Hi Shelley. Welcome to What's Your Next Podcast.

Hi Laura. Thanks for having me.

So happy to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I write about Manhattan and, but I moved to New Jersey, so, and I spend my days writing books.

yes. I love this. I was telling, we were sharing our Jersey stories. I had lived in Jersey for a long time. I did work in Manhattan. I worked actually.

Me too.

of the time in the financial district area by City Hall, the B Bridge, I work at Parkville, work down in, by Rural Trade Center. I live in Jersey City both in the exchange place area, which is right across the river and then Journal Square.

Well, I came when, after I moved out here, I commuted in across the GW Bridge, so

You're actually Northern, you're like, you actually have to

yeah. Yeah.

to Washington.

Actually, yeah, that's a good idea actually.

Yes. So, talk to about your journey to like writing historical fiction. Like how did you get, was it something interested in looking at stories like history or was it something that you were fascinated, you were like to explore this area? 'cause your latest focus about 19, 20 19 fifteens American, New York City, and some of the censorship and stuff.

Well, before I was a writer, I was a dancer. And so, when you dance you, you're sort of done at 40. And so, and I had kids and we moved to Jersey for the schools. And so a friend of mine who also had moved out. We did the Rice Krispy treats and

yeah.

school trips and the, we were like, but maybe we wanna do something for ourselves. So we started going into the city on Wednesdays, drop the kids off, go to a museum, see one exhibit, have lunch, be back in three. And so one day she says, I, I wanna do something different, just for me, just in our spare time. I said, yeah, I've been thinking about that too. And she said, you should write a mystery. I was always reading them. I said a great idea, except that I never know who done it until the very end. She says, oh, and here's the thing that people always say, and it's so not true. But we were so silly. How hard can it be? So we went and got a book on how to write a mystery. I wrote a mystery. And I sent it to a contest and it made the short list. And then the long story is I got an agent and he sold the book. And the thing is I wrote this just on a sort of a dare. And so, and he calls me back and I didn't know the industry. I didn't know how hard it was to get an agent or anything, or how hard it was to sell anything. And he called me and he said, I never even met him yet at this point. He goes, well, I just got an offer for you book. And I went, wow, that was fast. And he says, yeah, it's a contract for three books. And after that I stopped listening. And then when he finally said, Shelly, you listen. And I go, but I only have one book.

Oh my gosh.

That was my introduction to writing, so it hasn't all been that easy. Trust me as

I know, so you start with mysteries.

Yep,

of mysteries do you like? Because I actually, I'm a new mystery reader. I've transitioned out of romance. I start with cozy mysteries, were a great introduction to mysteries.

yes.

moved on to mysteries and all levels of mysteries from historical mysteries to actually like regular mysteries to millennial mysteries, which is like the new thing,

yeah, I haven't gone there.

I don't even care about that. It doesn't really matter who done it.

I remember writing a mystery and getting two thirds of the way through and decided I liked the murderer. Too much. So I had to go back and say, okay, you're gonna stay 'cause it's a series.

Yeah.

you're gonna stay now Have to find somebody to be the murderer. So I partic, well I'm writing historical women's fiction now. I sort of feel like that's my real place. It took me a while to get here, but so I like historical mysteries, but on the lighter side. Because the world is not so light, so it's nice to have a little humor with your murder. So, yeah, I like those. I like, and I also, so like mysteries that take place in Manhattan, of course, because I know it so well. And, but again, not on the noir side. I just, I'm an escapist reader.

Yeah. Yeah. I am just like you. I read mysteries that I don't care for. The murder is, it's always a surprise, but I really don't care about the murder. I

It still?

people. I care about the experience of doing it.

Yeah.

like how do you find in the community? And then the lighthearted I love now there's a lot more romcoms at it.

Yes.

banter. In areas, and I think that's like needed, especially in historical, like some of the historical, I'm like, oh, this is actually not that bad. It's like a little bit funny

I love historicals that can get that modern flare without sounding modern and out of period and that's takes a real talent to do that.

So now you landed into historical women's fiction. You probably have down to down the rail. What was it for you to get you to that place? Obviously you're writing about New York, are writing about a place in the setting, and New York is so rich because it has hundreds of years of, history. And you can pick, you can pick a street, you can pick a building, you can pick a building and have something, so. So what's your led you to pick this particular looking, removing the mystery and just having to relationship, which is women's friction and having the character arc of growing and exploring different things.

I was writing contemporary women's fiction along with my mystery.

yeah.

just because, it's have, like they used to, I don't do this, have sorbet between the courses of your meals, sort of to clear your palette. I don't think we do that anymore, but. It was nice to like, have a mystery. And my my heroine was, came to New York and stays at the 1907 Plaza. So she, she's very with it. And then my other characters were from on the East coast. I really I really relate related to this crazy mystery lady. And then, well, actually, I remember exactly when I switched because I was, it was, I was maybe on my fourth thing with her and, she of course helps solve a mystery. I said I'm gonna add a group of visiting, possibly murderous psychoanalysts. This takes place in like 1907. I know nothing about psychology in 1907. So I Googled it, and I'm reading about Jung and Freud and talk therapy and and then it, this thing in the middle of it comes up a new light on Tiffany Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany girls. And it was about these women who created and made Louis Tiffany's. Lamps, the lamps and the windows. And they were virtually unknown until they were rediscovered around 2004. And I went, that's my next book. So then I had to go to, my agent, said, okay, here's my next book. And they were like, oh, that sounds great. And so I just took the chance and here I am.

Here you are. And so the Sisters of Buck Row, it talks the stories in 1915. It's about, we are talking about the Comstock loss of which reader or listener who has no idea what they are, is about censorship. It's about obscene content and in ways it was affected by Com about birth control. And other female health,

yeah.

services that was considered obscene and which is, I have just, when I share with you, when I just met, I was like. I know you had this plan way before to what is happening in 2026 and how we have book banning, but we also have conversations. They've been lost about romances and obscene stuff. Materials we have, birth control has been on the hot topic

Yeah.

all of this different things. So a lot of it, a hundred years later we're. Seeing deja vu

Yes,

like it's a really place to understand our history and

exactly. Exactly.

from, because we're not that smart. We just repeat the same

Now this. 1915 was really a period where there was hope and things started changing and Margaret Sanger was there and doing things about women's health. Just like taking vitamins. When you're pregnant, you get a better outcome. All of that was banned. That would send you to jail. In fact, my book opens with her fleeing the country, Mar Sanker fleeing the country because Anthony Comstock is about to arrest her. If she is arrested, she will go to prison for 45 years for trying to make women healthier.

Yeah.

So, but after that, we made all these advances. It was Roe v, Wade, and, all sorts of things for women. And then it suddenly started to deteriorate again. And strangely enough, using Anthony Comstock, who was the most vicious sensor in all of American history, catered women. But he was a nutcase too. I mean, it like changed what was, if he couldn't read a MA magazine, 'cause it was in a foreign language, he would like haul the guy off to jail for having obscene literature because what's the know? And he sort of became the sort of what we call a zombie law. That's, so out of touch that it just isn't used anymore. But what the trouble now is they're using it again.

Mm-hmm.

The states adopted parts of his law originally for their own states. 'cause I mean, he was hired by the post office to keep pornography out of the mail. That sounds good. So, it sounded like a good idea, but he was just such. Such, just a, such a perversion of the reason he was hired and then they couldn't get rid of him. He just refused to leave. And by the time 1915 runs comes around, he's really kind of a laughing stock, which nobody says that these days. But he was ousted. He was a laughing stock. He was crazy. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. Well, there, here we are.

So here we are. So talk about this, about the Sisters and what is a book all about. Obviously we talk about the villain, the ultimate of the story. But it's about, sisters and book row. Which listeners you have no idea. Book row is fourth Avenue in Manhattan. It's downtown Manhattan. It's where the strand starts,

yeah.

where the strand is. It used to be a row where. There are bookstores and publishers and all the things

So yeah, so I chose 1915 because he dies of pneumonia in October. So I worked,

you.

I doing my research. I just grew to despise him so much. I mean, he burn burned, five, five tons of books he arrested on my high horse. You can forget I said all this, but you know, he arrested like the lady that put the art catalog together because she had a photograph of a Greek statue and it probably the dove. Who's nude, I mean, it's just bizarre. So I said it in 1915, and then it just happens that this is the year that Margaret Sanger fled the country, leaving behind an unpublished manuscript. So he is looking for that. And my three sisters who have just inherited a rare bookstore from their father. One day they find themselves in possession of a ancient, most likely stolen manuscript, which looks like it contains f fragments of poems from the poets and banned for centuries poet a safo pho.

Mm-hmm.

So this, and this is the same time that Anthony Comstock has decided to turn his thugs off. On all the booksellers because he's looking for stuff. It doesn't matter what stuff. And at the same time, they don't know what to do. They know they have to protect this work because it's, it's a work of great literature. So then one, one day, this mysterious rather charming, of course, stranger comes to the store and he purports to be a buyer for us, a private dealer who's interested in archaic manuscripts. They're like, oh, can we trust him? Will he help us save this manuscript? Or is he just somebody posing so that he will lead us to complete betrayal and June, but they decide that, whatever comes their way, they have to be on the forefront of saving literature from people who would, people who are afraid to learn, people who, you know. Just don't have the imagination. And so they go at it full force, mayhem, ensue, and yikes.

There we go. It's May and Sue. I think in some ways, the way I read this book, it felt very familiar in many ways of,

Yes.

like protecting our books, and protecting. And the level of like scrutiny and the level of of other people having an opinion and then, not seeing what it can actually do. It's a legacy, like you're Generations.

yes,

that you the people wanna like track it or it and then make money out of it,

yes.

like,

you steal these kind of things, you have to lock it away, never to share it. You have to go down in your vault and appreciate it, which is sick.

so, yeah. So it's powerful to have the three sisters and at the same time, having this climate that feels familiar, which I hate to say this feels familiar hundred years later. And at the same time, seeing the resolution and seeing, there's a hope and 'cause we do get so fresh movement, we get women's like advancements happen. We see, we know that history, like things progress to a

Yeah. And in the old days, he was mainly out of New York and Washington, Philadelphia,

yeah.

now, as soon as something like that happens, it's spread because of the internet. So everybody's up in arms or else it,

everywhere.

It's, it sometimes seems overwhelming to save things that are Of civilization, but

was sharing with you, I live in Hillsborough County, which is. Crown Zero for book banning in Florida. It's, they're trying to act laws and we have, one idiot who has not read any of these books because I

that's the thing is they don't read them.

They just, they don't read them, they just write a little per of, they're like, this

Yeah.

And all about not just LGBT, it's sexuality, it's actually women's health. Like diversity, like everything is a problem, because it's supporting something else. And at the same time we have, the fall of Royal's Way v Wade and like how women's rights are being taken away. And conversations about the expectation that social media now expects women to go back to babies. I don't know which one money. This is expensive. And then not work. I don't know how,

nobody, normal people have to have both people working.

yes.

It's just a thing.

And no fault divorce. The divorce is no longer acceptable, but so

I think it comes from fear. People don't want other people to have what they don't have, but we all, I mean, there's so much stuff.

I think it's just yes, it's fear. I think it's also. The fact that women have found their voice and they have new choices. They have choices. They choose

Yeah.

engage. They have set the standard and they're no longer willing to compromise

All right.

to be a mother to somebody else unless they're a child of their birth or they adopted or they surrogate or they do, you know what I mean?

Yes.

and so the standards are very high and now that makes the men feel fearful and therefore we are banning, basic education. We have schools that are actually, the professors are getting fired or that we have like boards are being replaced by ultra Christian ultranationalists for that fear. Like it's a lot of it's fear base

Well, people are afraid of change just by nature.

Yeah.

So they hold onto what they, we hold onto what we know, and we think that's the right way. And so when that's challenged, the first thing somebody does is, oh no, don't change anything.

yeah.

don't change the sign on the door. Don't.

Yeah.

it just skyrockets, when it gets out into society as a whole.

and there's a lot of nostalgia. I dunno, for some reason, we all

Thank,

wanna go back to the fifties,

not me. Thank you very much.

there's a whole lot of nostalgia going on. I'm like, but did you actually understand what it, what was happening there?

I am working on a book that takes place in 1870. Right.

my gosh.

I keep saying I wanna go back to when things were civilized in 1900 or 1907 or 15. Because, it's funny when you write about the same period in the same city, it's like a book that I did was around 1905. To 1915. It's every, you think, oh, well I know it, I'll just put in the characters. But just a number of cars on the street had multiplied tenfold. There was mostly buggies and carts and ho forces in 1905, where the few cars get to 1915 and it's mostly cars and horses, getting out of the way. Nobody wanted cars. 'cause they were afraid make the horses afraid. So, it's all the same thing.

And you had the subway. The subway. When did the subway got built? Like it was in 19 hundreds I think.

Yeah. Yeah.

like we had all these like technology. I think it's, I think it's interesting. I love the fact that you're like, we're gonna go back to 1870, which is terrible time,

and it's not even in Manhattan, it's taking place on Long Branch on The Jersey Shore because it was the summer White House of, well, several presidents had homes down there over the years. So I thought, you know what you afraid to do in Washington, you don't mind doing in the Jersey Shore. So we'll see.

it's a preamble to, as millennials, the Jersey Shore as a place of comfort. Jim, Tim Laundry that took party to place, maybe there were just the pre, there were the predecessors of Mike, the situation,

yes, I know. And those people aren't, they were from Pennsylvania. They're not even from the Jersey Shore.

they're not from New Jersey.

I mean, I had someone talking to someone in Canada once that said, oh you know the people in Jersey school? I said, they're not from New Jersey.

I'm so excited for the next book. What's your process of research? Do you go to historical archives? Do you do Google? I know, like research is a little bit different than. When I was researching in college, 'cause I did before the intern, so we had to go to the library. So

The good old days

yes. Before the, before Wikipedia,

the internet can be a wonderful thing. I do mostly. Primary sources because you can get any newspaper

Yeah.

from a back. I haven't gone back before 1870. I'm probably gonna move back toward

back

civilization, but

you can move back to Gild at age or the twenties.

One once that happened is I think a lot of us try to use primary sources. The problem with using things that. Were written at the time as they have a certain worldview that isn't like without bias because they live in and also sometimes they get things wrong.

Yeah.

so if the pri like if a newspaper got something wrong, all those people had it wrong too. So I try to write, I don't research further than my book or maybe a couple of years because I don't wanna know. I mean, we all know what happens, but vague, in a grand scheme way. But I don't wanna know too much more than my characters know, because then I feel like that's just bound to, to in the narrator. Interruption thing. So I really just I really just try to enclose us in a world and I, I use other, historical books and I mean history books and Pat, things that have been written now, like secondary, tertiary sources. But I really like to do Most of my work, like the trial that one of the sisters goes through, that's a composite of several trials that, that all the dialogue in there is like totally lifted from history because it's so good. So I didn't feel bad about stealing it all.

no, it's just basically just sharing the story of being a storyteller. So let's talk about some book recommendations. You are a reader, you read mysteries, but let's talk some, what kind of books do you not read? Are you reading historical? Are you reading other genres? Contemporary?

I like to read. I like to read historical mysteries that are kind of fun

Yes.

when I'm not, when I'm not writing. See, this is a problem when you're writing. I feel like I don't read, I really don't read any fiction while I'm writing, which is a big chunk of time because. You don't, it's like you start reading somebody and you really you find yourself read writing in the same rhythm, or thinking in the same rhythm, or maybe they have a fact. And I go, I don't, didn't know that. I haven't found that. But if you use a, I'll borrow this if you don't mind. What if it was made up? So I really try to just stay away from that. I read a lot of, like nonfiction when I'm writing fiction. But for fun. I'd say anything goes.

I love this. Do you have any books to recommend or listeners to pick out?

I do actually, and they're not brand new

perfect.

When all your friends are writers,

Yeah.

You can't say, oh, read my book and not hers, or read her book and not,

Yeah.

One of my favorite go-to books both as a writer and a reader, is this Rough Magic by Mary Stewart. I

Mm-hmm.

it's from 1965. She wrote also about king Arthur, but she had a series of romantic suspense and she's really good. If you like romantic suspense, this rough magic. It's a, an out of work actress goes to visit her sister in Kafu. And Kafu is sort of where they think, the Tempest was based on, of course we don't know that. But anyway, in the book it is. And she just builds the suspense so wonderfully with her language, with her word choice and with the rhythm of her sentences. She doesn't need any high tech chases or

Yeah.

Like stuff that interferes in leaves you at the side edge of your seat. You're sort of at the edge of your seat, but it's so intense and it just brings you there. And. And as a reader, I mean as a writer that helps you. I mean, it just inspires me to try to find that place. And as a reader I just wallow.

Yeah.

And let's see what else I was, oh, I love anything, and this is something I don't always read, but Susanna Kearsley I think she might be Canadian. She writes like sort of time slips. Stories, somebody, and I mean, and that's a very popular genre now, I think, but I think she does it so seamlessly that boy, I can't move my characters from one room to the next, the way she just slips through like centuries. I think the winter season is still my favorite, but yeah, I would highly recommend any of hers. And there was one other one. Oh, I know. What I was going to recommend is oh, Elizabeth Peters. This is a historical sort of wacky some humor. Amelia Peabody, Victorian archeologist, and her husband Emerson, and their son Ramseys, they are just larger than life funny characters that. Just makes you wanna keep reading and make you laugh and make you bite your nails. And I want, as a writer, I really love about hers. She always, she was an Egyptologist in at Chicago University, so, so she knows her stuff. So it's all well documented. But every once in a while she'll just slip in a little tidbit that the first time it happened, I was like, I was reading a 'cause I was kind of like into archeology for a while. I was reading a, I think it was Flinders Peters, Flinders Petri. He was an archeologist. And so I'm reading Amelia Peabody's thing and story and she meets her husband and he's got malaria something and he's wearing pink underwear. And I went I know who did that. That was Flinder's Peach. And he tried to keep tourists away 'cause they would all come on their donkeys and umbrellas and mess up the sight, so he would wear pink long johns. And scare all the tourists away and she just slipped it into her book and she was doing that all the time. So that was just extra fun. So tho those are three to get started on?

I love these recommendations and I'm actually excited to really revisit Elizabeth Peter, like that

Yeah.

that seems like a fun one just to revisit at same time, learn a little about something new.

Yeah. She also writes, Romero wrote, she's Dead Now, but wrote romantic suspense in the old classic style, which I kind of like. So you know, there's no gore guts.

Yes. Shelly, tell us, we're gonna find you.

I met Shelley noble.com and Shelley Noble Facebook and Shelley Noble authored Instagram, and I'm down to those now because I like those two because they're slow enough so you can actually interact with people that are liking and making comments and everything else just got so fast. It was like a moving slate tray. So I'm down to those three, I think.

I love this, honestly. So thank you, Shelley, for being in the show.

Thank you for having me. Those fun.

Thanks for listening to the What three next. For more book lists, cozy reads and library tips, visit the what three Next block.com. Your next great read might be waiting there. Thanks for listening to the What three next. For more book lists, cozy reads and library tips, visit the what three Next block.com. Your next great read might be waiting there.