When I first conceived of Patience Worth, I envisioned a collection of interconnected short stories—Victorian mysteries with a supernatural twist. Little did I know how completely this remarkable character would capture my imagination and demand room to breathe.
Patience came to me fully formed: born in February 1880 to a mathematics professor and a former governess, orphaned by her mother’s death at twelve, and essentially raised among books in her father’s extensive library. Her formative years were shaped by both penny dreadfuls and detective stories, particularly Wilkie Collins and the newly published Sherlock Holmes tales, alongside accounts of unexplained phenomena that others dismissed.
Her uncle Frederick Blackwood—a former military man turned private investigator with occult interests—stepped into her life after her mother’s death, becoming a mentor who helped shape her unique investigative approach that bridges the rational and supernatural.
What began as character notes quickly expanded. I found myself mapping out Patience’s modest attic room at Mrs. Finch’s boarding house, where she transformed every available surface into an archive of information. The walls above her desk displayed meticulously organized newspaper clippings of unsolved crimes, maps of London neighborhoods marked with colored pins indicating crime patterns, and detailed anatomical drawings from medical journals. Wooden crates lined the walls, containing her carefully categorized library of detective fiction, criminal psychology, and obscure volumes on folklore and mysticism—many “borrowed” long-term from the library’s reference section.
I couldn’t stop there. I detailed her physical appearance: slight with observant ice-blue eyes that sharply contrast with her complexion, rich chestnut hair that falls in loose waves to her shoulders when freed, though typically styled in a practical Gibson Girl updo with wayward tendrils that escape throughout the day.
The supporting characters emerged next—especially Thomas Clarke, the son of a police inspector whom Patience befriended at age ten after impressing him by solving the theft of his pocket watch through mud patterns on suspects’ boots. Their friendship provided Patience with a rare social anchor during difficult years and a practical window into law enforcement.
What was meant to be a brief character sketch for a series of short stories had become a richly detailed world. The first story—involving a mysterious note from her uncle about “a matter with teeth enough to draw blood” and something predatory watching from the fog outside her window—refused to remain confined to a few thousand words.
The second story expanded similarly, as Patience traveled to the remote village of Bolam to investigate a curse “that began with the return of Postlethwaite from the East,” facing a landscape where hoarfrost “refracts the morning light in a thousand splinters, giving the bog a diamond-crusted perversity.”
Each narrative demanded full exploration of Patience’s methodical mind, her frustration with society’s limitations on women, and her determination to apply her investigative talents to cases others fear to touch—those that cross boundaries between the rational and inexplicable.
What began as a collection of short mysteries had transformed into a series of novels, each allowing Patience Worth to fully demonstrate her extraordinary abilities as she navigates Victorian London’s fog-shrouded streets with one foot in the rational world and one in the shadows beyond.
The turn of the century represents to Patience not just a new era but new possibilities for women like herself who long to step beyond traditional boundaries. As her creator, I found myself equally unwilling to constrain her remarkable journey to anything less than the novel-length adventures she deserves.
The first should be available sometime in May 2025. Stay tuned….