Let’s Meet the Author

TalkBook Discussion : Why Kings Confess by C S Harris

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Let’s Meet the Author

1Andrew-theQM
Aug 25, 2024, 1:49 pm

Let’s Find Out All About C S Harris.

2EadieB
Edited: Aug 25, 2024, 2:12 pm

C. S. Harris

Professional Bio

Candice Proctor, aka C.S. Harris and C.S. Graham, is the USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of more than two dozen novels including the Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery series written under the name C.S. Harris, the C.S. Graham thriller series co-written with Steven Harris, and seven historical romances. She is also the author of a nonfiction historical study of women in the French Revolution. Her books are available worldwide and have been translated into over twenty languages.
A former academic with a PhD in European history, Candice also worked as an archaeologist on a variety of sites including a Hudson's Bay Company Fort in San Juan Island, a Cherokee village in Tennessee, a prehistoric kill site in Victoria, Australia, and a Roman cemetery and medieval manor house in Winchester, England. She loves to travel and has spent much of her life abroad, living in Spain, Greece, England, France, Jordan, and Australia. She now makes her home in New Orleans, Louisiana, with her husband, retired Army officer Steve Harris, and an ever-expanding number of cats.

The Fun Bio

The Formative Years

Growing up in the military does strange things to children. Some become dedicated homebodies who refuse to move or even travel again; others spend their lives roaming the world, never quite feeling as if they belong anywhere. Guess which category I fit into?

My father was in the Air Force. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, he was head of U.S. Air Force Intelligence for Spain and North Africa. That's me with my sister Penny (now the writer Penelope Williamson) and our grandmother in Heidelberg. The occasion was my dad's university graduation. After my dad retired, he went on to earn a PhD and become a professor of history. By the time we left Europe, English was my second language, and I couldn't even remember the States. The transition was, to put it mildly, traumatic.

In some ways life in the States was better than I expected, in other ways worse. I lost myself in books, from the girlpower stories of Trixie Beldon and Nancy Drew to the timeless tales of Twain and Stevenson and Kippling. I also fell in love with the mountains of Oregon and Idaho, which is where we lived. My dad was a dedicated outdoorsman, so we spent a lot of time in the woods. I enjoyed fishing and target practice, but my enthusiasm for hunting ended the first time I saw a deer shot.
I hated, hated, hated school. I was a child of the Sixties in just about every way you can imagine, and then some. My high school was so horrified when they realized I was going to be valedictorian that they refused to allow me to give the traditional speech at graduation.

I love you too, Moscow High!
At college, I studied archaeology and classics (Greek and Latin). This is me in Greece, where I attended the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
I spent my summers on various archaeological digs, working on a Hudson Bay Company fort in San Juan Island and at Chota, onetime capital of the Cherokee

Nation in Tennessee. I also earned spare cash as an official Burial Removal Specialist, relocating graves threatened by roads, dams, parks, and similarly destructive examples of what we like to call progress. It left me with an interesting perspective on death and a firm resolve to be cremated.
I was so anxious to make it through school and get on with the real business of living my life that I finished college at the age of twenty, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude. And then I thought, Oh, dear. Now what do I do?


The Roaring Twenties

Unable to decide whether I wanted to go to graduate school in Classical Archaeology or Historic Archaeology, I took a few years off to wander.
I moved to Australia, where I lived in Sydney in a tiny old Victorian row house. The toilet was in the backyard. There was a derelict church at the end of the street next door to a halfway house for ex-cons, and a Hari Krishna group around the corner that sang day and night. For a while, I worked for the Anthropology Department of the University of Sydney on a prehistoric dig down in Lancefield, Victoria. We slept in tents on a sheep station. Due to the water shortage, we were allowed a shower every fourth day.

The dig was in a swamp. Think about that.
Leaving Australia, I meandered through Asia and Africa. Think treks through the jungles of New Guinea. Drinks at Raffles. Safaris in Kenya. This is a photo of me with a friend in Hong Kong—or was it Singapore?
I moved to England and went to work for the Winchester Rescue Archaeological Unit. We lived in an abandoned Victorian chocolate factory

(oh, the glamour of archaeology) just across the street from Winchester Cathedral. Some of my best memories are of warm summer evenings spent listening to the bell ringers practice ringing the changes, and nights crowding around the stove and throwing darts down at the local pub.

I traveled from one end of Europe to the other. It was alternately trying, educational, and glorious. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, I need to DO something with my life. Something else.
What does a classics major do when she's decided she doesn't want to get a PhD in archaeology? She gets an MA in Middle Eastern history and is recruited by the CIA...
Yes, really. But having read this far, you didn't expect THAT to last either, now did you?

I had discovered that I actually enjoyed graduate school, and of course I have always loved history. So I decided to get a PhD in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century European history and become a college professor. I spent a year in Paris doing research for my doctoral dissertation. I lived in a proverbial garret on the Isle de la Cite, a seventh floor walkup, toilet three floors down. But the view of the Seine and the Louvre was great, and if I crawled out the window onto the roof I could also see the towers of Notre Dame.
Then, Ph.D in hand, I set off for Midwestern State University in Texas for a tenure-track job as an assistant professor. Except that, after a year and a summer, I started getting restless...

Looking for Life...

I didn't consciously leave academics, I simply got married. To an international businessman who'd grown up in Qatar and Lebanon, England and Switzerland. We moved. A lot.

My stepdaughter Diana lived with her mother in the north of England, so we spent considerable time there. One of my favorite trips was the six weeks we spent one Christmas and New Years at Lumley Castle just outside of Durham. Magic.

Having two children of my own slowed me down a bit, but not much. I just dragged them around the world with me. I developed strong arms.
At the time, my parents had a house in Medinacelli in Spain where they used to spend their summers, and the girls and I would meet them there.

Here's my mother (to the right) with one of my daughters.
Still considering myself an academic, I wrote a book on the ideology of gender equality in the French Revolution, which I imaginatively entitled Women, Equality, and the French Revolution. This is when I also started writing fiction seriously. I decided to try romances both because I'd loved Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart as a teenager, and because I'd read a book that said they were easy to get published (big round of laughter here). Unfortunately, I never

met a Harlequin I could finish (nothing against the genre, they just don't tap into my personal romantic fantasies) and the places I was living didn't sell books with half-naked men and women on the covers. It's hard to write for a market you don't read, which is one reason it took me FOREVER to get published.

I still miss the Middle East, the smell of garlic sizzling in olive oil, the clean calm of endless desert, the incredible archaeological sites. I do not miss the distant rattle of machine guns. We moved to Australia. That's right, Australia. AGAIN.
We settled (sort of) in Adelaide, which I still consider the most beautiful, livable city in the world.

One year for Mothers Day, my children gave me a book entitled The Women of Botany Bay, about the women convicts who were transported from England to Australia in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It captured my imagination. I kept thinking, how could any woman have survived such an experience? The eventual result was the novel called Night In Eden, published by Ballantine as a lead title in the Australian spring of 1997. My career as a published author had begun.
I loved Australia and miss it terribly. But my life was changing and it was time to move on…


Still crazy after all these years...

It’s a new millennium, and my girls and I are in Japan, on our way from Australia to the States. It's a trip we've made often, every year and a half or so, part of my futile effort to remind my children that they are half American. But this will be our last such trip. My kids and I are moving to the States. One of my daughters lived there her very first year, the other was born in Jordan and considers herself—and sounds like—an Australian. Talk about culture shock!

We move to New Orleans, where my mother settled after the death of my father and has a large extended family. I buy a house a few blocks from the lake, plant a garden, and start writing a book about a dead trophy wife. I develop a mystery series set in Regency England and plan another series, this one of contemporary thrillers. I spend a lot of time talking to a writing friend who used to be an Army intelligence officer. We talk about writing. Books. History. Foreign affairs. Life in the military. We get married.

Hurricane Katrina sent about a foot of water sluicing through the first floor of our house, took off our roof, and made us refugees for eleven months. But we've moved back home now.
And we're all living happily ever after.

Writing Honors and Awards

Who Buries The Dead
starred Booklist review
RT Top Pick

Why Kings Confess
starred Publishers Weekly review
RT Top Pick
Nominee for RT's Reviewers Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery of 2014

What Darkness Brings
starred Publishers Weekly review

When Maidens Mourn
RT Top Pick
Nominee for RT's Reviewers Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery of 2012

What Remains Of Heaven
Library Journal starred review
RT Top Pick
Winner of RT's Reviewers Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery of 2009

Where Serpents Sleep
Publishers Weekly starred Review
Winner of RT's Reviewers Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery of 2008
RITA finalist

Why Mermaids Sing
starred Library Journal Review
Winner of RT's Reviewers Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery of 2007

When Gods Die
starred Publishers Weekly Review
starred Kirkus Review
starred Library Journal Review

What Angels Fear
starred Library Journal Review

Beyond Sunrise
starred Publishers Weekly review
PW Editors' Pick for May 2003
Romantic Times Top Pick

Midnight Confessions
starred Publishers Weekly review
Romantic Times Top Pick
Romantic Times award, Best American Historical

Whispers of Heaven
Romantic Times Top Pick
Romantic Times award for Best British Isles Historical

The Bequest
RWA Rita Finalist, Best Long Historical

Night in Eden
One of Amazon.com's Top Ten Romances for 1997
One of Romantic Times' "200 All Time Favorite Romances"
Romantic Times award, Best First Book

Complete Book List

Sebastian St. Cyr Regency Mysteries
written as C.S. Harris
What Angels Fear 
New American Library, November 2005 hardcover, 978-0451216694
Signet, October 2006 paperback, 978-0451219718 
Allen & Unwin Australian release April 2008
When Gods Die 
Obsidian/New American Library, November 2006 hardcover, 978-0451219688
Signet, November 2007 paperback, 978-0451222558 
Allen & Unwin Australian release April 2008
Why Mermaids Sing 
Obsidian/New American Library, November 2007 hardcover, 978-0451222268
Signet, October 2008 paperback, 978-0-451-22533-7
Where Serpents Sleep
New American Library, November 2008 hardcover, 978-0451225122
Signet, November 2009 paperback, 978-0451226655
What Remains of Heaven
New American Library, November 2009 hardcover, 978-0451228024
NAL Trade, August 2010 trade paperback, 978-0451230560
Signet, August 2011 mass market paperback, 978-0451234377
Where Shadows Dance
New American Library, March 2011 hardcover, 978-0451232236
Signet, March 2012 mass market paperback, 978-0451233950
When Maidens Mourn
New American Library, March 2012 hardcover, 978-0451235770
Signet, March 2013 mass market paperback, 978-0451414229
What Darkness Brings
New American Library, March 2013 hardcover, 978-0451239273
Signet, March 2014 mass market paperback, 978-0451418180
Why Kings Confess
New American Library, March 2014 hardcover, 978-0451417558
Signet, March 2015 mass market paperback, 978-0451418111
Who Buries the Dead
New American Library, March 2015 hardcover, 978-0451417565
Signet, March 2016 mass market paperback, 978-0451418128
When Falcons Fall
New American Library, March 2016 hardcover, 978-0451471161
Berkley, March 2017 paperback, 978-0451471178
Where the Dead Lie
New American Library, April 2017 hardcover, 978-0451471161
Why Kill the Innocent
New American Library, April 2018 hardcover, 978-0399585623
Who Slays the Wicked 2019
Who Speaks for the Damned - 2020
What the Devil Knows - 2021
When Blood Lies - 2022
Who Cries For the Lost - 2023
What Cannot Be Said - 2024
Who Will Remember - 2025

Thrillers
written as C.S. Graham
The Archangel Project
Harper Collins, September 2008, 978-0061351204
The Solomon Effect
Harper Collins, September 2009, 978-0061689352
The Babylonian Codex
Harper Collins, November 2010, 978-0061689369

Historical Romances
written as Candice Proctor
Beyond Sunrise Ballantine, 2003 
ISBN 0-345-44718-2
Midnight Confessions Ballantine, 2002 
ISBN 345-44717-4
Whispers of Heaven Ballantine, 2001 
ISBN 0-8041-1931-4
The Last Knight Ballantine, 2000 
ISBN 0-8041-1931-7
September Moon Ballantine, 1999 
ISBN 0-449-00127-X
The Bequest Ballantine, 1998 
ISBN 0-8041-1827-2
Night in Eden Ballantine, 1997 
ISBN 0-8041-1758-6

Nonfiction
written as Candice Proctor
Women, Equality, and the French Revolution 
Greenwood Press, 1990 
ISBN 0-313-27245-X

3Andrew-theQM
Aug 25, 2024, 2:09 pm

Thanks for posting this Eadie 😊

4EadieB
Edited: Aug 25, 2024, 2:14 pm

>3 Andrew-theQM: You're welcome!

5JohnDBurke
Aug 25, 2024, 4:09 pm

Thanks Eadie

6EadieB
Aug 25, 2024, 4:12 pm

>5 JohnDBurke: You’re welcome!

7threadnsong
Aug 25, 2024, 6:10 pm

Wow! Quite a life. Thank you Eadie!

8EadieB
Edited: Aug 25, 2024, 6:35 pm

>7 threadnsong: You’re welcome!

9Olivermagnus
Aug 25, 2024, 9:02 pm

>2 EadieB: Thanks!

10EadieB
Aug 25, 2024, 9:10 pm

>9 Olivermagnus: You’re welcome!

11bluebird_
Aug 26, 2024, 3:32 pm

Thanks Eadie! What an interesting life!

12EadieB
Aug 26, 2024, 5:37 pm

>11 bluebird_: You're welcome!