Ellen Byron, author of All Aboard for Murder, the latest book in the Golden Motel mystery series, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to share with us how she mined the past for ideas for her latest mystery.

Welcome, Ellen. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

When I was a teenager, my father insisted Ivisit California. He’d fallen in love with the state on business trips and wanted to share his enthusiasm, so he arranged a trip for me. The first stop would be a visit with his Uncle Howard and Aunt Molly, my great-uncle and aunt, who’d moved to Modesto, California from Brooklyn in the late 1940s when Howard got a job managing a tomato packing plant.

Molly took me on some wonderful jaunts during my stay. My favorite was a visit to Columbia State Historic Park in the southern end of Gold Rush Country. The park is a historic miner’s village comprised of at least thirty extant buildings dating back to the town’s founding in the 1850s. It’s both picturesque and entertaining, offering a combination of history, shops, and eateries served up by docents and employees dressed in period garb. You can even ride a stagecoach and pan for gold.

The visit to the restored village made an impression on me. But I didn’t realize how deep an impression until I was coming up with ideas for future mystery series and the visit to Columbia came back to me, inspiring my Golden Motel Mystery series, contemporary humorous mysteries set in California’s Gold Rush Country.

Since I hadn’t been to the historic park and its environs in decades, I felt a refresher was in order, so I mapped out a road trip for my husband and me. The historic site proved to be as wonderful as I remembered it, brimming with hands-on history. I took a humorous approach to recreating it in my series as the historic location of Goldsgone. Like the real site, those who work there dress as if it was the 1850s, down to the “robber” who “holds up” the stagecoach ride. But some of the residents of Goldsgone are much less likeable than the kind and helpful citizens of Columbia!

To research the park’s Halloween-themed events for All Aboard for Murder, we took another trip to the historic park in late October of 2024. We enjoyed “Boo on the Boulevard” – Columbia’s Halloween street festival – and I did a late-night paranormal tour where we were allowed into buildings that are generally closed to the public. I didn’t run into any ghosts, although our tour guides insisted they picked up evidence of apparitions.

By tapping into memories of my first trip to Columbia State Historic Park, I mined my own past for inspiration from the past of the miners who founded the village. You’ll find much of my experience channeled into my third Golden Motel Mystery, All Aboard for Murder.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Ellen, and good luck with All Aboard for Murder, the latest book in the Golden Motel mystery series. Readers can learn more about Ellen Byron by visiting the author’s website and their Facebook, Goodreads, BookBub and Instagram pages.

The book is available online at the following retailers:

 Amazon – Kensington – Bookshop.org – B&N – Hudson Books – Target – Walmart 

About Ellen Byron: Ellen is a bestselling author, Anthony nominee, and recipient of multiple Agatha and Lefty awards for her Cajun Country Mysteries, Vintage Cookbook Mysteries,  Catering Hall Mysteries (as Maria DiRico), and Golden Motel Mysteries. She is also an award-winning playwright and non-award-winning writer of TV hits like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly OddParents, but considers her most impressive achievement working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.

A native New Yorker, Ellen is a graduate of Tulane University and lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, daughter, and a rotating crew of rescue pups.