Creating Finian Bracken

Irish priest and whiskey man Finian Bracken appears in every book in my Sharpe & Donovan series, starting with Saint’s Gate. He has a tragic past: he lost his wife and two young daughters in a sailing accident just as the distillery he started with his twin brother, Declan, was taking off. Finian ends up in a struggling fishing village on the southern Maine coast, befriending FBI agents, lobstermen, grandmothers, innkeepers and one particular English art thief.

Finian came together for me as a character one rainy afternoon when I was tucked in an Irish hideaway for a writing retre… Read More