Young British widow Emma Blackstone moved to 1920s Hollywood to care for her silent-movie star sister-in-law, Kitty. When a famous director calls for help, Emma and Kitty race over to the set of his new blockbuster movie. Emma makes a shocking discovery and must solve the puzzle while finishing her own screenplay. Critics have celebrated the “Silver Screen” series for Hambly’s masterful eye for detail plus the vibrant portrayal of scholarly Emma. 

Emma recently endured multiple traumas. How is her time “in this gaudy American Babylon” helping her heal?

After the end of World War One, Emma lost not only her husband, but her parents, her brother, the home she’d lived in and the studies and career around which she’d built her life. She understands that she can’t go back to the life she had in England—and in fact, being in a completely different world is in some ways easier than being surrounded by reminders of what she has lost. She’s not sure in which direction she wants to go, but she’s learning to move on, among people who are all in a world that none of them grew up in, and where the rules are all different. 

Did anything surprise you during your research process?

What surprised me most—and disconcerted me—was learning that in early films they used live ammunition, which was cheaper than using blanks. I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that you could get peanuts saturated with cocaine at the studio commissaries. I was both surprised and, in a weird way, entertained to learn that there were little communes of Mexican socialists who had fled the Revolution, hiding back in the Hollywood Hills. And I was fascinated to learn more about how the whole system of “extras” worked, including the cowboys who came west when the cattle ranges closed and got work in the movies.

What are your future plans for the Silver Screen series?

The next book will involve child stars in Hollywood in the 1920s. In future books, I hope to take the whole cast to Broadway—many studios were still filming in New York at that time—and to deal with vaudeville, with early Westerns, and with baseball. There’s so much out there in the early 1920s to write about.

Is there any historical parallel to Old Hollywood?

Possibly Regency England? Possibly Edo, Japan, in the Tokugawa period? That sense of oncoming technological change, of social change, of conspicuous consumption and display? Of people from all sorts of backgrounds thrown together with maybe more money than they’ve ever had in their lives. An intersection of social scheming and political machinations.How did your medieval history background influence your writing career?

I started out writing sword and sorcery fantasy in the 1980s. My early background in medieval history gave me a sense of what things have to be dealt with in any society: shelter, where do you get your food and water, what do you do for your living, what other kinds of people are in the world with you. Because it was the first historical period I'd studied in depth, it taught me about studying history.

How did your medieval history background influence your writing career?

I started out writing sword and sorcery fantasy in the 1980s. My early background in medieval history gave me a sense of what things have to be dealt with in any society: shelter, where do you get your food and water, what do you do for your living, what other kinds of people are in the world with you. Because it was the first historical period I'd studied in depth, it taught me about studying history.

You’ve written well over sixty novels in addition to short stories and Saturday morning cartoons, how would you describe your work habits?

I try to work every day, though for the past seventeen years I have also taught, so mostly I write 4-5 days a week, if I can. I make sure I take a mile walk in the morning, and frequently ideas come to me in walking. I also exercise 20-30 minutes in the late afternoon, after I’m done with work for the day. It helps me sleep. I meditate. I used to take off Sunday afternoons and paint, and I look forward to going back to that: all these things help me. 

I write from a fairly loose, short outline—just to make sure I know how to get from the opening line to the final curtain. I remember once when I was writing a Star Trek Old Series novel. There was a lag of about a year and a half between the time I wrote the outline, and the time I was actually writing the book. I got up to the point where the outline says, “And then these six people take over the Enterprise,” and I’m sitting there wondering, “How the hell did they manage to do that?”

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