Geneva, NY, February 07, 2024 — Marolyn Caldwell has completed her new book, “The Diamond: Book 2 of Battle of Wills Series”: a riveting work that takes readers into an attempt to recover a priceless diamond.
Author Marolyn Caldwell grew up in a college town called Manhattan, located in the very heart of the Kansas Flint Hills, where her father was a chemistry teacher at Kansas State. She has been writing mystery stories since she could pick up a pencil, but she didn’t sell her first book until she found out, while she was living in Washington, DC, about romance and mystery writers’ conventions. When she was informed that a convention calling itself Malice Domestic was being introduced in Bethesda, Maryland, she immediately signed up. There she met an editor who was looking for romantic mysteries. “Flight into Danger” and “Whirlwind” were subsequently published by Walker & Co.
Marolyn volunteered for a board position on the planning staff of the second Malice Domestic Convention and was a member of that board for many years. When she retired from years of being a legal secretary, she moved back to her birthplace in the Kansas version of Manhattan, where she discovered to her delight that the Carnegie Library she had so loved when she was a child was just reaching its centennial year. She proposed a Midwest mystery convention to the board of directors, got the go-ahead, gathered up a lot of enthusiastic volunteers who had no idea what they were in for, incorporated the Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave, and for six years spent her time in bliss meeting mystery writers from both sides of the country, listening to their wit and wisdom, and learning ever so much about the craft and business of writing.
The ideas behind “Battle of Wills” and its two successors predate all those conventions, drawing as they do from a family history that isn’t quite spoken about but being inspired by the tales that she has uncovered in researching especially her mother’s family, quiet farm people who were very resourceful. They lived on the banks of the Ohio River in Kentucky and ran a very accommodating ferryboat across the river—until their town was burned to the ground by Morgan’s Raiders.
Marolyn writes, “He opened the door behind the passenger seat, and she slid onto the slick pseudoleather. She lowered herself against the seat as best she could, settling on her left side, her head bumping hard against the door behind the driver’s seat. Her hands, even bound in front, were of no use. The man pushed at her jeans-covered legs until they folded into the allotted space and then shut the door against her damp boots. She could still see the door-lock shaft standing up. Perhaps, she thought in desperation, at some point when they weren’t watching, she could work the old-style door latch open with the toe of her boot, slide out, and make a fast getaway. With her hands tied? Well, she’d think about that later.”