Carole Price

  • About
  • Books
    • Sour Grapes
    • Sour Grapes reviews
    • Twisted Vines
    • Twisted Vines reviews
    • Happy Homicides 4
    • Vineyard Prey
  • Contact
  • Events
  • Media
  • Posts
These posts are from my Lady Killers column I write twice a month. To browse the posts from my blogging days, please visit The Wine Cellar in the archives.

Why Shakespeare?

Posted on May 24, 2018

Why Shakespeare? Carole asked herself when looking for a theme for her first book. When her daughter moved to Ashland, Oregon, home of the famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Carole attended several plays, including Tongue of a Bird. It was held in the smaller Black Swan theater, and involved a search for an abducted girl. This play takes one to metaphysical, spiritual, and psychological worlds. The characters live in varying aspects of each. In a complex way, everything is going on inside the main character’s head.

Carole found the play to be very poetic in its use of language. It managed to just tell the story and then let it be without theatricality getting in the way. The smaller theater was good for hearing the language and getting inside the heads of the characters. The play was an internal journey where you enter the play through your head and leave through your heart, and this is why Carole decided Tongue of a Bird would be one of her first plays in her first book Twisted Vines. Thus, it became one of the first to be performed at the smaller Blackfriars theater, one of two Shakespearean theaters her main character, Caitlyn Pepper, inherited from an unknown aunt. She signed up for behind the scene tours of the Ashland theaters and later met with a stage operations supervisor who sees that all components of a play come together. Talking with him and his willingness to share opened up more avenues that Carole would include in her book and those that followed.

Carole always thought of herself as a casual observer of repertory theater, but once inside the Festival it was obvious to her how music enhanced and nurtured the story. She was full of ideas for her own theaters by bringing Shakespeare to Livermore, California, where she lives. Years earlier she had taken a class in Shakespeare at Livermore’s Las Positas College. Little did she know then how important that class would become when she retired from her job and started writing mysteries.

Carole fell in love with the Bard and attended many more plays. Twisted Vines became the first book in her Shakespeare in the Vineyard mystery series, followed by Sour Grapes and Vineyard Prey. Each book includes a play at both of the theaters simultaneously. One never knows what will spark an idea for the next book.

Filed Under: The Lady Killers Tagged With: California, Carole Price, Livermore, mystery writer, Shakespeare, Shakespeare in the Vineyard mystery series, Sour Grapes, Twisted Vines, Vineyard Prey

Share this on
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter

Bumps in the night

Posted on June 3, 2015

Lot of things go bump, bump, bump in the night. They howl, they growl, and bang against the house. Squirrels scamper across our tile roof. One night, something caused me to look out the bedroom window. Lo and behold a family of raccoons! I knew they’d been in the area because my neighbor saw them climbing out of the gutter at the corner. They go … (continue)

Filed Under: The Lady Killers

Share this on
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter

Funny/monkey business

Posted on May 20, 2015

The Funnies was the name of two American publications from Dell Publishing, the first a precursor of the comic book in the 1920s and the standard 1930s comic book. I loved reading comic books as a kid and paid ten cents for each one. Today they would be worth a lot of money, if only I’d had the sense to keep them. Comics had a lowbrow reputation … (continue)

Filed Under: The Lady Killers

Share this on
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter

Dreams

Posted on May 6, 2015

Our dreams are unique to us. No one else has had our personal experiences or background, so we should keep that in mind as you attempt to interpret our dreams. Some of mine have been so bizarre that I decided it was time to look deeper into them. One particular dream returned often enough for me to attend a class to learn what it meant. In my … (continue)

Filed Under: The Lady Killers

Share this on
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter

Flashpoints

Posted on April 22, 2015

Flashpoints are events that provide the writer with a story to tell. They introduce chaos where none existed. A flashpoint can occur before the story begins. Sometimes it occurs after the introduction, when the characters are introduced and the scene set. What matters is to get the reader hooked early on. In Twisted Vines, the first book in my … (continue)

Filed Under: The Lady Killers

Share this on
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 11
  • Older

Read my short story

Some fun photos

Bay Area booksellers
Bay Books
Orinda Books
Rakestraw Books
Read Booksellers
Towne Center Books

Where to find my books

Copyright © 2022 Carole Price.All rights reserved.