SKATE CRIME... IN STAGES

The final book in my Figure Skating Mystery series, "Skate Crime," is out now.

I wrote the bulk of it in the Fall of 2006, taking a break for the birth of my daughter in January of 2007, before turning the completed manuscript in, in March.

I wrote a good section of Chapter Two, Antonia Wright's back-story about growing up in Harlem and fighting the racism of the United States Figure Skating Association, while I was still on the tail end of morning sickness. When I read it again now, it still makes me woozy.

On the other hand, I wrote Chapter Eight, Gina's back-story of Olympic Gold followed by no clue of what to do next, while sitting for four hours at the doctor's office, having my blood drawn every sixty minutes and not being able to eat. Rereading that particular section makes me hungry.

Of all my skating books, "Skate Crime" took the longest to get from concept to shelf. I first came up with the idea when I worked as the Associate Producer for "A Skater's Tribute to Carlo Fassi." (Though Carlo is, by no means, a model for the murdered coach in the book, Lucian Pryce; and neither are any of Lucian's students based on Carlo's. Well, not officially anyway).

I got the inspiration for Lucian's jealous daughter, Sabrina, however, from Carlo's wife, Christa, talking about the sibling rivalry that sprung up between the Fassis' daughter, Monika, and Carlo and Christa's student, Jill Trenary.

I ended up writing the first few chapters of the "coach murdered at his own tribute" concept while working for TNT at the Nagano Olympics. But when I sent that proposal around to editors, the feedback I got was that Sabrina, as the sleuth and narrator, wasn't very sympathetic.

I sat on the story for half a decade, only figuring out a way to rework it once I'd launched the Bex Levy series. Sabrina Pryce is still a character in the book, but now her motives are very different. She isn't trying to figure out who killed her estranged father -- she's one of the suspects!