Fifth book on the horizon!

I am so excited to announce the upcoming 5th novel, Alice Drake. This one was a lot of fun to write as my main character travels to South America. I drew on my own experience of having lived in Bolivia for a few years. I could hear the mosquitoes sing as I wrote of her jaunts through the jungle. My father and I once took a boat trip down a tributary of the Amazon river called Mamore. For eleven days we floated (and sometimes got stuck because of low water). We were actually riding on a barge tied to a boat. We hung our hammocks to racks of lumber and prayed that our mosquito nets would do their job. Of the millions and millions of mosquitoes we saw and heard on the river, only a few daredevils reached us. They penetrated a canvas hammock, sleeping bag, and clothing to draw our blood. There were horrible days, as in when my father came down with dengue fever from those horrid mosquitoes. There were incredible moments: looking into an inlet as the sun was just rising and seeing a flock of flamingos take flight, watching fresh water dolphins play in the river beside our boat, trying to visually measure caiman on the banks that were said to be more than 3 meters, and many, many more. So how does this fit with a mid-nineteenth century novel? It was an age of exploration, not for the purpose of claiming new territory, but for science and anthropology. To be sure, some non-science came out of this period. The opinions of a few men were chalked down as perfect science to explain away a perfect God. However, I believe there were those who just wanted to learn. To see nature beyond their own culture and go where few had gone. My character's parents are such people. They explore the world with awe and wonder and with no motives to prove anyone's scientific point of view. Not to mention the fact that I am quite sure mosquitoes were just as much a menace then and they are today. bzzzzzzzz