Fun Facts for “Stealing the Shepherdess”

Factoid One

The Young Shepherdess, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau is my favorite painting in the world! I’ve loved it ever since I was 10-years-old and saw it in the San Diego Museum of Art. I own a very nice canvas print of it. Every time I go to the museum, it is the both the first and last painting I visit.

Factoid Two

Kroyn is Yiddish for “crown.” Get it?

Factoid Three

To write this book, I actually spent time planning how I would manage to steal “The Young Shepherdess” from the San Diego Museum of Art. Even though I have been to that museum countless times, I paid for access to the 360˚ virtual tour app the SDMA provides so that I could walk through it at home, at any time of day. You have no idea how valuable that was. Such a big help!

Although I ended up having to use creative license to make up certain aspects of the robbery, it still took me several days to devise a plausible plan for robbing it.

Factoid Four

Most of the minor characters’ names I took from the cast of the 1968 Steve McQueen version of “The Thomas Crown Affair.”

Factoid Five

Represents the longest I’ve gone in a story between introducing the first main character and introducing her love interest.

Factoid Six

Emily’s surname, Bacon, is taken from the Baconian Method of scientific investigation, which is based on the belief that knowledge should be gained through systematic observation and experimentation, rather than relying on preconceived ideas.

Factoid Seven

The book was inspired by the 1999 version of “The Thomas Crown Affair.” My father is a big Pierce Brosnan fan (though he still believes Sean Connery was the best James Bond, which is no surprise considering he is named after Sean Connery).

I remember watching this version of the movie at home when I was about eleven-years-old with my father, when it came on cable. He told me he had seen it in the theaters when it was released. Apparently, it had come out during a week my mother had taken 4-year-old me to visit family up in San Francisco, and he had gone to see it by himself.

I’ve always enjoyed this movie. For some reason, I like good heist films. Another favorite of mine is “The Score,” with Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton. Maybe I was a thief in a previous life.

Also, Rene Russo is really hot in it!

Factoid Eight

Although the book was inspired by the 1999 version of “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the prologue was inspired by the opening scene of the 1968 version of the movie, with Steve McQueen.

Factoid Nine

No lie…I went through virtually ALL of the languages available in the Google Translate app, trying to find a foreign language alternative for “Crown” to use as Priscilla’s surname! Most of them I rejected because the word for “crown” in a lot of languages is actually too similar to what it is in English. Others I rejected because they were too dissimilar. Still others were rejected because the Translate app would only return a non-Arabic-based alphabetic translation, which would have just confused everyone.

I settled on “Kroyn” because I liked the way it looked on the page, and was kinda/sorta like “Crown,” but not too close to it.

Factoid Ten

This book is the first one I’ve written which relies heavily on male characters in terms of number and importance to the story. The closest to come to it is “Falling for Jillian Ashley,” from my Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance series. The character of Max in that book was integral to the story, but even he was more of a minor character in that novel, and he was the only male with significant page time.

Also, this book is the first I’ve written where I wrote segments of the story from the male point of view…which was an interesting exercise!

Bonus Factoid

I actually performed an experiment to ensure that the method Priscilla uses to hide the Shepherdess painting in order to get it out of the museum worked.

Priscilla and I are the same height: 5’ 10”.

My girlfriend is a painter, and we have canvases in our house. Most of them are already stretched, but she has some rolled canvas in our garage that she’s never going to use. So…I actually cut one to the dimensions of the Shepherdess painting (62” x 28.5”). I then rolled it up the longest way, creating a roll that was 28.5 inches long.

I didn’t have a large rubber band like Priscilla uses, but I attached the roll to my right leg using some jute string I have. I then pulled on a pair of wide-leg palazzo pants that I pretty much only wear when I’m in LA to see how well the pants hid the roll.

And it works!

Having the canvas strapped to my leg did make walking a little stiff, but you wouldn’t be able to tell I had a canvas under the pants.

I even practiced getting into my car with the canvas tied to my leg, so that I could accurately describe that in the book.