Botany, Cats, and the Stories that Find Us Jocelyne Waddle 2026

I am delighted to share that Book Two in my Lady Aurora Mysteries is now available in paperback. A Mermaid’s Drowning is a romantic historical mystery, a Gilded Age puzzle drenched in tides and secrets.

We left Aurora well tucked in her dilapidated manor in the south of France in Death Comes at First Light, so what in the world is she doing in Newport, Rhode Island? Well, she led me there, and I am the kind of writer who follows where my main character wanders.

And since I am confessing truths, here is another: my novels behave a bit like cats in a garden. Feeling romantic? They brush against your ankles with liquid eyes half‑closed. If it is a mystery that beckons, they slip into the shadows, mischievous and daring you to keep up. Look for the historical threads, and they climb to a high branch, tail flicking, watching to see if you catch the details hidden in the leaves.

They come by that temperament honestly. My mind is easily distracted by metaphorical butterflies, pausing to sniff the faint trace of an idea that wandered through hours ago, and then, without warning, stretching out in a sunny patch of history to listen for the faint tap‑tap of some half‑buried detail beneath the surface. Fortunately for a novelist, this is exactly the sort of mental mischief that leads to discoveries on the page.

This novel sent me down an unexpected research path. I went to Newport twice, in the soft mists of late September and in February when the wind came in sharp off the water, and I walked those cliff paths trying to get a feel for a city that shaped so much of 1885 society.

I found myself back in Victorian botany texts, where, by chance, I stumbled into the strange world of lethal mushrooms. I had not planned on fungi becoming one of the most compelling threads in the book, but there they were, at once beautiful and a little unsettling.

Somewhere between the field notes and the footnotes, I began to notice how much women had given to the sciences, especially botany. Their work was tucked into margins, hidden behind initials, or quietly absorbed into the accomplishments of men.

And after following that dark trail as far as it would go, my curiosity darted off in new directions: Gilded Age cuisine, seaside social etiquette, the French architecture of summer “cottages,” and the subtle social tensions between old families and new fortunes. Each new turn led me farther down the garden path.

Writers talk about “finding” a story, but I believe stories also choose us. They grow out of our obsessions, out of the subjects we return to again and again without quite knowing why. For me, it is botany, the natural world, and the quiet ways science and emotion embrace and kiss.

A Mermaid’s Drowning continues to play with the question I love exploring: Is it a romance dressed as a mystery, or a mystery cloaked inside a romance? Aurora herself is still not sure, only that every clue draws her deeper into both.

And if you decide to join Aurora on this adventure, I hope the story curls around your ankles, slips into your shadow, or leaps to a high branch just out of reach, stirring the passions that have been prowling at the edge of your imagination.