After the release of A Lady Unrivaled in September, my Ladies of the Manor Series will be at an end. And my Society Thieves (if that’s the name we keep) Series will begin.

Now, given the title of the series, and the fact that the first book, as of this moment (again, titles and names change a lot, LOL) is The Name Thief, it ought to be no great surprise to anyone that one of my characters is a thief.

And given that one of my characters is a thief, I obviously had to mention a few of her past exploits. The heists she has pulled off.

There’s just one problem with stating it like that–the word heist didn’t exist until well after my 1914 setting (thank you, Stephanie, for pointing this out!)

Now, this is a great disappointment to me, because I like that word. I don’t know why, exactly, I like that word. But I do.

The word is American slang (another mark against it for my British characters), and is thought to be a dialectical variation of hoist–which would be used in stealing much like “lift.” It was a noun first, from 1930, and then a verb in 1943. Interestingly, heister (thief/shoplifter) is traced back to 1927. Older, but still not old enough for my purposes!

Which of course left me with the problem of figuring out how Rosemary would be referring to “the museum heist” when heist isn’t an option. Thankfully, job was in use as “a planned crime” sine 1722. So that’s now how she thinks of everything that had been called a heist. 😉

Hope everyone has a great week!