thick medicine you were spoon-fed as a child to keep you healthy? Read how poisonous castor oil actually is and be shocked!

I didn't use this bushman' s poison in The Grotto's Secret but my mind is bubbling away with ideas for another novel that I am writing.

I found this fabulous site that is incredibly resourceful for authors wanting to find out more about Medieval Fashion. Don't you just LUV the shoes!

This lovely image of looking out from the inside of a cave or grotto gave me the idea for my character to hide things inside ... what does she hide? Find out in The Grotto's Secret.

This cave-art in Nerja, gave me the idea for where my character in The Grotto's Secret could hide something valuable. At the time she didn't know her secret could have deadly consequences in the wrong hands!

Medieval Costumes Paper Dolls, this is a great way to find out what they wore in the middle ages. I used some of these ideas in The Grotto's Secret.

In The Grotto's Secret, my character uses these tools when she writes her mother's herb journal.

I loved how this skylight gives an eerie glow down the stairs. I used this image to imagine a similar setting for the top of the stairs where Kelby spots the baddie in The Grotto's Secret.

Let me know if you can feel and touch and taste and smell this decaying old mansion when you read through those chapters.

It gave me the idea of having a study for the mad scientist, with his medical books scattered across the floor and the trees peering in at Kelby. When reading The Grotto's Secret you can't mistake the exact scene where she finds this study.

When I was writing the scenes in the spooky mansion, I found loads of fantastic images that inspired me to write a vivid setting for scaring the hell out of my character Kelby Wade in The Grotto's Secret.

This image by photographer Alicia Rius is totally creepy. I took this idea OTT and had the Homerton Lab in The Grotto's Secret full of weird bottles like this. Find out when my character sees this horrible sight and what happens next in The Grotto's Secret suspense thriller.

Exeter's underground tunnel inspired my when writing my crisis scene in The Grotto's Secret where my heroine flees from the bad guy.

This spooky image from photographer Alicia Rius and her experience of seeing them in a mirror gave me the idea to have my heroine frightened by a ghost ... err statue in The Grotto's Secret.

This abandoned hospital hallway gave me the idea to have Kelby trip over an old wheelchair and crashes to the dusty floor when she is pursued by the baddie. What happens next? Read The Grotto's Secret to find out.

This image of an abandoned hospital will give anyone the creeps. The rusting hospital trolley bed gave me lots of ideas about rotting equipment lying around.

Here is another lovely old abadoned hospital wheelchair ...

Although this abandoned hospital is in Beelitz Heilstaetten, Germany, in my mind Kelby is guided to the bottom of a rotting wooden stairway. This one is stone but also see the image of the skylight. I love how the light filters down but still gives such an eerie feeling ...

I love old typewriters and although I didn't have one in the Homerton Grange Lab, my imagination could go places with this image.

An abandoned dentist equipment added a nice imagined touch to my scary hospital lab in The Grotto's Secret.

The Grotto's Secret won The People's Book Prize. It's a Historical Conspiracy Thriller for fans of Glenn Cooper, Kate Mosse and James Rollins! The Grotto's Secret is the first book in the Torcal Trilogy.

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A popular means of packing up your book to go in medieval times, including the precursor of our modern tablet sleeve. Medieval readers had additional storing options: slipping the book into a box, bag or wrapper. Unfortunately, few of these exotic – and fascinating – storage devices survive today. I used this particular girdle book in The Grotto's Secret.
An open girdle book. Note the tied knot used for easy holding and the relatively small size of the book itself. This girdle book gave me the perfect hiding place for a secret map.
When I was thinking of an idea of how to frighten my main character in my conspiracy suspense thriller, The Grotto's Secret, with something terrible the villain does to her family, I came up with the idea of hanging an ear (yes, a human ear) to a wind chime. Please don't do this at home!
A book hangs from a monk's girdle, ready for instant use and protected from thieves and the elements. My medieval character keeps her writing safe by making this kind of girdle book bag. When I was researching the historical side of my conspiracy suspense thriller (The Grotto's Secret.) I found some interesting ways that medieval authors used to carry their books. Jump a few centuries ahead and we would carry our iPads or Kindle in our handbags. These ancient girdle book bags are a highlight of some of the exciting chapters in The Grotto's Secret. Find out more weird and wonderful things I did while writing my historical conspiracy thriller.
Along with the Castor Oil Plant, the Oleander is the most deadly plant in the world. It is also tremendously popular as a decorative shrub where we live in Spain. Just one leaf can kill an adult, and fatal poisonings have resulted from minimal exposure to the twigs, blooms and berries. My puppy was poisoned by this plant (we think after he poisoned himself 3 times in 3 months!) so I used this as one of the plot threads in The Grotto's Secret. I used this plant for a reason ~ a real life poisoning! Find out how my precious little puppy was poisoned by the Oleader plant and why that terrible event inspired me to write The Grotto's Secret! Discover more poisonous plants. And find out more weird and wonderful things I did while writing my historical conspiracy thriller.
Remember that horrid thick medicine you were spoon-fed as a child to keep you healthy? Read on to find out just how poisonous the castor oil plant is and you will be shocked! There is an ingredient in the castor bean, which just so happens to be the deadliest plant poison on earth! What!?! Yeah, I thought the same thing too. Literally. Just one tiny castor bean is enough to kill an adult within a few minutes. Castor oil is made safe (but not palatable) with the removable of the lethal compound known as ricin. Amazingly, castor bean plants are grown for decorative purpose all over the place, particularly in California. This information had my creative juices bubbling away when I wrote The Grotto's Secret and wanted to find natural ways to kill my villains. I used this castor-plant-bean in my conspiracy thriller and my character describes the beans shown above as 'ticks'. Read The Grotto's Secret to find out what happens ... From the bean behind castor oil to the world's deadliest decorative shrub, you may be surprised to find out the incredibly lethal plants often hanging around the neighbourhood parks - or gracing your tabletop in the form of a centerpiece. Discover more poisonous plants. And find out more weird and wonderful things I did while writing my historical conspiracy thriller.
In the stunning view we have in our new Spanish home, far in the distance I can see this heart shaped mountain. The more I looked at it, the more it made me want to use it somehow in The Grotto's Secret, so I did. When you read the book, see if you can spot the heart shaped mountain. Then drop me a line and let me know with an image of you with the book. And I will send you a copy of the book for a gift for your friend.
Nicolas Culpeper' Complete Herbal is still in print today, and this inspired the idea that my medieval character was in fact the first to write a herbal journal in The Grotto's Secret. He spent the greater part of his life in the English outdoors, cataloguing hundreds of medicinal herbs.
But it seems that he pinched his ideas from Gerard’s Herball, who references many of the poisonous plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.The origins of Gerard's Herball, famous for its detailed (if sometimes inaccurate) descriptions of plants, are controversial. It is said that The Queen's printer John Norton had commissioned a Dr Priest to prepare an English-language translation of Rembert Dodoens' immensely popular herbal, but the priest died and John Gerard to take over the work. They're all wrong, my character was the FIRST to write up a complete herbal journal! :) Read my author's notes to find out more.
Queen Cleopatra famously forced servants to commit suicide by means of a strychnine tree’s fruit seeds, which contain lethal levels of strychnine and brucine, in order to determine if it would be the best means for her own suicide. Upon seeing their agony (which included painful vomiting, facial contortions and convulsions) she opted for the apparently less horrific choice of the asp. In The Grotto's Secret, my character finds some natural toxins in a lab and ... well, I won't give away the plot! Remember that horrid thick medicine you were spoon-fed as a child to keep you healthy? Read how poisonous castor oil actually is and be shocked!
I didn't use this bushman's poison in The Grotto's Secret, but my mind is bubbling away with ideas for another novel that I am writing.
I found this fabulous site that is incredibly resourceful for authors wanting to find out more about Medieval Fashion. Don't you just LUV the shoes!
This lovely image of looking out from the inside of a cave or grotto gave me the idea for my character to hide things inside ... what does she hide? Find out in The Grotto's Secret.
This cave-art in Nerja, gave me the idea for where my character in The Grotto's Secret could hide something valuable. At the time she didn't know her secret could have deadly consequences in the wrong hands!
Medieval Costumes Paper Dolls, this is a great way to find out what they wore in the middle ages. I used some of these ideas in The Grotto's Secret. See the fantastic fashions during the medieval period by reading the full article on History of European Fashion.
These tools were used by scribes and writers in medieval times. In The Grotto's Secret, my character uses these tools when she writes her mother's herb journal. Little does she know that trying to get it published would come to the attention of the Spanish Inquisition and prove fatal ...
I was looking for inspiration for the spooky mansion in The Grotto's Secret so my character (Kelby Wade) can come upon lots of scary obstacles when she is following a trail of strange leads her deceased brother left for her. I found this lovely image on 13 Beautiful Abandoned Places In Britain. I loved how this skylight gives an eerie glow down the stairs. I used this image to imagine a similar setting for the top of the stairs where Kelby spots the baddie in The Grotto's Secret.
This long hallway inspired me when I had heroine Kelby creeping into Homerton Lab to find out who was killing her family in The Grotto's Secret. I spotted it when looking for abandoned mansions. I have this fascination with old and decaying buildings, which can be hauntingly beautiful when imagined how they were once in their prime. Here are nine crumbling mansions that are fascinating to look at and come with some intriguing backstories, browse through 9 fascinating abandoned mansions. Then read The Grotto's Secret to find out how I put my character through the wringer with all sorts of creepy things being flung at her. Let me know if you can feel and touch and taste and smell this decaying old mansion when you read through those chapters.
I was looking for a study that my character Kelby Wade comes across when searching through an abandoned mansion. As she was scared and the fictional mansion I was creating was to be as spooky as hell, I also wanted it to be a sensory experience for both the character and my readers. This is another hauntingly beautiful image I found on 13 Beautiful Abandoned Places In Britain. It gave me the idea of having a study for the mad scientist, with his medical books scattered across the floor and the trees peering in at Kelby. When reading The Grotto's Secret you can't mistake the exact scene where she finds this study.
When I was writing the scenes in the spooky mansion, I found loads of fantastic images that inspired me to write a vivid setting for scaring the hell out of my character Kelby Wade in The Grotto's Secret. Photographer Alicia Rius captures the light spilling into the room, and it gave me an idea for showing rusting beds with the spirit of lost souls hovering over them. Read my suspense thriller to find the exact time she comes upon this room in the abandoned mansion where she is chasing leads to find out who killed her brother.
This image by photographer Alicia Rius is totally creepy. I took this idea OTT and had the Homerton Lab in The Grotto's Secret full of weird bottles like this. Find out when my character sees this horrible sight and what happens next in The Grotto's Secret suspense thriller.
I liked looking at these underground city tunnels to feed my imagination with spooky places when I wrote the underground tunnel scenes in The Grotto's Secret. Exeter's underground tunnel inspired my when writing my crisis scene in The Grotto's Secret where my heroine flees from the bad guy. You can read the full story about Exeter's underground tunnel here.
This spooky image from photographer Alicia Rius and her experience of seeing them in a mirror gave me the idea to have my heroine frightened by a ghost ... err statue in The Grotto's Secret.
This abandoned hospital hallway gave me the idea to have Kelby trip over an old wheelchair and crashes to the dusty floor when she is pursued by the baddie. What happens next? Read The Grotto's Secret to find out.
This image of an abandoned hospital will give anyone the creeps. The rusting hospital trolley bed gave me lots of ideas about rotting equipment lying around. Read The Grotto's Secret to find out what kit was thrown into Kelby's path. And who ended up on this trolley bed. This photo of Rathen State Hospital is by Tom Kirsch. Opacity is dedicated to documenting various abandoned places through both text and photographs; recording their transformations through time before they are demolished. Find more of these haunting abadoned places.
Here is another lovely old abadoned hospital wheelchair ...
Although this abandoned hospital is in Beelitz Heilstaetten, Germany, in my mind Kelby is guided to the bottom of a rotting wooden stairway. This one is stone but also see the image of the skylight. I love how the light filters down but still gives such an eerie feeling ...
I love old typewriters and although I didn't have one in the Homerton Grange Lab, my imagination could go places with this image.
An abandoned dentist equipment added a nice imagined touch to my scary hospital lab in The Grotto's Secret.