Thanks for drawing Freya Stark to my attention! I'd heard the name, but wasn't previously aware of quite what an amazing life she'd had.

Whilst struggling with writer's block, Richard Castle read half of a battered copy of one of A. Pond's Melody Malone mysteries, and vaguely considered trying to do something clever and sci-fi with a time-travelling detective. He ran into Kate Beckett at the book launch the day afterwards, so Nikki Heat ended up being a rather different character in the end. And the rest is history...