Carol O’Connell - Winter House

Nearby was a burst of static, and a radio began to play an old Count Basie tune. Mallory drummed her fingers to the same rhythm.

Charles did not.

If he heard the music, he never acknowledged it, not by the tap of his foot or a nod in time to the beat. No, of course not. He was stable now and smiling as he looked up at the stars – the silent stars. All was right on Charles Butler’s planet.

Mallory’s fingernails dug deep into her palms, making red crescent wounds in the flesh, as if pain could drown the low notes of a string bass thrumming close to the earth – the ripple of piano keys that flew over the trees and up to the sky.

Crazy people make sane people crazy.

She looked back at the open windows of Winter House, expecting to detect a faint glow from the dial of an old-fashioned radio.

Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.

At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.

Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.