Jenny Wheeler is convinced there is no better time than now to be a woman, but if she was faced with making a second choice it would be 1860’s California – the setting for her historical mystery series Of Gold & Blood.
Nearly twenty years after the 1849 Gold Rush brought thousands upon thousands of (mainly) men into California on the greatest adventure of their lives, the energy, the thirst for excitement remained, but the rough frontier had become a maritime colony; “urban, cosmopolitan, and resembling nothing else in the Far West,” (Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850 – 1915. Oxford University Press.) A place where women had the chance to pursue their dreams with more freedom than (arguably) anywhere else in the civilized world.
Jenny loves the stories that came be spun from the region that was “the cutting edge of the American dream,” (Kevin Starr again) and she’s busily creating those stories with as much passion as those ’49ers chased after gold nuggets!
Before writing historical mysteries Jenny had an equally exhilarating career as a newspaper and magazine editor, recognized in a 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Magazine Publisher’s Association, and a generous profile in one of the magazines she edited, the New Zealand Listener, in March 2019. See it online at Noted! if you want further details!
When Jenny is not writing or chatting to other authors for her podcast at The Joys of Binge Reading, she splits her time between a home on Auckland’s upper harbor where she – if she could stop for ten minutes she could contemplate beautiful sunsets over the water – and a modest vintage caravan with breath taking sea views over the Coromandel coast.
She’s a fresh air fiend and an enthusiastic cook who is intent on recreating the dishes her characters in the Of Gold & Blood series share in their family feasts. One unrealized dream is to eat at San Francisco’s Cliff House restaurant, which features in the first chapter of her first book, Poisoned Legacy. Through her research for Of Gold & Blood she’s recently discovered that Californian Zinfandel is even more to her taste than Marlborough Pinot Gris. Who would have thought?
