Once Upon a Crime follows a veteran homicide detective who needs to find a vigilante serial killer before she kidnaps her daughter. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration for Once Upon A Crime came from my reading about the hunt for the Son of Sam. He’d sent a taunting message to an NYPD detective threatening the detective’s daughter.

Another part of the inspiration came from a criminal case I worked on when I was a police officer about the sexual assault of a young lady.

How did you come up with the idea for the antagonist in this story, and how did it change as you wrote?

In writing Once Upon A Crime, given that most sex crimes have women as victims, I wanted a female character hunting for sexual offenders to be the antagonist. At first, she was a disgruntled police officer whose back story was about her being dispatched to do a preliminary investigation of the brutal sexual assault of a young girl. A news item gave me the idea for a different antagonist: Penny Grimes.

When you first sat down to write this story, did you know where you were going, or did the twists come as you were writing?

When I started writing Once Upon A Crime, I had fairly good idea of where I was going with it. As the story took root, several ideas came to mind for the twists and turns used in it.

Can you tell us more about what’s in store for Detective Madison Chase and the direction of the next book?

At this time, I haven’t decided whether to write a sequel to Once Upon A Crime.

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