Both The Pharm House and The Torch is Passed are set primarily in western New Jersey in the Morristown area, a beautiful area of rolling hills, farmland and horse country. Many wealthy industrialists and financiers established country homes in the Morristown area. In The Pharm House, the founding family of Marshall Pharmaceutical built a large country estate that is featured in the story.
Although many of those old late 19th/early 20th century manor homes have been razed, several remain standing. I stumbled across one a few months ago, the Cross Estate.
It’s a “Queen Anne Farm” built by John and Ella Bensel in 1905 and purchased by William and Julia Cross in 1929.
As a writer, sometimes you stumble across something that you decide just has to go into a story at some point.
On the Cross Estate there is an old five-story, stone water tower. Now, I ask you – have you ever seen a better place to set a murder scene?
I love mingling the new and the old and history into my stories.
Read The Pharm House and The Torch is Passed and see what historical nuggets you may find.
Visit my website at http://www.authorbillpowers.com
The re-release of The Pharm House will be out in September 2015, soon followed by the sequel, The Torch is Passed in November 2015.
Bill Powers