Vanished on the Vaudeville Circuit follows a Vaudeville performer whose 7-year-old daughter goes missing one night and his search for her. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story? 

I was interested in the world of vaudeville and its traveling entertainers, almost vagabonds, since I first read the book GYPSY by Gypsy Rose Lee as a child.  Gypsy and her little sister grew up in vaudeville.  It was intriguing to learn that there were children who had been free of going to school and spent their childhoods entertaining, and I wanted to write about a father who was on the road with his daughters.  It’s the 1920s, so I made the father, Avram, who changed his name to August, the child of immigrants, with all the resilient bravado that those who came to this country brought with them.  The premise for this book popped into my head one day as I was outside drinking a coffee by the rose bushes in my backyard, and I ran right inside to start the book.

Why choose this place and time for the setting of the story? What do you find so fascinating about the Roaring 1920s?

As I said, I love the whole idea of the world of vaudeville, and the 1920s always struck me as a wonderful time.  It was my grandparents’ era.  I grew up listening to show tunes and also the bouncy, optimistic songs of the 1920s, loved them then and love them yet.  World War I had ended.  The members of the armed forces who survived returned home wanting to forget it and have a good time.  It’s just an amazing decade, or it was until it ended with a crash and burn in 1929, and I put the story right in the middle of it, 1925.  I also had to put the story during a time when vaudeville was still alive and well.  It was in 1925, but its demise was coming.

Do you think there’s a single moment in everyone’s life, maybe not as traumatic, that is life-changing?  

Oh, definitely, yes!  August La May kind of “wakes up” when his younger child goes missing.  Up until then, he’s not naive or anything, but he’s a lot more trusting of the world around him until that happens.  After that, as we say in Brooklyn, “Forget about it!”  He’s older and wiser, fast.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?  

I work on several at a time.  At the moment, I’m not sure which one I’ll finish next, but there’s a bunch of them in the works.  The genre I love the most is cozy mysteries like this one!

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