Goodreads asked Sharon L. Dean:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Sharon L. Dean Death of the Keynote Speaker grew from my years attending academic conferences and researching the nineteenth-century writer Constance Fenimore Woolson. Star Island, where I attended camp when I was in high school, seemed like the perfect setting for a mystery novel. As I began writing, I realized that I could integrate the rich history of The Isles of Shoals into an academic conference about a fictional nineteenth-century writer. The tone, not the content, of Woolson's letters became the headnotes that helped me to recreate the history and to integrate it into the present.

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