Carla Vergot began writing the Lily Barlow series in 2016 when she took a sabbatical from teaching elementary special education in Virginia. The first book, The Mystery of Jane Dough, was never meant to be a stand-alone, but at that time Carla wasn’t sure she had the skills to continue the series, so she gave it a happy ending and that was that. The experience of completing a book was transformative, and with the encouragement of her husband, she resigned from teaching to continue writing the second and then the third book. She and her husband are planning to move to Charlottesville just ahead of retirement, which, coincidentally, is where Lily Barlow spent two years at the University of Virginia.
