Why this time period and place?
It honestly had a lot to do with where I came to the ideas for the book from. There was a real Seattle

madam named Mother Damnable, for example. She’s not my Madame Damnable—and Rapid City isn’t Seattle—but there’s definitely inspiration there. The girls at the Hôtel Mon Cherie grew out of a period photograph of the ladies of a similar ‘parlor house,’ also located in Seattle. And I have a long­standing love for those sorts of buried cities, raised by fill around the ground floors of the buildings already standing. It seems to have happened to most coastal cities once upon a time—Boston has neighborhoods like that as well.

Was there anything you wanted to include in this book that you couldn't (for whatever reason)?

I would have liked a little more cryptozoology than we got. In Karen’s world, the various so­called Creatures of the Lumberwoods—the critters from legendry and tall tales, such as the squonk, the hodag, the splintercat, the hoopsnake, the jackalope, the chupacabra, the glawackus, Champ, the sasquatch, the wendigo—they’re all real. I think they have Pacific tree octopuses too, even though those are a modern invention, because I love them.

I’m a sucker for all that stuff. Especially squonks, which are a legendary bird that can never be captured alive because if you put it into a sack it weeps so copiously that it dissolves into a puddle of its own tears and seeps away. I’d have loved to do more with all of that. I just didn't have room, without it turning into a distraction. Discipline is the hardest thing.

Without spoiling the ending, what do you think Karen would like to do the most if money (and ability) were no object?

Oh gosh. She’d take the love of her life and travel the world. Pony trekking in Mongolia. She’d go up to Anchorage and see it for herself. Sri Lanka. Shanghai. Hawaii. Australia, Antarctica, Chile. The whole Pacific rim. Maybe even someplace really exotic, like Boston or New York!

Thank you Elizabeth!!