Candy's Blog

Bits and Pieces

2012-02-10T20:32:00.004-06:00

First, you'll be happy to know that I finally sent What Darkness Brings to my editor today. Steve and I went out to dinner to celebrate, and of course spent the entire time brainstorming ideas for book number nine. It's starting to come together, but I still have a long ways to go.

Next, some booksignings: I'll be signing When Maidens Mourn at the Garden District Bookstore in New Orleans on March 10, from 2 to 4. And I'll be flying to Houston on March 31st, for a signing at Murder by the Book, at 4:30.

And lastly, some people were asking about the brass table visible in the last post, so here's a better picture of it:

My parents bought the table in Morocco in the late fifties or early sixties when we were living in Spain. Here's a close up of the legs:

Like almost everything else in my office, it went under a foot of water in Katrina and looked awful. But some denatured alcohol followed by shellac brought it right back.

The Method to My Madness...Or Do I Mean the Madness to My Method?

2012-02-03T10:51:00.007-06:00

My last post provoked some questions about why I divide my manuscript into four parts. I haven't always organized my WIP (Work in Progress) this way. When I first started writing (back in the Dark Ages, with a computer that had to go through DOS and used two five-inch floppy disks), I saved each chapter on my computer in a separate file. It was a royal pain, because chapters are artificial, fluid things, and I was always having to shift scenes from one file to the next.

And then, about fifteen years ago, I started reading books on screenwriting (this has since become popular, but at the time no one was advocating it). Screenwriters trained in the process popularized by Syd Field divide their stories into three parts: Beginning (first quarter), Middle (second and third quarters) and End. The Middle is bisected by what Field called the Midpoint, where typically something BIG happens to change the direction of the story. Something significant should also happen at the end of Part One and of course at the end of Part Three, to provoke the Climax.

So, since my books are usually around 400 manuscript pages long, it made sense to start dividing them into four, 100-page chunks that roughly corresponded to this way of looking at a story. It's basically a tangible way for me to assess how my story is developing. It's also a lot easier to handle a book both physically and on the computer in 100-page chunks, since 400 pages can get pretty unwieldy.

Lately, younger screenwriters have adopted a system that divides stories into EIGHT segments, with something significant happening at the end of each segment. I've actually started using this system, too, when I lay out my plotting cards. But I still stick to my old four-part scheme when it comes to the actual writing.

An added benefit to approaching a book this way is that as I'm writing, I get a nice sense of accomplishment when I get to move on to the next "part". It's an artificial milepost, but when you're slogging through a process that can take up to a year, it helps.

And yes, that is a copy of When Maidens Mourn! It arrived on my doorstep yesterday, hot off the press.

Finished! (well, almost...)

2012-01-28T15:05:00.006-06:00

I've been a bad blogger lately, I know. My elder daughter got married at the end of December, several of us have been battling health issues, and I've been pushing hard to finish my next Sebastian book. It isn't due until 1 March, but it is finished. Almost.

Why almost? Well, I've done all the major revisions and the line edits, too, and printed off a clean copy. Now I'm just going to let it sit there for a few weeks, then come back and read it one last time with fresher eyes. I also haven't written the last few paragraphs of the final scene yet, either, because I want to wait until after I do that final read. So almost finished. But this breathing space is a rare luxury for me; normally I'm pushing SEND at 4:00 p.m. the day it's due.

I thought some of you might enjoy this glimpse into how I write. I divide the book into four parts, and keep each part in a separate file. As I print the book off, I also keep the parts separate, each with its own variously colored title page. I use the title pages to write notes to myself--the spelling of the names of people or places that I find myself forgetting or (especially at the beginning) even character descriptions. Why do I do it this way? Hmmm, maybe that would make a good blog post in itself!

In the meantime, what I am doing now? Why, plotting book number nine, of course! Can't tell you much, yet, except that it will be set in late January/early February 1813.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-04T16:14:00.005-06:00

I survived Christmas, the Wedding, a houseful of guests, and New Years, although I have to admit I haven't written a word in over a month now. But the happy couple is off on their honeymoon, I put my stepdaughter and partner on their flight Monday, saw my sister off today, and I find myself actually eager to get back to What Darkness Brings (still getting used to that title).

Hope you all had a good holiday season. (Yes, that is Bourbon Street on New Year's Eve, although the photo was taken by a friend, not me.) I think I'm going to skip the resolutions this year; at this point I suspect I lack both the energy and the initiative. How about you? Do you do New Year's Resolutions?

Holiday Time

2011-12-27T10:07:00.004-06:00

This has been a hectic Christmas, with lots of out-of-town guests, a widening pool of flu victims, a Christmas tree that smashed to the ground (breaking several dozen of my favorite ornaments and burying the village at its feet), and sundry other happenings. But we managed to get the tree back up and the village rebuilt, and we're muddling through and still having lots of fun.

These photos were taken with my iPhone, because it's much easier to just snap and email the images, so they're not of the best quality. The two above are of my buffet village, while below are the resurrected tree (bolted and wired to the ceiling) with its village, and a closeup of the village harbor...

Here's hoping your holidays are full of good cheer!

We Have a Title!

2011-12-12T23:56:00.002-06:00

So this afternoon I sent my editor a chatty email in which I mulled over some new title ideas, trying to get a feel for what she might like. I included the lovely Michael Drayton poem "Farewell to Love" suggested by HJ, and the possibility of finding something to draw out of it. I talked about maybe using the word "hope," or "blue," or any of the various other suggestions people came up with. As far as I was concerned, the discussion was only just beginning. But within minutes (literally), I had an answer: they loved one of the suggestions so much that they had already made it official!

So I now have a new title, for which I am completely indebted to my blog reader, Essex, who suggested it. Are you ready? The new title is...

What Darkness Brings.

I still like Who Bells the Cat, but I must say that this new title does fit the story wonderfully. I big thank you to everyone for their ideas!

So what do you think?

(The above photo is of Croxden Abbey and is from the blog The Staffordshire Daily Photo.)

Title Woes

2011-12-07T16:33:00.004-06:00

Oh, dear! My working title for Sebastian book number eight, Who Bells the Cat, has just been given a big thumbs down.

Needless to say, I am disappointed. I really, really liked that title. Not only that, but I now have three weeks--in the middle of the holiday season, preparations for a wedding, and all sorts of out-of-town guests arriving--to come up with a new title.

Suggestions are welcomed, encouraged, begged. What's the book about? Well, without giving too much away, the murder victim is a nasty old diamond merchant. Kat's husband--Russell Yates--is accused of the murder. The Hope diamond--which actually once formed part of the French Crown Jewels until its theft during the Revolution--figures prominently. The victim was a devote of magic and dabbled in the black arts.

Oh, and there's a black cat.

Mary "May" Wegmann Burgdorf, May 1912-December 2011

2011-12-06T15:07:00.003-06:00

This has been a sad week for my family, as the last of my mother's sisters died. On her ninetieth birthday back in 1992, my Aunt May told me she'd decided she was going to live to be 100 years old. She almost made it.

Aunt May had one of those personalities that specialists say contribute to longevity. Always laughing, happy-go-lucky and upbeat, she never had a mean or nasty word to say about anyone (Full confession: I don't resemble my aunt much). She loved her garden and worked out there every day she could. The picture above was taken just last year. She might have needed a walker to get around, but that didn't stop her.

I know she lived a long, rich life. Yet I can't help but be sad at her passing. She was a great lady, and she will be missed.

When I first moved here to New Orleans not that many years ago, my mother and all eight of her brothers and sisters were still alive. They used to laugh that when they started dying, they'd go like dominoes, and so they have. The only one left now is my Uncle Al, aged 91 1/2.

What an incredible family of strong, opinionated, generous, talented men and women they were.

A Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T23:07:00.004-06:00

I must confess I've never been particularly fond of Thanksgiving holiday. Neither my children nor I ever cared for most of the food typically associated with the occasion, and because my kids grew up overseas, we generally just ignored the day.

But this year, Thanksgiving has arrived at a particularly appropriate moment. Three weeks ago, someone I dearly, dearly love suffered a massive concussion. We've passed through some terrifying days, but while she's not completely out of the woods yet, she should be soon. I've started writing again, and hopefully I'll get back to posting more regularly, too.

And so, a heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Book Trailer for When Maidens Mourn

2011-11-02T11:28:00.004-05:00

I'm not convinced these things do any good sales-wise, but they're fun to make and they seem to cheer my publisher, so here's the new book video for When Maidens Mourn:

And here's the cover copy:

Tales of King Arthur and the Lady of Shalott provide inspiration for this latest gripping installment in the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series when, just four days wed, the aristocratic investigator and his fiercely independent bride, Hero Jarvis, find themselves caught up in a twisted intrigue of ancient legends and a deadly family curse.

Regency England, August 1812: Sebastian’s plans to escape the heat of London for a honeymoon are shattered when the murdered body of Hero’s good friend, Gabrielle Tennyson, is discovered drifting in a battered boat at the site of a long-vanished castle known as Camlet Moat. A beautiful young antiquarian, Miss Tennyson had recently provoked an uproar with her controversial identification of the island as the location of Camelot. Missing and presumed also dead are Gabrielle’s two young cousins, nine-year-old George and three-year-old Alfred.

Still struggling to define the nature of their new marriage, Sebastian and Hero find themselves occasionally working at cross-purposes as their investigation leads from London’s medieval Inns of Court to its seedy back alleys, and from grand country homes to rural enclaves where ancient Celtic beliefs still hold sway. As he probes deeper, Sebastian also discovers dark secrets at the heart of the Tennyson family, and an enigmatic young French lieutenant with a dangerous, mysterious secret of his own.

Racing to unmask a ruthless killer and unravel the puzzle of the missing children, Sebastian and Hero soon find both their lives and their growing love for each other at risk as their investigation leads to Hero’s father, who is also Sebastian’s long-time nemesis… and to a tall, dark stranger who may hold the key to Sebastian’s own parentage.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T18:46:00.004-05:00

The pumpkin was carved by my younger daughter when she was home this past weekend.

And here is my older daughter's rescue dog, Bella, dressed up for Halloween as a bumblebee.

Did you know you can have your vet test your dog's DNA to see its heritage? Turns out Bella is half boxer, half bulldog. And all sweetheart.

Polish Angels

2011-10-25T22:00:00.004-05:00

I've started giving some thought to how I plan to approach making a book video for When Maidens Mourn, and so I naturally began by looking at what I had done for What Remains of Heaven and Where Shadows Dance. But when I went to YouTube to watch them, I was surprised to find this:

It's a book video for the Polish edition of What Angels Fear. Kinda neat, huh? And I must say, I really like their cover.

Funny, I hadn't realized until tonight that I had never actually seen my Polish covers.

How Something Once Simple Became Complicated

2011-10-21T23:21:00.004-05:00

Once, long ago (but in this galaxy) anyone who wanted to submit a manuscript to a New York publisher made certain that said manuscript was printed in Courier. Courier was the industry standard because it was the font of typewriters. Editors knew that a manuscript typed or printed in Courier with one-inch margins was estimated at 250 words per page, or 100,000 words for a 400 page manuscript. Of course, there weren’t actually 250 words on each page, but that’s the way it was figured because publishers were aware of the fact that empty white space takes up paper, too. In other words, it’s irrelevant if all your lines are this short:

“Holy cow!”

Or this long:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, etc.

Because what matters isn’t the actual number of words but how many lines it takes for you to tell your story. In other words, how many pages will be in the final published book?

Fast forward to the age of computers. While they resisted at first, editors eventually started accepting manuscripts typed in Times New Roman (which gives you a lot more words per page), Century School Book, Palatino, whatever. And then people stepped into the abyss and started using computer word counts. Now everyone is confused.

I’ve discussed this issue with editors, agents, and other writers, and while they all say, Yes, they use computer generated word counts, they also generally frown and say, Yes, they are misleading, and No, they really don’t quite know how to judge a book's length anymore, either. A book that comes in at 95,000 words as counted by a word processor can be as much as 125,000 words if figured using the old method. That’s a big difference! Authors who write lots of short sentences (“Holy cow!”) can come up with a much shorter computer-generated word count than verbose, long-winded authors given to writing long paragraphs of text, even though their books will end up the same actual number of pages.

So what do writers do? Most simply switched to Times New Roman and just go with the computer count. But there are still lots of hold outs. A huge, megaselling author I know still stubbornly uses Courier. Another NYT selling friend of mine uses Palatino and is if anything more confused than I am. Personally, I use Century School Book because I find it readable and it gives me a nice, old-fashioned 250 words per page. But I’ll admit that when my manuscript is running long, I’ll switch to Times New Roman because I know it will look shorter.

Yes, at some level we are all still in school, fiddling with margins and fonts, and deluding ourselves into thinking the teacher won’t notice.

(Ironically, the above image is taken from a 26 April 2011 article on Haggard and Halloo entitled "No more typewriters," and is about the shuttering of the world's last typewriter manufacturer, in India.)

And the Murderer Is… Um, Let Me Think About That Again

2011-10-12T15:28:00.004-05:00

Full confession: I’m within some 75 pages of the end of Who Bells the Cat (working title only; I don't know yet if I can keep it), and I’m considering changing the identity of the murderer.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I did it in the very first mystery I wrote, Midnight Confessions. I’ve even switched a couple of times in the Sebastian series, although never anywhere near this late in the writing of the story.

So why do I suddenly decide, No, wait! It’s not him. I think it's actually her? Sometimes I make the switch because I come up with a great new twist. Sometimes I realize that a sequence of events that seemed perfectly logical in abstract doesn’t hold together as well as expected once I get down to the nitty-gritty details. Once I even turned a murderer into a mere innocent suspect largely because I’d come to like him too much to turn him into a rat at the end. (No, I’m not going to tell who, so don’t ask!) Funny, I can kill off characters I like, but I have real trouble assassinating their characters.

I’m the kind of writer who likes to plot her books out very, very carefully in advance, so this kind of radical change is always both disconcerting and exciting. But my outlines have never been straightjackets. I recently moved a scene up over a hundred pages, from halfway through the book to about the 100 page mark; suddenly all the problems I’d been having with the manuscript magically disappeared. I’ve dropped everything from scenes and entire chapters to characters and motives. I dearly love adding new twists and subtle nuances. And just often enough to keep me on my toes, Sebastian will tell me, “No, you’ve got it wrong. He didn’t do it; he did.”

The photo above is from a great blog, Cemetery Travel: Adventures in Graveyards Around the World.

When Maidens Mourn, Chapter One...

2011-10-09T13:26:00.003-05:00

Camlet Moat, Trent Place, England, Sunday, 2 August 1812

Tessa Sawyer hummed a nervous tune beneath her breath as she pushed through the tangled brush and bracken edging the black waters of the ancient moat. She was very young—just sixteen at her next birthday. And though she tried to tell herself she was brave, she knew she wasn’t. She could feel her heart pounding in her narrow chest, and her hands tingled as if she’d been sitting on them. When she’d left the village, the night sky above had been clear and bright with stars. But here, deep in the wood, all was darkness and shadow. From the murky, stagnant water beside her rose an eerie mist, thick and clammy.
It should have wafted cool against her cheek. Instead, she felt as if the heavy dampness were stealing her breath, suffocating her with an unnatural heat and a sick dread of the forbidden. She paused to swipe a shaky hand across her sweaty face and heard a rustling in the distance, the soft plop of something hitting the water.

Choking back a whimper, she spun about, ready to run. But this was Lammas, a time sacred to the ancient goddess. They said that at midnight on this night, if a maiden dipped a cloth into the holy well that lay on the northern edge of the isle of Camlet Moat and then tied her offering to a branch of the rag tree that overhung the well, her prayer would be answered. Not only that, but maybe, just maybe, the White Lady herself would appear, to bless the maid and offer her the wisdom and guidance that a motherless girl like Tessa yearned for with all her being.

No one knew exactly who the White Lady was. Father Clark insisted that if the lady existed at all—which he doubted—she could only be the Virgin Mary. But local legend said the White Lady was one of the grail maidens of old, a chaste virgin who’d guarded the sacred well since before the time of Arthur and Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table. And then there were those who whispered that the lady was actually Guinevere, ever young, ever beautiful, ever glorious.

Forcing herself to go on, Tessa clenched her fist around the strip of white cloth she was bringing as an offering. She could see the prow of the small dinghy kept at the moat by Sir Stanley Winthrop, on whose land she trespassed. Its timbers old and cracked, its aged paint worn and faded, it rocked lightly at the water’s edge as if touched by an unseen current.

It was not empty.

Tessa drew up short. A lady lay crumpled against the stern, her hair a dark cascade of curls around a pale, motionless face. She was young yet and slim, her gown an elegant flowing confection of gossamer muslin sashed with peach satin. She had her head tipped back, her neck arched; her eyes were open but sightless, her skin waxen.

And from a jagged rent high across her pale breast flowed a rivulet of darkness where her life’s blood had long since drained away.

At last! The Cover for When Maidens Mourn

2011-09-30T21:51:00.004-05:00

I've finally been given permission to post the cover of When Maidens Mourn, due out 6 March 2012. So here it is:

A huge improvement, in my opinion, over the last two covers. But I think Angels and Mermaids are still my favorites.

What do you think?

The Accidental Writer's Retreat

2011-09-27T21:23:00.005-05:00

Nine months after Katrina, my family bought a lakeside cottage a couple hours' drive to the northwest of New Orleans. One of the most nerve-jangling aspects of evacuating for a hurricane is figuring out where to evacuate to. Horror stories of people driving 12-15 hours without finding accommodation are not uncommon, and when you have an elderly relative and multiple animals, that can quickly turn into a disaster. Hence our acquisition of what we affectionally called "The Bolthole."

But it wasn't long before we realized that our cottage was more than just a hurricane refuge. It was also a wonderful place to spend the weekend, far from all the sounds and nervous energy a city generates. And then I realized that I could go up to the lake by myself for a week at a time and write like crazy. It was that discovery that enabled me to turn in Why Mermaids Sing (the book I wrote while we were rebuilding our house ourselves) on time. I have written a hefty chunk of every book since then sitting on my porch swing and staring at the water. It's not uncommon for me to get 40-85 or more pages written in a week. At home, I consider it a good week if I make it to 25.

Why do I get so much more accomplished up there? Part of it is no Internet (my daughters have lobbied long and hard to get Internet installed up there, but so far I've resisted). Part of it is no piles of laundry, no dishes (except for my own), no plants to water, no lawn to mow (yes, I mow my own lawn--with an old-fashioned reel mower). At home, thanks to all the above-named distractions and more, I probably average six solid hours' writing time a day if I'm lucky, and I try to devote weekends to my family. At the lake, I write for 18 hours a day. So if I stay up there seven days, that's basically equal to a month a home.

When I look at it that way, maybe I'm not as productive up there as I like to think I am (I did say I spend a lot of time staring at that lake). And then, because I write by hand, I still need to come home and type everything up and do a preliminary edit.

But I've come to appreciate the opportunity the lake house offers me to simply live and breathe my story twenty-four hours a day, with only the occasional phone call from my husband and daughters checking in with me. I also cherish the peace that comes from watching the ducks cut a V-shaped wave across the surface of the water. I planted a hummingbird and butterfly garden across the front of the house, which brings a parade of little visitors to feed just feet away from where I'm sitting. I enjoy the hawks soaring over the treetops with wings outstretched; the squirrels chasing each other around the trunks of the pines; the chipmunk that lives under the back porch and loves to torment Huckleberry (the one cat I always take with me).

This past week, I had a new visitor. I was on the swing writing away when I heard a strange scraping rattle; looking up, I discovered that a big tortoise had crawled up on the porch with me. This guy is at least 16" long. (Unfortunately, I only had my phone with me, so the picture isn't the best, especially since the late afternoon sun was sending harsh shadows across the concrete). I didn't even know we had them up there.

And I can now say that Book Number 8 is coming along nicely, and I'm hoping that after one more trip to the lake in October, the rough draft will be finished.

When Books Become CDs

2011-09-16T20:59:00.005-05:00

My author's copies of the audio version of Where Shadows Dance finally arrived, and it was quite a strange experience sitting down and listening to my own book. Interestingly enough, I enjoyed the reader's rendition of the dialogue of the minor characters. But neither Gibson, Sebastian, nor Hero sounded the way I "hear" them, so it was disconcerting. I made it through most of the first CD, then dozed off. Always a danger at this point, since I can practically recite the book in my sleep.

But Steve, being a trooper (and having only read it once), listened to the entire thing. He said he enjoyed it, and that he thought the banter between Sebastian and Hero came off even better when it was spoken. Of course, Steve listens to two or three books a week, while I've probably listened to only half a dozen, period. And I've never listened to a book by an author I normally read, so I can only wonder at how different the experience is.

Thoughts, anyone?

The Word Collector

2011-09-05T10:13:00.006-05:00

Rob Petersen

When I was younger, I loved to collect words. I'd relish each new discovery, store it away in my memory, and then trot it out for use whenever the opportunity offered. But somewhere along the way, I pretty much quit doing that. It wasn't a conscious decision; it wasn't even something I was aware had happened. I guess I got lazy. Or maybe just distracted.

Then, a couple of months ago, I stumbled across a word (for the curious, it was canard) and thought, That's a word I know, but I never use it. Then, a few hours later, I ran across another such word. And a few hours after that, a third such word presented itself to me. It was obviously a sign. But because my memory is not what it used to be, I knew if I didn't write the words down, they would fade again from my consciousness. So I got out a Post-It note, wrote down the three words, and stuck it up on my monitor with a mental note to stop being so lazy and make it point to move these words from my passive into my active vocabulary.

And then a strange thing happened. I started noticing lots of such words, or words I didn't know at all but wish I did. Soon, my Post-It was covered. I switched to a note card. Now I have two cards covered front and back; I'm thinking about buying a little empty book. But you know what? I'm still not using them. So I thought I'd share some of them, which is sorta like using them, only not quite. So here we go, in no particular order:

Ailurophile
A cat lover.

Desuetude
Disuse.

Gluckschmerz
From the people who brought us Schadenfreude, this one means unhappiness at the pleasure of others.

UPDATE A word of warning: a German reader tells me he's never heard of Gluckschmerz, which evidently should be spelled Glücksschmerz if it did exist. But I still think it's a great word and ought to exist even if it doesn't!

If you have favorite little-known or little-used words, feel free to send them in. I'm still collecting!

Yes, Please?

2011-09-01T10:46:00.008-05:00

This is a satellite image of a trough of low pressure, currently located over the Gulf of Mexico, which we're told has a strong possibility of developing into a tropical cyclone that will probably hit Louisiana. They're saying it has the potential to dump a lot of rain on us, but since it's already so close it probably won't have time to strengthen too much before it comes ashore.

Don't get me wrong; I don't want any flooding or high winds or damage of any kind. But there's this nasty marsh fire that's been burning right on the outskirts of New Orleans all week. Think of how a swamp smells. Then think about how that would smell if it were burning. Yeah, pretty sickening. Literally. It's sending the old, the young, those with respiratory problems, to the emergency rooms.

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

So a nice hard rain would be great about now. Not too hard. No flooding. No trees crashing into houses. Just enough water falling from the sky to stop a fire that is now threatening the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. Please?

UPDATE: Okay, make that No Thank You! Now they're predicting 10-20 inches of rain and warning residents to clean out their gutters, park their cars on the neutral ground, avoid driving through flooded streets, etc, etc. Good grief. Hey, can't we just get a nice, solid rain? Like, you know, 1 or 2 inches? Must it always be drought or flood?

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2011-08-28T12:47:00.000-05:00

When I first started thinking about my annual Katrina anniversary post, I searched for just the right photos to illustrate it. But I won't be using them. After spending the weekend watching what Hurricane Irene did to the east coast, I just can't look at any more flooded streets, any more shattered houses, any more white swirling clouds. So instead, for anyone and everyone savaged by this latest storm, this song's for you:
,

While hurricane season technically lasts from 1 June to 1 December, everyone in New Orleans knows that the truly dangerous period extends for three weeks on either side of 10 September. It's during that nasty six week window that the Gulf is at its hottest and conditions are somehow ripe for funneling killer storms our way. Betsy, Camille, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike...they all fell within that six week period

This is the time of year when I just sort of hunker down, shut my eyes, grit my teeth, and wait for it all to be over.

Monday will be the sixth anniversary of Katrina. Next year will be seven; soon it will have been a decade, then a quarter century. With every year, Katrina recedes farther and farther into the past. I recently reread some of the posts I wrote in the months after the storm, and I was frankly astonished at the number of the things I'd forgotten from those days. But one thing I remember quite clearly about the weeks after Katrina is the way people kept playing Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends. Our houses were either open to the sky or protected by flimsy blue tarps; water was still standing everywhere; the levees were battered, weakened, or gone. We knew if another hurricane hit the city, at that point, all truly would be over. So we watched the sky, and hoped, and held our breath, and waited for that six-week danger period to be over...for September to end.

The English Patient

2011-08-23T12:17:00.005-05:00

Although I enjoyed the movie The English Patient when I saw it in a theatre in Adelaide some years ago, I did not read the book. It was described as being “dense” and “inaccessible,” and since I generally have a low tolerance for self-consciously “literary” books, I was never tempted to have anything to do with it.

Well, a few weeks ago my daughter was cleaning out her bookshelves and one of the books she set aside was a trade paperback edition of The English Patient. I picked it up and said, “Are you getting rid of this?” She said, Yes; she hadn’t enjoyed it and could never really “get into it.” My plan was simply to flip through it and then toss it in the pile for the library book sale. To my surprise, not only did I end up reading the entire book (remarkable in itself, since these days I give up on probably nine out of ten books I begin), but I actually enjoyed it. And now I’m left pondering all those adjectives that we hear so frequently applied to it.

Yes, it is nonlinear, but I did not find it difficult to follow. The characters were rich, the language wonderful, and the insights into the human condition thought provoking. (The heroine’s response to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, “If we can rationalize this, we can rationalize anything,” echoes within me still.) But dense? Inaccessible? I don’t think so. And the ending, while only slightly different from the film version, did not leave me with that wretched sense of sadness that characterized the movie.

The book does, however, require a slightly altered frame of mind. I suspect enjoyment hinges on the reader appreciating that the book is not an attempt to recreate a realistic slice of life but necessitates an approach vaguely similar to the way one would read a fable or a fairy tale. Perhaps it’s that shift in thought pattern that so many readers find themselves unable to make—or uninterested in making. Or perhaps one must simply be in a certain mood, and the book and I happened to meet at the right place and the right time. Perhaps if I’d tried it ten years or even ten months ago I’d have hated it, too. I did say I have a low tolerance for self-consciously literary books, didn’t I?

Have you ever had that experience? Pick up a book and hate it, and then try it again at a different time and enjoy it?

Whiskies in a Box and Co.

2011-08-10T23:11:00.013-05:00

Whiskies is one of the kittens born to the mama cat my daughter found abandoned in a state park up in Arkansas two years ago on 4 August (a birthday they share with our President). She managed to find a home for the mama cat and one of the kittens, but we still have three kittens left: Whiskies, Roscoe, and Peanut. Whiskies had trouble being born and is slightly retarded as a result, which is a polite way of saying he's the dumbest cat I've ever met. He doesn't know how to meow and can only make squeaking noises like a pig. He also doesn't seem to know when he's full, so he eats constantly. But he's a lovable little (big?) sweetheart who really, really doesn't fit in a shoebox.

Here is Whiskies's sister, Peanut (with her adopted brother, Oden). Peanut was the runt of the litter and has a thyroid problem. As a result, she's about 1/4 the size of Whiskies. People who don't know better think she's about twelve weeks old.

And last but not least, here's Roscoe:

Unfortunately, I could only find an old photo of Roscoe from last Halloween, although he hasn't changed much. I always thought he'd grow up to be a big tomcat, but he's still fairly small.

A few weeks ago, my daughter went to Mississippi and brought this home...

She'd just had puppies, but the puppies didn't make it and she almost didn't either. Her name is now Bella, and she's looking much better...

I told my daughter she's not allowed to leave the state ever again.

Peaceful Coexistence

2011-07-31T21:28:00.003-05:00

This cat and chicken live around the corner from my mom's old house. The owner is a little old man; sometimes the three of them will sit out on the porch together, but usually it's just the cat and the chicken. We've been trying to get a picture of them for ages, and Steve finally managed it this past weekend.

Talk about unlikely friends....

Language Usage in Historicals

2011-07-27T18:29:00.002-05:00

I’m in the midst of one of my least favorite writing tasks—going over the copyedited manuscript for When Maidens Mourn (Sebastian Number Seven). This manuscript has very, very few copyeditor’s balloons in it (to the point I’m worrying), but almost every one I’m finding is a query on word usage. As in, “The term ‘jawline’ dates to 1924; please consider rewording.”

As far as I’m concerned, the solution to that one is fairly simple: either leave it as is to conform to modern spelling, or separate it into two words to be true to the period but have the self-proclaimed Grammar Nazis come down on you (well, on me). Roofline (1857) falls into the same category. Hard-pressed (1825) can be changed to sorely pressed. But other words are much harder to deal with. Did you know that booed didn’t enter the dictionary until 1884? So what did they say? Heckled? But that conjures a different image, doesn’t it? Wooden-faced arrived in 1859. Confetti in 1815. Tic in 1834. So, what word did they use before then? Would modern readers even know what it meant, if I could find it?

Complicating all this is the fact that the Powers That Be sometimes get these word origin dates wrong. I remember I changed “tenement” in What Angels Fear because I was told it didn’t come into usage until the mid-century. Since then, I’ve seen it used in a passage from the first decade of the century. (So there.) Likewise, I’m told that Cyprian didn’t come into usage until 1819, yet Beau Brummell gave his famous Cyprians’ Ball in the Argyl Rooms in 1813. Doppelganger entered English language dictionaries in 1851, yet was used by Continental writers as early as 1796 (and is being used by Sebastian St. Cyr in 1812 because, I’m sorry, nothing else will work and we can all assume that Sebastian, clever man that he is, has heard of it). The term toad eater is said to date to 1742; does that mean I can use ‘toadying,’ even though it wasn’t in dictionaries until 1859?

Even trickier are words like chain gang, supposedly not used until 1834. Except that French prisoners of war were set to work in chain gangs. So what did they call them? I suspect chain gangs. I changed "guttersnipe" (1869) to tatterdemalion, which is true to the period but will doubtless send my readers scurrying for their own dictionaries.

The truth is, words frequently enter the English language because they fill a vacant niche. What did we use before we borrowed schadenfreude from the Germans? And is there another word that quite conveys the image of starburst (1959)?

So I change queried words when I can find a way around them. But if I can’t come up with something that says what I want to say without sounding awkward or imprecise, I’ll leave a word—like self-congratulatory (1833)-- even though the dictionaries say it wasn’t yet in use. Because I’m writing a story, not a dictionary.

Lake Therapy and Some Covers

2011-07-22T17:15:00.005-05:00

I spent this past week up at our lake house, writing feverishly. The first part of this book (Sebastian Number Eight) has been giving me fits (I typically have trouble with the first part of my books). But by giving myself the time and space to do nothing but focus on my story, I think I’ve finally worked past that.

This next week is going to be devoted getting my younger daughter ready to move into her apartment up in Baton Rouge, where she’ll be starting graduate school next month. Then I’m hoping to head back to the lake for another intensive session in August. I can’t believe I'm already talking about August. Where has this summer gone?

Oddly enough, while much of the rest of the country has been sweltering, New Orleans has been relatively cool the last few weeks. We’ve had lots of rain, which has dropped our average temperatures ten degrees down into the high 80s. Normally at this time of year, I shut all my windows and doors and just hunker down to endure until fall. But I actually spent part of today sitting out on my porch swing. Wonderful.

Recorded Books has now posted the cover of their audio version of Where Shadows Dance, so I’m allowed to show you the entire image:

If you right click on the image it will take you to a larger version. I like it. Very evocative and moody.

And for those of you awaiting the mass market paperback edition of What Remains of Heaven, a box of these just landed on my doorstep:

I tried to get them to change the cover for the mass market edition, but I should have known that was never going to happen...

The Full Monty Moment

2011-07-12T11:06:00.006-05:00

This past weekend my daughter and I watched Calendar Girls, a 2003 British film about a group of middle-aged Yorkshire village women who decide to raise money for charity by producing an “artistic” nude calendar. I found it pleasantly entertaining and funny until about the two-thirds mark, when the movie lost its way. It began as a heartwarming story about a group of likable women who come to grips with aging and death by learning to embrace life, only to turn into some sort of Faustian tale about the temptations and repercussions of fame. It was no longer funny, or pleasant, but squirmishly uncomfortable, and I found myself wandering out to do laundry, get some tea, whatever, until the final, low key but gently-pleasing denouement.

But when you’re a writer, even a less-than-perfect book or movie can have something to teach you. In hitting Le Google to see if the move was, indeed, based on a true story (it was), I found this gem by critic Derek Elley. Elley praises the film for its gentle and likeable (“if sometimes dramatically wobbly”) spirit, and notes almost in passing the film’s lack of a “big Full Monty-like finale to send audiences buzzing into the streets.”

And I thought, Wow. The Full Monty Moment. Is there any better phrase to describe a pitch-perfect ending that provides both a satisfying finale and an uplifting rush?

The Full Monty is a great story about a group of unemployed steelworkers who rediscover their self-confidence and self-respect by putting on a male strip show. Its masterful screenplay almost never wobbles, and certainly never forgets its theme. And when those guys finally go out on stage, when we watch them successfully pull off (no pun intended) what once looked like a joke and see them smiling and full of confidence, the moment is magic. One can easily imagine theatre audiences spilling into the streets, as Elley notes, all abuzz with the experience (buzz is good; it sells movie tickets and books).

Of course, not every tale contains such a pleasantly uplifting moment within it. Some stories are dark and depressing and require a different sort of moment entirely. And some tales are simply inherently wobbly and gentle, and leave you with a warm glow rather than a rush. In thinking back on Calendar Girls, I’m not sure one could really fault the screenwriter for either the movie's unevenness or its lack of a “Full Monty Moment.” If there was another way to tell that story, I don’t see it. The truth is, some story ideas are basically flawed; even in the hands of a master, they will never produce a truly grand product. Does that mean those stories should never be told? Not necessarily. Despite its shortcomings, Calendar Girls was enjoyable and heartwarming (and profitable—that’s important). If the filmmakers had canned their project when they realized it didn’t a have a “Full Monty Moment,” they would have been making a mistake.

But I do love that phrase and the concept it encapsulates. It’s something for a writer to keep in mind when considering a story idea: “Does this story contain within it the potential for a grand Full Monty Moment?”

Fun and Games with Amazon’s Author Central

2011-07-06T16:19:00.004-05:00

Amazon.com has a feature on their book pages they call More About the Author. (“Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more. Visit Amazon’s So-and-So Page.”) It’s something authors need to set up themselves, with the result that every time I visit Amazon and am reminded of this feature’s existence, I get a nasty sinking feeling. It’s the same harassed niggling I experience whenever I realize just how big the weeds in my poor neglected garden have grown, or when I quickly close the door on a closet while thinking, Someday I have got to clean that thing out. I guess you could call it that I-know-I-need-to-do-this-but-oh-jeez-I-don’t-have-time-and-I-know-it’s-going-to-be-a-hassle feeling.

Well, today I decided, That’s it; I need to set up an Amazon Author page so that readers can find all the books I’ve written under my various names. Whereupon I was quickly reminded of why I avoid things like this.

I began by metaphorically rolling up my sleeves and going to the page for Where Shadows Dance on Amazon to click the “Are you this author?” link. Down the rabbit hole we go.

First, I typed in my email address. But because that email addy is linked to my Amazon account under my own name, Candice Proctor, the system automatically pulled up all my Candice Proctor historical romances and asked, “Are these your books?” Oh, this is easy, I thought. When I replied, “Yes,” they told me they would need to verify my email address with my old romance publisher. But once that was done, they assured me, I could add any of my other books that hadn’t come up.

Sounds simple, right? So, while waiting for Random House to respond to Amazon’s inquiry, I merrily set about uploading a short bio and photo to my new author page. Random House obviously responded quite quickly, because I soon got a little ding from my inbox telling me all systems were go.

Except they weren’t.

As I quickly discovered, Amazon only allows you to list books on your author page that are written under that name; you need to create separate author pages for each pseudonym. Only, when I tried to do that, I hit a snag. I wrote Amazon an email. “Since the system does not allow different pseudonym pages to be merged, how do I create multiple author pages using one email address? In other words, I would like to create pages for C.S. Harris and C.S. Graham, but when I try to sign up using my email address, I am immediately taken to the Candice Proctor page.”

I received a quick, friendly, cheerful response:

Hello,
I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused. Yes, as you mentioned, we aren't able to merge Author Pages for those who write under more than one name. However, Author Central allows you to manage up to three pen names within a single account. You can manage both of the Author Pages from your current Author Central account. Here's how:

1. Log in to Author Central (https://authorcentral.amazon.com).
2. Click the "Books" tab located on the top of the page.
3. Click on the "Add more books" link that appears under "Are we missing a book?"
4. Search for books written by [PEN NAME] by title, author, or ISBN.
5. Click "This is my book."

Once we verify you're an author of the book(s) selected, a second/third Author Page will be available for you to maintain.

In order to switch between pen names in Author Central, select the drop down symbol to the right of your name in the upper right hand corner where it says “Hello [CURRENT PENNAME CLAIMED].” When you select the name you wish to access, you will be brought to the corresponding Author Central dashboard.

We appreciate your feedback and may consider cross-referencing Author Pages with one another in the future. If you have any more questions or concerns, please contact us by clicking on the following link. I hope this helps! We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Well, isn’t that cute? I get to maintain not one but three author pages (if I had four names, I'd be out of luck), each of them only showing the books I’ve written under that particular name. Since the object of this entire exercise was to help readers find all my books, I’m not a happy camper. I decide to write a second email telling Amazon I understood the setup, but maybe they ought to give some thought to changing their system to allow all books to be listed on each page, as well as simply cross-referencing the pages.

The response I receive is considerably less cheerful and friendly than the first, although they’ve obviously learned the old Be Sure To Use “I” Statements When Being Assertive To Avoid Making the Listener Feel Defensive Rule, because they write, “I understand you're upset and I regret that we haven't been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction.” They then repeat the instructions for setting up multiple pages [Duh! Got it the first time, people!] and end by saying, “We won't be able to provide further insight or assistance for your request.” In other words, Go away now and quit bothering us!

Do you think they'd be nicer if I were Dean Koontz or Ruth Rendell?

Anyway, I now have the Candice Proctor author site up. I’ve dealt with their no pseudonymous books rule by mentioning the Sebastian books in my bio, adding a link to the csharris.com website, and putting up the video for Where Shadows Dance. I’m still waiting for Penguin and Harper Collins to verify that I am me, after which I get to do this two more times.

In the meantime, I’ve written less than one and a half pages today.

The Sebastian Series Comes to Audio

2011-07-01T23:18:00.005-05:00

I've never had any of my books released in an audio version, but that's about to change: coming in August, Recorded Books will be bringing out Where Shadows Dance in both cassettes and CDs. To say I am excited is an understatement.

I have to admit I'd always hoped that if an audio version were made of the series, the reader would be male. But I don't see how I can complain, given that Davina Porter has a stunning list of audio books to her name. She's perhaps best known as the reader for Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon series. But she's also read for Anne Perry, Ruth Rendell, and Alexander McCall Smith.

Personally, I don't usually listen to audio books. I tried several while I was driving back and forth to work on the house after Katrina, and I listened to quite a few when I went through several months of twice-daily, half-hour physical therapy for a messed up shoulder. But that's about it. My husband Steve, on the other hand, listens to them constantly and churns through several a week. He has several subscriptions and will sometimes buy a book he enjoys listening to (the most recent being Bill Bryson's At Home). He also frequently tries listening to new (to him) authors and, if he likes them, he'll then buy hard copies of their backlist to read. So I'm hoping coming out in audio will help the series reach a new audience.

Recorded books has also bought the audio rights to When Maidens Mourn, which should be out next year. Hopefully if there's enough interest in the series, they'll go back and pick up the earlier books.

The link to the book on their site is here, although there's not much to look at yet.

Weekend Whirlwind

2011-06-28T10:59:00.003-05:00

Friday morning I flew to Phoenix, Arizona, for Poisoned Pen's June 2011 Conference (that's the pool of the Arizona Biltmore, site of the conference, above). This was my first visit to Poisoned Pen, a fact for which I was gently chided by Barbara Peters, the famous bookstore's impressive owner. And I can honestly say she's right, I should have made the trek out there long ago, because I had a fantastic time. Both my Friday afternoon panel (with Laurie R King, Peter Lovesey, Lauren Willig, Patricia Wynn, and Dana Stavenow) and Saturday morning's presentation (with Patricia Wynn) were loads of fun; I met lots of enthusiastic readers, aspiring writers, and published authors, and was really, really sorry I had to leave early.

I took my camera, but of course I never used it, except to snap this shot of British author Peter Lovesey singing a hilarious ditty about mystery books to the tune of an old Irish drinking song (yes, I recognized it, Peter). Unfortunately, this is one case where a picture is definitely not worth a thousand words, because the words and delivery were priceless.

Then, Saturday night, I flew back to New Orleans in time to participate in a mystery and thriller panel with S. J. Watson, Erica Spindler, and Cammie McGovern on Sunday morning at the American Library Association Conference. I took along Steve, who is better about remembering to take photos than I am. (Note to self: do NOT drink a giant latte in an attempt to stay awake for an evening flight if you want to go to sleep that night and avoid looking like you've been on a three-week bender the next day.)

I signed books both after the panel and then again Sunday afternoon at the Penguin booth. All told, I signed something like 300 books, which was quite amazing. Yes, Penguin was giving the books away, but the recipients could simply have taken their free books and walked off without waiting in line to meet me, so the entire experience was quite humbling. Thanks to everyone who came; it truly was a pleasure to meet you!

The 2011 American Library Association Meeting in New Orleans

2011-06-20T16:15:00.003-05:00

Billed as the "world's largest and most dynamic library conference and exhibition," the annual American Library Association Conference will be coming to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans from June 23-28. I'll be on a panel entitled "Mystery and Horror at Your Library" on Sunday morning, from 10:30-12:30, in Room 268 in the Convention Center. Although it's billed as a "panel," the instructions say "each author has been asked to speak for 12 minutes," so I'm not sure if this is going to be a typical panel with questions asked of all or some sort of serial individual presentation. And I don't know who else is on the panel because I can't seem to find it on their schedule.

At any rate, we're told that a "booksigning will follow after the panel, and one of the Penguin staffers will be there to facilitate the signing."

Then, at 1:00pm- 2:00pm, there will be another signing at the Penguin booth, #1422.

The ALA had their convention in New Orleans the summer of 2006, less than a year after Katrina. It was the first organization brave enough to return to New Orleans after the hurricane, which means the ALA holds a special place in all our hearts. When I signed that year, I was still living as a refugee and the city was such a mess we were wondering if it would ever be made right again. How much things have changed in just five years.

So any of you coming for the conference, please stop by the panel room or the Penguin booth and say "Hi."

And it's nasty hot down here, so come prepared for some heat.

Candy Joins the E-Reader Revolution

2011-06-18T10:58:00.004-05:00

So I finally did it: I broke down and bought an e-reader. Well, not a dedicated e-reader, but an iPad.

After years of watching one after the other of my family and friends buy e-readers, what finally pushed me over the edge? This thing:

It’s the published report of a Parliamentary committee that interviewed dozens of London magistrates, public office clerks, constables, pub owners, and clergymen in 1816, and it contains a wonderful wealth of information (more about that later). But after sitting at my desk and staring at my computer screen for something like 16 hours, my eyes hurt. My back hurt. My shoulder hurt (took me a while to figure that one out, until I realized it was from constantly making the same motion to turn the page). I download a lot of these old nineteenth-century texts from Google Books, and they are collectively a pain to read. Now I can sit out on my porch swing curled up with my iPad and read away.

My thoughts so far?

• The ready availability of free classics that I’ve always meant to read—or read long ago and would like to read again—is deadly. I was up until 2am last night playing with my new toy. And no, I don’t mean playing games on my new toy; I mean downloading free old books.
• You can’t comfortably flip through an ebook. I like to flip through poetry books, looking for old favorites or new ones that appeal or catch my eye. The first book I downloaded was Keats: Poems Published in 1820. I quickly realized that my style of reading poetry was not very compatible with the electronic format.
• Most people who buy iPads are not interested in reading books, or at least, they’re not interested in old books. I dealt with two sales reps in the Apple store, and neither had even heard of Google Books.
• The National Library of Australia is also a great source for old books.

Now excuse me, while I go play…

...and the livin' is easy

2011-06-08T16:08:00.004-05:00

I've been taking it easy the last couple of weeks, enjoying having my daughter home for the summer, painting and refinishing furniture, and gathering boxes of necessities for the apartment she'll be moving into this fall.

But I did manage to submit the proposal for Book Number Eight in the Sebastian series, tentatively entitled Who Bells the Cat. My editor is most enthusiastic, so all I need to do now is, um, write it.

And if you're curious about the rose pictured above, it's my favorite of my four dozen or so old roses, the gloriously fragrant and deliciously named souvenir de la malmaison.

Pomp and Circumstance...and Lots of Beaches

2011-05-26T10:03:00.005-05:00

If you're wondering where I've been, my younger daughter graduated (brief pause for an indulgence in maternal pride here: Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude) from her college down in Florida last weekend and we decided to turn the expedition to celebrate her achievement (and help haul home four years' accumulation of stuff) into a brief vacation. At one point we were afraid only Steve would be able to go while I headed for high ground with the family's overpopulation of cats (I cannot drive Steve's hulking white SUV, nicknamed "Moby Dick"). But in the end the Mississippi River's threat to New Orleans receded and I was able to make the trip, too .

I know most people think graduations are boring, but I actually love them--or at least, I love the beginning of the ceremony when the graduates march in accompanied by a seemingly endless loop of Pomp and Circumstance. The auditorium or stadium (or giant tent overlooking the bay, in this case) swells with such a heartwarming surge of joy and pride that I usually find myself fighting back tears. Students graduating with honors are justly proud of their academic achievement, while those not graduating with honors are equally proud (and often enormously relieved) simply to have managed to graduate at all. It's a long, hard slog through college, four years of fun and pain, growing and decision making, sacrifice and transformation, exploration and discovery. And it all seems to come together in that one uplifting, shared moment of giddy rejoicing. I am soooo glad I didn't have to miss it.

Woven in amongst the various ceremonies were also multiple trips with my daughter to her favorite beaches and piers. She grew up on the beach in Australia, so the last four years have been bliss for her. And somewhere, strolling along some shell-strewn beach, I stumbled across the solution to a problem that's been holding up my proposal for book #8 in the Sebastian series. So I guess maybe I can call it a working vacation?

No?

Breathing Easier

2011-05-16T10:17:00.003-05:00

The Corps has opened the Morganza Spillway, which has actually dropped the river level at New Orleans by about half a foot and is taking potentially lethal pressure off the metropolitan area's levees. We are all breathing a lot easier today even as our hearts go out to those with homes along the Atchafalaya who are now facing increased flooding.

We went and looked at the river yesterday. Yes, it's still scarily high, especially at Audubon Park, above. But you could see that it had been higher, and the levees in Jefferson Parish (below) still had reassuring stretches of concrete and green grass showing above the water line. In the picture below, the river is normally on the left side of the batture trees. That's the bike path you see running along the top of the levee; the River Road is far below, to the right.

I snapped these pictures with my phone, which made them easy to email. But I have other shots I hope to get uploaded, including of a truly impressive mass of debris piled up against the pier in Kenner's old town.

Getting Scary

2011-05-13T23:11:00.006-05:00

That's the second story of the cathedral you're looking at here; the street level is far, far below.

Of course, the Corps keeps assuring us that New Orleans will be safe...probably. That's after they put up this map to scare the bejesus out of us:

My house is in one of those areas colored for flooding of depths from 25 to 40 feet. Seriously? And everyone down here has soooo much faith in the Army Corps of Engineers. As for what's happening to the west of us, in Cajun country...it's just heartbreaking.

I need drugs.

(Photo by Matthew Hinton. He describes how he took the shot here, since, believe it or not, some people are trying to dismiss it as Photoshopped.)

Blogger Issues

2011-05-13T12:02:00.001-05:00

Blogspot has been having problems, locking us out for nearly 24 hours and deleting recent post. But they're finally open again and say the missing posts should be back up soon. Stay tuned...

From Russia with Sebastian

2011-05-11T12:40:00.000-05:00

In response to my recent post about covers, a reader in Uzbekistan very kindly sent me files of my Russian covers. I'm supposed to get copies of all my foreign editions, but in practice I frequently don't, so this was my first glimpse of the images chosen by my Russian publishers. They are certainly very different. Here's What Angels Fear:

When Gods Die:

And Why Mermaids Sing.

Obviously, Russian art departments are as oblivious to historically correct dress as their American counterparts. I also find it interesting that they chose to put a woman on all three books, with no real sense of danger--despite the fact that the series is about a man and rather violent. Of the three, I think my favorite is the Angels cover. There is something quite intriguing about the way the woman is looking over her shoulder and faintly smiling--although I think I would be surprised if I picked up the book and read the cover copy (that is, if I could actually read the Russian cover copy, which of course I couldn't!)

Contrast this cover art with what the Australians did:

(Actually, these are early versions--I can't find the final version, in which Big Ben was Photoshopped out.)

Obviously, a very different approach and look.

The truth is, traditions in cover art vary enormously from one country to the next. Which is why smart authors don't complain about the covers of their foreign editions--because we don't know enough to make any kind of a valid judgement.

My thanks to Irin Belokon for the covers!

The Pig Coming Down the Python

2011-05-05T07:51:00.009-05:00

As anyone watching the news knows, the Mississippi River is flooding. Badly. Those of us sitting down here at the mouth of Old Man River can only watch as the crest of high water rolls relentlessly towards us.

The flood is expected to hit the river at New Orleans on May 21, cresting on May 22 at 17.5 feet. (Update: They are now projecting a crest of 19.5 on May 23rd.) The levees along the river are built to take a 20-foot flood. Am I uncomfortable? Uh, yes; although thanks to protective measures taken after past river rampages, I know we are in a much more secure position than many upriver or even in other parts of Louisiana. I saw yesterday that the state has started evacuating prisoners from Angola, which is at St. Francisville, just above Baton Rouge. At the same time, Baton Rouge is borrowing thousands of sandbags from St. Charles Parish, although St. Charles made them promise to give them back before hurricane season. (Cue sick laugh here.)

The ironic thing about all this? We’re in a drought. All the storms sweeping through the South have gone north of New Orleans, so that we’ve had endless high winds but no rain since early April. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I look at the devastation caused by those storms in the other states around us and my heart aches for those effected.

The last truly devastating flooding of the Mississippi at New Orleans took place way back in 1927. Since then, the huge Bonnet Carré Spillway has been constructed. The Bonnet Carré (gloriously mispronounced by locals as the "Bonnie Carrie") is basically a 1 ½ mile mechanically controlled weir that runs along the Mississippi a few miles north of my house. When the river starts getting high, the Corps opens the spillway gates and diverts some of the floodwaters into a 7,600 acre floodway that runs for six miles to Lake Pontchartrain. It’s been opened nine times so far, the first time being in 1937, the last in 2008. In 2008, they only opened 160 of the spillway’s bays, although all 350 have been opened in the past.

Bonnet Carré open in 97; photo from Wikipedia

Word is the spillway may be opened as early as Monday. Already, water has started seeping through the bays and roads in the area are closed.

In the meantime, all we can do is wait, and watch.

Update:The state is likely to also open the Morganza Spillway north of Baton Rouge. This spillway is connected to the Old River Control Complex that keeps the Mississippi from shifting its course to the Atchafalaya (opening it will divert more water from the Big Muddy to the Atchafalya). The Morganza has only been opened once, in 1973, when it caused extensive flooding to communities down river. This move will be worse than blowing up the levees near Cairo because there are homes and businesses in the Morganza Floodway. (In fact, whether the Morganza opens or not, those communities will flood simply because increased water will flow down the Atchafalya whether anyone wants it to or not. But if the spillway is opened, they're going to be looking at 10 feet rather than 2 or 3.) At this point you're probably wondering, Why is she writing about all of this? I guess the answer is that I find the forces of nature--especially water--fascinating.There is something mesmerizing about watching this destructive wall of water roll towards us, and realizing how powerless we really are to do anything about it. We are looking at a tragedy unfolding. It's only a matter of, How bad will it be?

Current photos by Brett Duke of The Times-Picayune.

On Covers

2011-05-02T16:03:00.013-05:00

A reader commented recently about how much she hates the cover of What Remains of Heaven (Not as much as I do, believe me, Elaine!). So while we're waiting for my editor to give permission for me to post the new cover of When Maidens Mourn, I thought it might be fun to review the covers of the other books in the Sebastian series.

My publisher nicely asked for my input before the cover conference for What Angels Fear, and I suggested a funerary statue of an angel, perhaps with a church in the background. I was totally wowed by what they produced. It's classy, evocative, and moody, and I particularly like the scattering of red rose petals, which adds punch and gives the effect of drops of blood. I also think putting the title in a plaque on the iron fence was a clever touch, although it is a bit hard to read from a distance. But the book didn't sell as well as NAL hoped, so the powers that be decided to change the cover look.

When they asked for my input this time, I suggested using the image of the necklace that plays such a large part in the book. Needless to say, they ignored me. The first attempt at a cover for When Gods Die was actually quite attractive and showed a caped man on a murky street looking at a carriage. But the carriage was a hansom cab. I said, "You can't do that! Hansom cabs didn't appear until 1834. My readers will think I'm an idiot." So they came up with Gods Cover #2, which was beyond hideous. Basically it looked like the aged Ghost of Christmases Past leaning on a cane in front of the Brighton Pavilion, with a very spindly font used for the writing. I shrieked and made a bunch of suggestions for improvements, very few of which they listened to, with the exception of changing the font and making the male figure at least look more Regency-ish, although they also made both the figure and the Pavilion recede far into the distance (and the figure seems to float, ghost-like). The entire effect was simply weird, and ugly, and frankly I could have cried. About the only thing I like about the final Gods cover is the blue, and that burned effect around the edges. Otherwise it makes me want to throw things every time I see it.

I love the Mermaids cover. I even have a huge blown up copy hanging on the wall over my desk (along with the Angels cover). I think it's stunning, and mysterious, and wonderfully captures the mood of the book. I said, "Great! Can we do the next one like this? You know, get a look going to brand the series?"

Well...

Yup, that's a hansom cab. Did I complain? Nope. The image is striking, and it evokes a spirit of action and danger, which is good. The orange coloring is also unusual. This is my third favorite cover.

And then came...

Eeek! Except, as bad as this is, it was even worse at first. Oh, how I wish I could show you the original version. In Heaven #1, the woman (who is this woman, anyway?) was dressed in a white petticoat and a corset that laced up the back and showed her flesh beneath. And they had this weird lighting effect, so that it looked like she was being chased by sparkling lights. I am not making this up. Basically, it looked like a paranormal gothic erotic young adult novel, or, in the memorable words of my agent, "like Sarah Jessica Parker being chased up the stairs by a ghost." I wanted them to cut Sarah off at the waist; they compromised and cut off a bit of her head. They also added sleeves, got rid of the laced open back, and made it look like she was wearing a dress by coloring it peachy-pink. (I wanted something dramatic like red, but peach was better than her underwear.) They refused to put shoes on her feet, but they did get rid of the twinkling ghostlights, and they added the skull down in the corner, although not as noticeably as I'd have liked. I still hate it, hate it, hate it. It looks silly, and is so totally wrong for this book. It's just embarrassing. I said, Please, can we have something grown up for the next book?

No.

I like the right half of this cover, with the man coming out of the mist and the looming statues. I HATE the woman. And this is the second version. In Shadows #1, she's wearing a dress with nipped in waist and a hoop skirt, as in 1860. And this was after I sent the art department literally dozens of pictures of Regency dresses. They sort of fixed the silhouette, but they still didn't get it right (the waist on the back of the jacket should be much higher), and she still reminds me of a sorority sister dressed up as Scarlett O'Hara for a rush party; she's too modern and photorealistic. And interestingly enough, if you compare this image to the one that they used on the cover, you'll see that somewhere between this version (which is what I have on my website) and the production of the book, some clever person nipped in the waist again. Sigh. Why did they do that?

So, let me hear what you think! Which is your favorite cover? What sort of images do you think would be best for the series? And maybe, someday, I'll get permission to post the new cover. I just heard back from my editor, and she said it could be months before all the permissions have been cleared. Why? Who knows.

When Is a Book ‘Done’?

2011-04-26T17:26:00.003-05:00

I’ve spent the past month on the changes my editor suggested for When Maidens Mourn.

Her suggestions were not massive or even extensive, but I'm not one of those authors who can dash off revisions in a day or two. In fact, I probably spend more time revising my books than certain prolific authors spend writing their books. It takes a lot of thought, some quiet back-burner mulling time, lots of agonizing and thrashing and snarling, and slowly, bit-by-bit, I feel my way to a revised manuscript.

Am I ever satisfied? No. I sent the revised manuscript for When Maidens Mourn to my editor last Thursday night, because I was determined to get it over and done with before the holiday. Steve and I spent a blissful three days up at the lake, during which I spent some time thinking about my next books and second-guessing some of the changes I’d made on Maidens. As a result, when I got home Sunday night I sat down to write my editor a quick email: “I know I sent you the revisions for Maidens before I went away for the weekend, but while I was gone I did some thinking and want to go back and tweak a few things. So delete the chapters I sent on Thursday, and hopefully I'll get a new, improved version to you by the end of the week.”

My editor—a lovely woman, by the way—just said, basically, Fine. I’m eagerly awaiting the new version. (My agent, admittedly, kinda freaked.) So I’ve spent the last couple of days doing that “tweaking.” Am I satisfied now? No. But then, I’m never satisfied. The truth is, every time I read a manuscript, I see things that can be changed. Sometimes it’s little things—a word, a sentence, a scene that could have been better. But eventually a writer just needs to say, Enough already! and move on.

So that’s where I am, today. I just fired off the new revised revision to my editor. I still have a niggling feeling I could have done better, but I'm so sick of the thing that I know "better" is impossible at this point. Because to answer my question, a book is never "done." Alfred, Lord Tennyson first published The Lady of Shalott in 1833; he then substantially rewrote it and republished it in 1842. Obviously that niggling "it could have been better" is an occupational hazard.

On a related note, I can tell you we now have a cover and cover copy, so it’s starting to feel like a “real” book even though the release date is almost ten months away. I’m just waiting for the nod from my editor, and I’ll be able to post the cover. Personally, I think it’s quite stunning. But more on that, later.

Katrina Klunkers

2011-04-20T12:06:00.004-05:00

It's a common problem faced by those of us who rebuilt in the months after Katrina: the demand for appliances at the time was so high that companies shifted into high gear their manufacture of everything from washing machines and stoves to hot water heaters and refrigerators; production went way up and quality control went out the window. As a result, most of the appliances purchased after Katrina are pieces of #@$%.

In the last five years, my fancy, bells-and-whistles post-Katrina LG washing machine has broken down six times (can you say, "bitter"?). The dryer once. The refrigerator twice. The stove twice (it still doesn't work right). The dishwasher once (it still doesn't work right). The downstairs central air conditioning broke down just a couple of weeks ago. This week, it's the hot water heater's turn.

Of course it went out on a Saturday. (Why do these things always happen on a weekend?) No one would even come look at it until Monday. Then they needed to order the parts. I said, "Why don't you just replace it?" They said, "That'll run you about $900." I said, "Okay; order the parts." At least it's still under warranty, so the parts are free even if the labor isn't.

The repair men are here now. That's right, I've been without a hot water heater for five days. Yes, it's been relatively warm here, but even in the summer an icy shower right before you go to bed does not help a writer's chronic insomnia.

I've decided hot water heaters are mankind's greatest invention. Now pardon me why I go pay my plumber $175 for fifteen minutes' work. I'm in the wrong business.

The Power of Words

2011-04-14T11:37:00.004-05:00

Chicks Gone Wild

2011-04-13T11:08:00.005-05:00

New Orleans has a fowl problem. It seems that when Katrina wrecked the city, some lucky surviving chickens literally flew the coop. Now their wild descendants are populating the city's streets and parks.

It's reached the point that our local paper even ran a feature on it, which you can read here. I snapped the pictures above a couple of weeks ago, and Danielle took the ones below last summer.

They say animal control officers have been attempting to round up to the chickens, which they then deliver to a local farmer known as "the Chicken Man". Unfortunately, chickens are notoriously hard to catch, and of course the roosters have nasty sharp spurs. Frankly, I wouldn't want to tangle with this guy.

Caffeine update: I'm still sticking to my resolution and the blistering headache is finally gone, but man would I like a latte right now...

Masochism, Caffeine, and Sympathy for Addicts Everywhere

2011-04-06T10:31:00.008-05:00

I'm giving up caffeine for health reasons, and today is my second day. The blinding headache hit around noon yesterday, so I fired up Le Google and went to type in "caffeine withdrawal headache treatment." I got as far as the word "withdrawal" before Le Google in its infinite wisdom completed the phrase for me. Obviously a common problem. Can't you just see millions of agonizing, coffee-deprived people around the world hunching over their computers and frantically typing in caffeine withdrawal headache treatment?

The funny thing is, I never even drank coffee until recently; I simply didn't like the taste of it. Thanks to all those years in England and Australia, I was however seriously addicted to black tea until I broke that habit about five years ago. Then I discovered lattes. Mmm. But I was still careful not to drink it often until my mother went in the hospital last year and I was staying awake 36 and 48 hours at a stretch. After that I got in the habit of having a (giant) latte every Saturday and Sunday morning as a treat (although if the opportunity offered at any other time, I usually grabbed it. My favorite coffee shop, pictured above, is just down the street.) As my caffein addiction mounted, I slid back into the habit of drinking English breakfast tea all day long. Now I'm going cold turkey again. Aren't you glad you're no where near me?

I know it will all pass. Perhaps someday I will even be able to have a latte without suffering the same disastrous results as an alcoholic who falls off the wagon. But oh, the pain. Oh, the longing. What I wouldn't do for just one sniff...

Pardon me while I go make a cup of herbal tea.

What You Don't Want to See When Taking Your Daughter to the Airport

2011-04-04T13:58:00.005-05:00

My daughter and a friend have been spending the past week with us, home from school for spring break. They were supposed to fly out Sunday evening, but their flight back to Florida was canceled thanks to the hole that recently ripped open in one of Southwest's 373s. Then, this morning, New Orleans's airport had some excitement of its own.

Fortunately, my daughter was able to get out with only a brief (second) delay. But this sort of thing is seriously not good for my nerves. Funny, I'm not a nervous flyer myself, but when it comes to my dears, that's another story altogether...

AP Photo/Eric Long

The Poisoned Pen Conference

2011-04-01T12:05:00.006-05:00

I will be speaking at The Poisoned Pen's Writers Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, this June 24th and 25th. On Friday afternoon, I'll be on a "History and Mystery Tea" from 3-5 p.m. with Laurie R. King, Peter Lovesay, Lauren Willg, Jaqueline Winspear, and Patricia Wynn. Then I'll be doing another session Saturday morning. Other authors participating include Alafair Burke, Jan Burke, Michael Koryta, Sophia Littlefield, and many more. (You can click on the above flyer to see it larger.)

The conference will be held at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa. Accomodation is only $89/night (plus taxes); the registration fee for the conference is $50. As most of you know, The Poisoned Pen is one of the country's top independent mystery bookstores. They do a wonderful job of supporting up and coming authors, sell signed first editions on line, and have even started their own press to keep favorite series in print when their authors are dropped by New York publishers.

Registration is limited to 125, so if you're interested, you'd better hurry!

We Have Babies!

2011-03-26T10:39:00.007-05:00

Our mourning dove babies have hatched. Sorry about the poor quality of the picture--you can just see one of the babies off to the right--but I took it holding my camera over my head with the parents fussing at me from the gate, and I didn't want to disturb them any more than I was already doing.

Fortunately, this pair nested earlier than last year's, so I've managed to keep one of the plants in the basket alive to offer the babies some protection. I find it interesting that you only ever see one dove around the nest when they're sitting on the eggs, but as soon as they hatch both parents spring into action. This basket is exactly six feet from my office French door, so I have a front row seat to their activity.

Update: I managed to get a better picture today, of the mama and one of her babies. The previous snap was taken on Friday. Look how much the baby has grown in just one day.

Strange Goings-on in the Publishing Industry

2011-03-25T11:48:00.004-05:00

The publishing world is all aflutter this week, thanks to two contradictory and coincidentally timed occurrences.

On the one hand, NYT bestselling thriller writer Barry Eisler announced that he was walking away from a half-million dollar, two-book deal (that’s $250,000 a book) with St. Martin’s Press in order to self-publish in e-book format only. (I'd like to note without being catty that this contract represented a considerable step down from his previous contract with Random House.) Seems SMP wouldn’t concede to Eisler’s demands for a higher percentage of e-book royalties; Eisler got mad and walked.

Eisler has a long (emphasis on long) post about why he did this on his blog here . He makes a lot of good points about the publishing industry—my personal favorite being that the industry is outsourcing much of its work, such as weeding through the slush pile (a task now performed by agents since most publishers refuse to accept unagented submissions) and promotion (we all know how much authors are expected to do their own self-promotion these days) while retaining the same share of profits. (Can I add copy writing to the list of out-sourced tasks?) And I do think it’s disgusting that authors get less than 15% in real terms of e-book sales. Since the cover price of e-books is lower than that of hardcovers, the rise in e-books is seriously hurting authors’ take home pay.

However, I’m not one of those (many, many) authors jumping up and down, applauding Eisler’s move and saying, “Oh, this is such a good model; let’s all dump our publishers and self-publish e-books for $2.99.” According to Eisler, authors who stand up for print publishing—which he derogatorily labels “legacy publishing”—are suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Personally, I think Eisler left several factors out of his calculation. First of all, he foresees the sales of his books continuing at the same pace ad infinitum. In my experience, this just doesn’t happen. There is a huge burst of sales when a book is first released, then the sales trickle off month by month. By my reckoning, he would need to sell something like 400 e-books a day for 300 days before breaking even. In order to achieve these sales, he will be lowering the price of his e-books, which of course he can do since he’ll be getting 70% of the price rather than only 14%. It’s been proven that e-books with lower prices get higher sales. However, if everyone lowers their price, that benefit will evaporate. And then "legacy published" authors will be left with 15% of that much lower price, which will work out to considerably less than 50 cents a book. Thanks a lot, Barry.

Secondly, not everyone has an e-reader. Not everyone wants an e-reader. Barry Eisler fans without readers will either have to go through a cumbersome POD rigmarole, or look for new authors. Which do you think is more likely?

Thirdly, while publishers don’t do as much promotion as we’d like them to, lead titles (like Eisler's) do get promoted. For one thing, publishers pay coop to put those books in the front of stores and in the newsagents in airports. I’ve heard that airport bookstores are getting unhappy because businessmen will walk into their stores, browse the newly released hardcovers, then walk away and download the e-book. Much easier than flying with a big hardcover. But if an author's new release isn't in Hudson’s News, those businessmen are going to pick up the newest release by some author who has stuck with the “legacy publishers.”

There are other factors at play here: I can’t see Hollywood or foreign publishers combing the ranks of self-published writers looking for their next blockbuster. Eisler, of course, already has foreign publishers, who will not doubt continue to print his books. Interesting he’s still willing to work with overseas “legacy publishers.” Of course, he needs them to pay for the translators. (You can read Eisler’s rant about the cover his French publisher gave one of his books here. Now, I’ve complained about covers in the past, but this is just, well, wow.)

Ironically, the day after Eisler’s bombshell hit the news, Amanda Hocking, who recently created shockwaves by making over a million dollars on her self-published e-book young adult vampire series, signed a reported two million dollar contract (four books, roughly $500,000 each), with—double irony—St. Martin’s Press. Amanda, the guru of self-publishing in e-book format, evidently believes the “legacy publishers” still have something to offer her. You can read Amanda’s take on the controversy here.

Update: Historical romance author Connie Brockway is also "going rogue" and is leaving Avon for the world of self-publishing. You can read her take on the subject here.

Murder by the Book

2011-03-23T23:15:00.007-05:00

Last Saturday I did a signing at Murder by the Book, a wonderful little mystery bookstore in Houston, Texas.

I suspect the publishing industry would be in much better shape if we still had more bookstores like Murder by the Book. These people know books, they know authors, and they know their customers. "Hand selling" is something that used to go on in bookstores all the time--a familiar customer walks in the door, the book dealer says, "I just got in a book that you're going to love!" and puts the new book into the reader's hands. This is how new authors find readers--by word of mouth. And no one is better at generating positive word of mouth than a bookseller.

But with the slow death of independent bookstores, hand selling is disappearing fast. The clerks at Barnes and Noble tend to turn over constantly. Many of them don't read themselves, and they certainly don't take the time to learn the reading tastes of their customers. So the disappearance of the independent bookstores is one more factor contributing to the disappearance of midlist authors and the dominance of the franchised blockbuster.

But Murder by the Book is doing just great. They've carved out a niche selling autographed books, so that about a third of their business comes from mail orders for signed releases. I was amazed at how many people turned out to listen to me talk and have their books signed. People actually had numbers. You know, like at a Sarah Palin booksigning (only there were about 30 people there rather than 2,000). Frankly, I was stunned to realize that I had so many devoted readers in the Houston area. This was my second signing at Murder by the Book, and I fully intend to go back again.

Photos by Marc Brubaker--I forgot to take pictures myself

Authors as Franchises

2011-03-20T12:34:00.012-05:00

An ugly new trend is taking over the publishing industry: it’s called franchised authors.

Over the past several decades there has been a marked shift in the way books are distributed and sold. Almost without exception, those changes have resulted in a larger share of the market going to blockbuster or bestselling authors while the print runs of midlist authors continue to shrink. For example, 25 years ago it wasn’t uncommon for a new romance author to get a print run of 100,000; today, such an author is lucky if 20,000 copies of her first book are printed. Print runs of four figures are not unknown. And if print runs for new mystery authors were any lower, they’d be in negative numbers.

As a result, publishers look at their bottom line and say, What we need to do is publish more books by our Names and fewer books by these pesky Unknowns. The problem is, authors can only write one or two books a year. So what to do? Why, get those poor desperate underemployed midlist authors to actually write the books, then slap the bestselling Name on the cover. The book sells millions of copies. The Name makes millions. The publisher makes millions. Readers are happy. Everyone is happy except for the poor exploited sucker who actually wrote the book.

Some franchised authors such as James Patterson or Clive Cussler at least acknowledge their "co-authors" by putting the writer's name in eensy weensy letters behind the word “with” on the cover. But other authors insist on perpetuating what is essentially a lie; their ghostwriters are given no credit at all.

So how much do these bestselling authors actually contribute to the books that carry their names? It various, obviously, but the answer is often very little (and almost never as much as they claim in interviews). All parties to these agreements—agents, editors, and authors—are bound by nondisclosure agreements. But people do talk (especially after a few glasses of wine). So I can tell you that sometimes the Name will send the ghostwriter a vague plot outline (with emphasis on the word “vague”), while some Names content themselves with a final edit. And then there’s the Name who says in effect, “I want a new series with a female protagonist sorta like that guy in It Takes a Thief; remember him? Yeah. Oh, and I like horses, so put some horses in there.”

How much do these ghostwriters or “co-authors” make? While the Name pockets an advance of as much as a couple of million, holds film rights, and receives royalties, the poor sucker who actually wrote the book is lucky to get a one-time check for $50-75,000. One well-known romance author paid the man who wrote a half-dozen of her romances $4,000 a pop. That’s right: four thousand dollars per book. Ironically, those books received by far her best reviews.

Personally, I think the entire trend is so exploitative and disgusting that I will never, ever buy another book by any “author” who franchises his or her name. As far as I'm concerned, it's a matter of principle. (Yeah, I’m looking at you Cussler, Evanovich, Clancy, Patterson, Flynn, etc.) The problem is, those are the Names who at least give slight acknowledgment to the writers whose bad luck they are exploiting. But there are others who insist that their ghostwriters remain forever unseen behind a curtain. This is particularly true of romance and urban fantasy authors.

So how do you know what you’re buying? Well, if a NYT bestselling author is putting out three books a year—or even two if they’re longish books and he has a heavy promotion schedule—then the chances are he or she is not really writing all of them.

Please note that I am not saying that the specific financial or working arrangements discussed in this post refer to all of the authors specifically mentioned, only that these authors are among those who have publicly acknowledged that at least some of their books are produced with "co-authors". Some of these named authors may indeed have far more equitable financial arrangements and participate far more in the writing of "their" books than those I do know about.

Bird Brain

2011-03-14T23:09:00.005-05:00

I have three hanging baskets of plants that decorate the front of my house. This weekend, I realized some stupid mourning dove has decided to use the basket outside my office door as a nest. She flew when I walked past the basket, so I stuck my phone up and took a picture to see if she'd laid her eggs yet. She had.

Last year, some stupid dove (it could even have been the same one) laid her eggs in the hanging basket right outside the front door. I couldn't water the basket because I worried it might hurt the eggs (and would scare her away), so the plants in the basket slowly died. Then the basket dried out so badly it started blowing in the wind, so we tied a line to a weight underneath to hold it steady. Then the plants withered to the point that the afternoon sun was nasty hot, so Steve rigged up a shade for her.

Both eggs hatched and, under our watchful eye, very quickly grew huge. The mama sat on that nest forever, but once the babies hatched (or at least, once we became aware of the fact that they'd hatched) they flew in about a week.

So here we go again. And I don't even particularly like mourning doves.

Mardi Gras Parades on You Tube

2011-03-09T16:05:00.008-06:00

Just for fun, I've taken some of the photos from last Sunday and put them together into a video, with a soundtrack from Kevin MacLeod. It's only two minutes long, and I think gives a good feel for a day at the parades. The initial shots are from before the first parade arrived in the morning; it then progresses through the day until early evening, when we called it quits and left before the madness that was Bacchus and Endymion.

I've heard this Mardi Gras was unusually rowdy since it coincided with spring break and a lot of college kids came down to party. I think that shows as the day progresses.

I notice the photo quality degrades when uploaded to You Tube, and I'm obviously doing something wrong with the embed since it's bleeding into the right margin. Sigh. Anyway, here it is:

And don't forget to check out the link in the post below to a second interview, which also includes a drawing for a free copy of Where Shadows Dance.

Another Interview and a Book Giveaway

2011-03-09T11:03:00.004-06:00

I have another interview--with a book giveaway--up at a site called Tanzanite's Castle Full of Books. This is another wonderful (but dangerous) site for lovers of both historical fiction and nonfiction to browse, especially if you're fond of medieval tales. I could spend forever just looking at the beautiful gowns portrayed in the cover art.

You can read the interview here. And don't forget the book giveaway, which is open until 11 March.

Scene of the Crime

2011-03-07T21:50:00.005-06:00

I recently did an interview with J. Sydney Jones, the author of the new Viennese Mystery series, set in Vienna in 1900. As Karen Harper says, “What Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for Victorian London and Caleb Carr did for old New York, J. Sydney Jones does for historic Vienna.” Syd has a blog that focuses on mystery writers and the places they set their books, which means it's a dangerous place for those of us with bulging TBR piles.

The interview is now up at Syd's blog, Scene of the Crime. You can read it here.

(Gorgeous cover, isn't it?)

Gone Parading

2011-03-07T12:15:00.004-06:00

I missed the first Mardi Gras weekend thanks to an inconveniently timed book deadline.

But I'm making up for it...

More later.

Some Pub Dates

2011-03-05T23:28:00.003-06:00

I asked my editor about future publication dates, and she tells me that When Maidens Mourn is scheduled to be released in March 2012. The paperback of Where Shadows Dance will be released the same month.

The paperback of What Remains of Heaven (those are the cover flats above, which just arrived on Friday) is scheduled for August 2011, which is a year after the release of the trade paperback. They won't be doing a trade version of Shadows. The manuscript for Book Number 8--as yet untitled (yes, here we go again...) is due 1 November 2011, so it may be scheduled for November of 2012. But don't quote me on that.

Where Shadows Dance on Sale Today

2011-03-01T16:25:00.005-06:00

Where Shadows Dance officially goes on sale today.

Of course, that's the "official" release date. Some stores have been selling it already for a couple of weeks, which is not good for what is known in the business as "lay down." (Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming anyone who bought it early!) Lay down is important because if it is controlled--in other words, if the book goes on sale everywhere on the same day, or at least in the same week--you have what is known in the business as "velocity." Lots of books being sold all at once means a book's chances of hitting bestseller lists is improved. When the book trickles out, those first sales are spread over several weeks and the chances of hitting a list are diminished.

Once upon a time, stores were pretty good about observing release dates. But then they got more sloppy. When you see a tightly held release for, say the new Harry Potter or the new Twilight, it's because the publisher paid for it. Isn't that weird? Publishers actually pay bookstores not to sell their book.

Crazy business.

Finished!

2011-02-28T00:18:00.003-06:00

The manuscript for When Maidens Mourn is finished and sitting in my editor's inbox, ready for her to open on Monday morning.

I have a bunch of interviews lined up this week that I'll be posting, but at the moment I am exhausted and in serious need of sleep! Night all.

It’s Cover Time

2011-02-19T01:27:00.005-06:00

Someone must have heard me complain about being given only a few days to come up with cover ideas, because this time I actually have ten days advance notice of the looming cover conference for When Maidens Mourn (will I ever get used to that title?). I have a few ideas, most playing off Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott painting. But the more the merrier, so... Cover suggestions, anyone?

And to get you in the mood, here’s a sneak preview of….

When Maidens Mourn
Chapter One

CAMLET MOAT, TRENT PLACE, ENGLAND: SUNDAY, 2 AUGUST 1812

Tessa Cooper hummed a nervous tune beneath her breath as she pushed through the tangled brush and bracken that edged the black waters of the ancient moat. She was very young—just sixteen at her next birthday. And though she tried to tell herself she was brave, she knew she wasn’t. She could feel her heart pounding in her narrow chest and her hands tingled as if she’d been sitting on them. When she’d left the village, the night sky above had been clear and bright with stars. But here, deep in the wood, all was darkness and shadow. From the murky stagnant water beside her rose an eerie mist, thick and clammy.

It should have wafted cool against her cheek. Instead, she felt as if the heavy dampness were stealing her breath, suffocating her with an unnatural heat and a sick dread of the forbidden. She paused to swipe a shaky hand across her sweaty face and heard a rustling in the distance, the soft plop of something hitting the water.

Choking back a whimper, she spun about, ready to run. But this was Lammas, a time sacred to the ancient goddess. They said that at midnight on this night, if a maiden dipped a cloth into the holy well that lay on the northern edge of the isle of Camlet Moat and then tied her offering to a branch of the rag tree that overhung the well, her prayer would be answered. Not only that, but maybe, just maybe, the White Lady herself would appear, to bless the maid and offer her the wisdom and guidance that a motherless girl like Tessa yearned for with all her being.

No one knew exactly who the White Lady was. Father Clark insisted that if the lady existed at all—which he doubted—she could only be the Virgin Mary. But local legend said the White Lady was one of the Grail Maidens of old, a chaste virgin who’d guarded the sacred well since before the time of Arthur and Guinevere and the knights of the Roundtable. And then there were those who whispered that the lady was actually Guinevere, ever young, ever beautiful, ever glorious.

Forcing herself to go on, Tessa clenched her fist around the strip of white cloth she was bringing as an offering. She could see the prow of the small dinghy kept at the moat by Sir Stanley Winthrop, on whose land she trespassed. Its timbers old and cracked, its aged paint worn and faded, it rocked lightly at the water’s edge as if touched by an unseen current.

It was not empty.

Tessa drew up short. A lady lay crumpled against the stern, her hair a dark cascade of curls around a pale, motionless face. She was young yet and slim, her gown an elegant flowing confection of gossamer muslin sashed with peach satin. She had her head tipped back, her neck arched. Her eyes were open but sightless, her skin waxen.

And from a jagged rent high across her pale breast flowed a rivulet of darkness where her life’s blood had long since drained away.

This Hurts

2011-02-16T09:51:00.006-06:00

As many of you no doubt already know, Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, which is going to be a crushing blow to the already ailing publishing business. Most publishers had already quit shipping new releases to the troubled bookstore chain, which is said to owe $230 million to publishers and distributors. The chain has announced plans to close some 200 of its stores, starting immediately.

I personally have a soft spot for Borders, which is where our Monday night writers group has been meeting for nearly ten years now (except for a brief interlude after the store was walloped by Katrina). There's no denying the chain missed the boat with the ebook revolution, which for example now make up a quarter of my own sales. But a hefty chunk of my paper book sales were through Borders, so having all those boxes left sitting in the warehouse is painful. This isn't just about the chain itself; the fallout will be felt by publishers, distributors, and authors.

Eventually it will all sort itself out, but the transition is going to be traumatic. And I'm selfish enough to hope that MY Borders won't be one of the ones to close.

Now, back to writing... Almost finished!

Update: More bad news. Just heard Borders will be closing both of their New Orleans area stores.

Title Change

2011-02-09T12:22:00.004-06:00

It's official: book number seven in the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series in now called When Maidens Mourn (instead of Why Maidens Mourn).

Some found the title difficult to say; others thought it implied that maidens always mourn. Personally, I thought the "why" version tread a little too close to "Why Mermaids Sing." So hopefully this bit of tweaking will help.

I currently have my head down, working frantically to finish this manuscript, which is due 1 March. So you might not hear from me again until then!

Still Alive

2011-01-31T10:32:00.005-06:00

Just thought I'd let everyone know that I'm still here and still writing furiously, with just a few occasional breaks to paint my spare bedroom (which used to be my mother's room, and is being transformed from her favorite color blue to a sunny yellow).

I've discovered that painting (as in walls, not pictures) is for me a form of meditation. Gardening has the same effect. I focus completely on what I am doing, which means I am "in the moment." But because neither activity is mentally challenging, they're both great ways to still the chatter in my mind and free my subconscious for creativity.

I also thought I'd show you this, which arrived last Friday, hot off the press...

(Incidentally, the curious cat at the top is Thomasina, peering out of Huckleberry's barrel. Her left ear was lopped when she was feral, to show that she'd been fixed.)

The Lake in Winter

2011-01-22T12:16:00.003-06:00

I've spent the past week up at the lake in an intensive effort to finish Why Maidens Mourn (still trying to get used to that title), number seven in the Sebastian St. Cyr series.

My last several writing retreats haven't been particularly successful, although this one wasn't quite the disaster of my November expedition. That one started with my car breaking down. Then about an hour after I finally arrived at the lake, I experienced a plumbing disaster that flooded the main bedroom, a storage closet, and half the kitchen. The entire first day was consumed by such productive exercises as rescuing boxes of papers, books, and photos, pulling up soaked carpet, and mopping (plus doing a lot of swearing). The second day was spent with a shovel and a Roto-Rooter man, digging up the yard in a forlorn attempt to find the clean-out valve for the septic tank (after uncovering the entire line, we discovered there was no clean-out valve). Then, because these things always come in threes, a horde of red ants evidently disturbed by the flood invaded my house and attacked Huckleberry's food bowls. Because my porphyria makes bugsprays as deadly to me as to bugs, the only thing I had to fight back with was Restoration Hardware grapefruit counter spray and pepper.

This time, I only had to contend with the rain and the cold. My sister Penny recently moved to McCall in the mountains of Idaho, so I've added McCall to the weather app on my iPhone and amuse myself occasionally by looking up her temperature and snickering when I see it's, say, -15 degrees in McCall and a balmy 65 in New Orleans. Well, last week it was a balmy 35 degrees in the mountains of Idaho and a bone-chilling 22 at my lake house. Who's snickering now?

Did I get much done? No. I spent one entire day writing a sentence, or maybe a paragraph, and then crossing it out, and crossing out the next one, and then tearing the page from my notebook and throwing it in a crumpled wad across the room. In the end, I produced less than half my normal retreat output. But several [nippy] walks around the lake helped me finally realize what the problem was. I came home, spread my plotting cards across the dining room table, and reorganized my plot. Hopefully I'm now good to go.

Or I'd better be. This deadline is barreling down on me fast.

Australia on My Mind

2011-01-12T13:06:00.003-06:00

I had planned a new post about books made into movies, but the news coming out of Australia this morning about the flooding that is now engulfing Brisbane was simply too horrible for me to ignore. A big chunk of my heart will always call Australia home. When I left Australia for New Orleans ten years ago now in order to be here for my aging mother, I literally cried all the way from Adelaide to Sydney. I'm crying now. Australia is a land endlessly beset by fire and flood. Fortunately, it is also populated by an incredibly resilient, hearty people who know how to put things right.

My thoughts are with you...

Title Time

2011-01-06T09:48:00.005-06:00

Publishing houses seem to have two speeds: the proverbial molasses-in-winter mode and the we-needed-this-yesterday frantic rush. When an author is waiting on them (such as, ahem, to cut a check), they typically go into molasses mode. But when they need the author to do something, for some bizarre reason it never seems to occur to them to contact the writer until the last minute. I can't tell you the number of times I've been given literally one hour to revise cover copy or come up with a tag line. Usually I'm given a day or two to come up with cover art suggestions. I was once given an hour to rename my heroine after the Powers That Be decided her name was too long. (Seriously. The book was Midnight Confessions, but I don't at the moment recall my heroine's original last name. All I know is that I really hate the substitution. Character names should never be rushed.)

Cover copy revisions obviously depend on having something from the copy department to revise. But the other stuff--tag lines and cover art suggestions--are things authors know ahead of time they're going to have to come up with. So I've learned to give some thought to those things on my own calendar rather than waiting for the inevitable rush email. I have the suggestions for the cover of the book I'm currently writing (Sebastian Book Number Seven) all ready and will simply send them off as soon as I get that we're-cover-conferencing-this-book-on-Wednesday-so-if-you-have-any-suggestions-get-them-to-me-by-morning email.

So you'd think I'd have been prepared for the message that greeted me when I got around to checking my email on Monday afternoon: We need a title for Book Number Seven by Wednesday morning! Silly me. I somehow imagined I'd have until I actually finished the book to come up with the title. Nope. I was caught titleless. I did go through a period last summer when I tried to come up with something; those of you who've been around the blog that long will remember we spent a week or so thrashing about and brainstorming possibilities. But I then pushed the whole title thing onto the back burner, thinking I'd just let it simmer.

Great titles, in my experience, are gifts from the ether. They come seemingly out of nowhere, instantly captivating and awe-inspiring in their inherent rightness. I've never come up with a title that I sweated and fretted over, and ended up really liking. In this instance, I sent the entire long list of suggestions from you, my blog readers, to my editors, along with a half-dozen suggestions of my own. All were knocked back. I came up with some more suggestions; my editor came up with some of her own. We settled on one we thought we could live with. Her boss nixed it. We went down to the wire, with the final decision being made on Wednesday morning.

Titles are so important, I don't think they should simply be grabbed on the fly. On the other hand, sometimes inspiration never strikes and a decision must be made. Or sometimes inspiration strikes and The Powers That Be nix it and come up with a title of their own (What Remains of Heaven being the prime example; I named that book What Hell Marks, referencing a quote from Shakespeare that I actually took out of the book's final copy in the hope that I can get them to use the title for a future book.)

But all this is just buildup to telling you what the title of the seventh book is. Drum roll, please....

Why Maidens Mourn.

Like it? Hate it? Feel free to be honest. I'm not exactly in love with it myself. But I like it much better than What Remains of Heaven (yeah, I'm still cranky about that one).

The Year Candy Got Her Groove Back

2011-01-03T12:35:00.004-06:00

I started 2010 in a strange, inexplicable funk, uncharacteristically unable to summon up any enthusiasm for toasting in the New Year or making new year’s resolutions or indulging in any of the other joyous, confident, reenergizing rituals I generally associate with the flipping of the calendar. It was obviously a premonition. But that year is over and hopefully along with it the seemingly endless train of illness and death that have beset those dear to me.

I can honestly say that this new year has brought a burst of energy swirling with it. I’ve been cleaning out storerooms and closets, making plans to go up to the lake for a writing extravaganza, organizing everything in sight, making lists and resolutions and generally enjoying that ebullient, heady sense of fresh possibilities I usually associate with a new year.

So, here’s hoping your holidays were joyous and that the new year will live up to at least some our expectations. Cheers, everyone!

It's That Time of Year

2010-12-20T17:29:00.009-06:00

I was whining the other day about what a pain it is to have a book released at Christmas time, and my friend said, "Well, it's better to have a book released in December than to not have a book released at all." She was right, of course, so I quit whining. But I can still use the frantic juggling of book signings, interviews, and Christmas shopping as an excuse for being a Bad Blogger, can't I?

My kids are finally off school for the holidays, and we're muddling our way through our first Christmas since my mother's death. I've decided to simply give up trying to write for the next week so that I can focus on things like decorating the house and making Christmas cookies and generally just having fun with my girls. Saturday, we got the tree up; this afternoon I helped Danielle with her annual gingerbread house; yesterday we put up the new wreath and garland I made for the front door.

In the past nine months, I have left town for Easter, Mother's Day, and Thanksgiving. But I couldn't run away from Christmas. Although we are not a religious family, Christmas has always been huge for us. To be frank, I thought this time of year would be harder than it has been. I have so many wonderful, laughter-filled memories of Christmases past, that hanging my mother's ornaments on my tree and putting her creche--bought in Madrid when I was a child--in my living room has proved to be unexpectedly healing. Who'd have thought?

Radio Interviews Online

2010-12-07T21:11:00.004-06:00

For anyone interested, several of the radio interviews Steve and I have been doing for The Babylonian Codex are now available online.

Radio interviews can be disconcerting. You’re talking to someone you’ve typically never met, over the phone, while thousands of people eavesdrop on your conversation. (Did I mention I have a phone phobia?) You can’t see the face of the person you’re talking to, so you don’t know if you’re boring them, or if you’ve missed the point of their question, or what the next question is likely to be. And if you’re like me, your mind takes flight and you can find yourself struggling to answer even a simple question like, “So what’s your book about?”

With that caveat, if you still want to listen, here are two of them:

Suspense Radio with John Raab (original air date 7 December, following Brad Thor)

Terry Lovell at KYCA in Arizona (original air date 3 December)

We also have another interview coming up at 9 a.m. CST on Thursday, 9 December, with Steven Nestor of KRTS out of Marfa,Texas. You can listen to it streaming online in real time here.

And when all of this is done (we’ve been averaging two interviews a day!), I hope to get those photos of New Iberia up.

Literary Tourists

2010-11-30T13:04:00.007-06:00

I made my first solo trip to London when I was 21 years old. As a life-long student of history, I was naturally excited to explore as an adult everything from the Tower to Westminster Abbey and Hampton Court. But I also came to London as an enthusiastic devote of Georgette Heyer. When I walked down St. James's Street or sat on a bench in Hyde Park, part of the thrill I experienced undeniably came from my awareness of the historical associations of those place. But it was a history filtered through the talented imagination of one of my favorite authors. I was there as a literary tourist.

There have long been Dickensonian (Dickensian?) tours of London; now there are De Vinci Code tours of Paris. I recall searching out the grave of Greyfriar's Bobby in Edinburgh, thanks to a Disney movie I'd loved as a child. When I went back to the Alhambra, I could hear the echoes of my father's rich baritone telling me one of his favorite bedtime stories, about how when Granada's last Moorish ruler paused and wept as he looked back on the beautiful city he'd loved and lost, his mother admonished him, "Don't cry like a woman for what you failed to defend as a man."

So it was in this tradition that Steve and I spent last week in New Iberia, Louisiana. Yes, we were there because New Iberia is in the heart of Cajun country and because it is the site of Shadows on the Teche, a lovely plantation. But we were mainly there because as anyone who reads James Lee Burke knows, New Iberia is the literary home of Dave Robicheaux. We had a great time, and once I get my photos organized--and get though all the radio interviews I have lined up this week--I'd like to do several posts on it. But in the meantime, the photo above is of the Bayou Teche, while here is Victor's Cafeteria, where Dave always eats breakfast...so of course we did, too.

With a Little Help From Our Friends...

2010-11-25T13:11:00.003-06:00

Whiskies helping Samantha and me put up her tree...

And Sodapop, my sister's new rescue donkey...

Who knew there's an entire society dedicated to rescuing donkeys and mules?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

My Precious?

2010-11-21T22:48:00.005-06:00

There's a meme that has been floating around for a long time involving a list of 100 books. The list is supposed to have been compiled by the BBC, although according to this article in The Guardian, the list was actually compiled for World Book Day from respondents who were asked to name their ten most "precious" books. But why let a little something like facts get in the way of some fun?

The idea is to bold the books on the list you've read and italicize those you started reading and never finished. Because of the way it was compiled, it's a weird list, containing both The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and Hamlet, for instance. Now, I'm a huge fan of Shakespeare, but I can't claim to have read every single one of his plays (I have read all of his poetry). I also find the list heavy on Jane Austen and oddly lacking in other time-tested authors such as, say, Robert Louis Stevenson or Homer. But I'm digressing again.

In looking over my list, I realize the exercise reveals several things about me. First, I'm good at starting books but not so great at finishing them. In fact, I'm so famous for giving up on books that my writers group has given my name to the act of abandoning a book unfinished: they call it "proctorizing." I also realize I used to be better about finishing books than I am now. I still remember plowing through the 1600 pages of The Count of Monte Cristo as a senior in high school (for fun, not for class). I doubt I'd make it these days.

Would I call any of these books "precious"? Well, maybe the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Very few of the works of this list would make it on to my list of the 100 Best Books of All Times, or even a list of The 100 Books I Liked Best (I recognize that some of my best-loved books are not great literature.)

Anyway, without any more analyzing, here's my list:

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Booksignings and Interviews Coming to Someplace Maybe Near You

2010-11-18T19:36:00.004-06:00

Things are gearing up for the release of The Babylonian Codex on 30 November. So far, Steve and I will be doing a booksigning on December 11, from 1-3 p.m., at the Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania Street New Orleans, Louisiana. If you are unable to attend, you may contact the bookstore to preorder a signed, personalized book. Their telephone number is 504-895-2266.

We will also be doing the following radio interviews:

Los Angeles
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
12:15 PM to 12:30 PM CST LIVE
LA TALK RADIO
Sam & Suzy Show

Phoenix
Friday, December 3, 2010
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM CST
KYCA-AM AM 1490 LIVE
“KYCA Talks”

North Carolina
Monday, December 6, 2010
8:30 AM to 8:40 AM CST
LIVE
THE PARADISE RADIO NETWORK
WCBQ-AM 1340 WHNC-AM 890

California
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
8:30 PM to 9:00 PM CST LIVE
SUSPENSE MAGAZINE with John Raab

Personally, I much prefer live TV interviews to live radio interviews. I find it very disconcerting to have tens of thousands of people eavesdropping while I talk to someone I don't know and whose face I can't see. It's a weird experience.

I'll let you know when more events are scheduled.

Author Quotes

2010-11-09T23:08:00.004-06:00

I suspect I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s a subject that I frequently find myself pondering. How much attention do you as a reader give to author quotes on the covers of books? You know the ones where some famous or at least well-known author says, “Don’t miss this!” or “Compelling! Spellbinding! Impossible to put down!”

I suppose there was a time when a positive quote from an author I liked plugging an unknown writer might have compelled me to pick up a book. Now I know to take such quotes with a grain of salt. Because the truth is that authors give quotes (or “blurbs” as they are sometimes called) to other authors who are their friends, or at least their friends’ friends. They also agree to read books for quotes as a favor to their editors or agents. There is even one famous male author (who shall remain nameless) who has been known to give quotes to young, attractive female writers in exchange for, well, you know. Do all those authors really loooove all the books they plug? What do you think?

I’d like to believe that the wonderful, generous authors who have given me great quotes over the years did truly love my books. I know some of them did because they have gone to the trouble of contacting me privately and telling me how much they enjoyed my book. But did they all? I doubt it.

Since I'm not on the NYT bestsellers list, I don’t get asked for blurbs that often, although I’ve noticed a definitely uptick in the requests this past year. When you get to be really famous, everyone wants a quote from you. Some authors, such as Anne Perry, almost never give quotes. Others, such as Steve Berry, are very, very generous. (Yes, I have a Steve Berry quote on my book; thanks, Steve!)

Sometimes finding the right author to give a quote for your book can be really, really hard. I had a NYT bestselling author lined up to give a quote for Where Shadows Dance only to have my editor say, no, she didn’t think that author set quite the right tone for the book. Sigh. Of course, when you’re James Patterson or John Grisham, you don’t need another author plugging your book; that Number 1 NYT Bestseller! banner over your name pretty much says what needs to be said.

Reactions to Infidelity

2010-11-05T21:15:00.004-05:00

A young psychology student of my acquaintance is conducting a survey on emotional and cognitive reactions to infidelity. The more people she can find willing to complete the survey, the more generalizable her results will be. It's short and fun and thought provoking, so if you have the time and the inclination, please visit her site here.

The responses to the survey are completely anonymous and the results will be reported in aggregate form only. Your participation is voluntary and you may discontinue at any time. If you have any questions, the contact information is on the survey.

If you know of anyone else who might be interested in taking the survey, please pass on the link. I'll be posting the results when they become available.

Thanks for your help!

The Lake in Autumn

2010-11-02T12:45:00.005-05:00

I arrived home from San Francisco, told my family hello, then headed off to our lake house to spend a week frantically scribbling away on Sebastian Number Seven. The weather was gorgeous; the serenity and scenery inspiring. I spent Halloween sitting out on the porch in shorts (the above photo was snapped on my iPhone from my perch on the swing). The wildflowers were blooming in breathtaking bursts...

...and those of you awaiting the next Sebastian book will be happy to hear that I made great progress.

On another note: some people leave their hearts in San Francisco; I appear to have left my camera. So no more Bouchercon photos from me. Sigh.

Charles Gramlich over at Razored Zen was kind enough to review the last two Sebastian books he's read; thank you, Charles!

And finally, here's a picture of one of my daughter's little rescue Manx orphans, being a Halloween cat:

Bouchercon by the Bay

2010-10-22T10:51:00.006-05:00

I love Bouchercon! As conferences go, it's fun and low key and very different from, say, RWA National. Part of that difference comes from the mix of people. Bouchercon is a lot of writers and booksellers, editors and a few agents, a few unpublished writers, and many, many fans. RWA is all published or unpublished writers, agents and editors, with the result that there is more of an air of desperation and less a spirit of fun. Of course, the fact that RWA is virtually all women and many Bouchercon attendees are male also makes a difference. Ahem.

My experience at this Bouchercon was very much in contrast to Baltimore's Bouchercon, where I was staying in the hotel and didn't know anyone, which forced me to get out and network (something I don't do well). This time I was staying with my sister (author Penelope Williamson, who lives in Mill Valley) and driving in every day with Tracy Grant. Both of them have been in this writing business even longer than I have, so along with the experience of the conference I was also able to spend hours and hours dissecting both the conference and publishing in general.

I'll talk more about the individual events in a later post, as I thought I'd just give an overview here. Thursday began with some great panels, followed by the opening ceremony that evening, after which Harper Collins hosted a reception where some fifteen or twenty authors were on hand to sign and give away copies of their books. Danielle, my publicist, had set up my table right next to the bar, so I got a lot of traffic and ran out of books fairly quickly. (I snapped these pics with my phone before the function actually began; I have more photos that I'll post once I get them off my camera.) The huge poster Harper Collins provided was gorgeous, so hopefully even people who didn't get a copy will remember the cover.

Friday came more panels, and then the NAL cocktail party followed by the famous Lee Child "Reacher Party." My panel was on Saturday, followed by a booksigning (where people actually bought my books), and then the Harper Collins party followed by the Touchstone party, which I also attended since Catherine Coulter was riding in from Mill Valley with us that day. The weather was glorious until the end, when the fog came rolling in and this little New Orleans hothouse flower froze to death.

I brought home all kinds of gossip and lots of ideas and thoughts to sort through, and what feels like an incipient case of pneumonia. More later!

Bouchercon 2010

2010-10-08T13:55:00.005-05:00

Bouchercon is the annual world mystery convention. This year’s Bouchercon will be held next week in San Francisco --Thursday, Friday and Saturday—at the Hyatt Regency, 5 Embarcadero Center. Attending will be an impressive array of mystery writers, from John Connelly and Martin Cruz Smith to Rhys Bowen and Laurie King.

I’ll be on a panel on Saturday at 3.00 p.m. with Pat Canterbury, John Lutz, Katia Lief, and Matthew Schoonover. The title of our panel is “Alien Country,” and I think it’s about crossing genres.

Immediately after the panel at 4:00 p.m. I’ll be holding a book signing for both my Sebastian mysteries and the contemporary thrillers (The Archangel Project and The Solomon Effect), all of which should be available from booksellers at the event. I’ll also be participating in the Harper Collins book signing to be held Thursday night at 7 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt, at which time I will have fifty advance readers copies of The Babylonian Codex to give away free on a first come, first serve basis.

You can read more about the conference here (and if their site looks vaguely familiar, it’s because it was done by the same brilliant designer responsible for both of my websites). I attended Bouchercon two years ago at Baltimore and had a wonderful time. If you’re in the area, hope to see you there!

A Necessary Evil

2010-10-04T23:07:00.006-05:00

Here it is: Candy's predictable, semi-annual rant about the copyediting process. If you're curious, you can click on the screenshots I've included and get a better look at the process in action. (You'll also get a sneak preview of a few snippets from later scenes in Where Shadows Dance, but I promise there are no spoilers.)

I've had some copyeditors from hell in the course of my career, but this seems to be my year to luck out with copyeditors. This one was both thorough and sane, which meant that the process wasn’t anywhere near as painful as it can be. But that doesn’t mean it was painless. First of all, this stage is now all done electronically, which means that instead of curling up on my porch swing with the manuscript and a pencil, I now spend days and days sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen, something I really, really hate. Plus, gone are the days of Post-it notes, so that once I stick my changes/comments in the margin, too, things can get quite colorful--and crowded. (If you want to get a better view of the page, just click on the screenshot and you'll get a much bigger, clearer image.)

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that when it comes to things like capitalization and punctuation, I may as well simply go with the flow (me and the dead fish). Yes, there are rules in grammar. But different houses have different rules and, I’ve learned, different copyeditors within the same house can have different rules, too. They want an accent in Napoleon? Fine, they can put it in there. They don’t want an accent in Napoléon? Fine; take it out. Ditto with the comma in “Now, he wasn’t so sure.” Make that, Now he wasn’t so sure. Is it, The Colonel stood at the top of the stairs? Or, The colonel stood at the top of the stairs? It depends, evidently, on the phases of the moon.

And then we have the issue of historical accuracy. Scrambled eggs were called buttered eggs in the early nineteenth century. Okay, I’ll happily change that, even though no one will know what kind of eggs Sebastian is spooning onto his plate. But when I write “direction” for address, as was done in the Regency, I’m told readers may misunderstand and think it’s a typo that should be “directions.” A Regency Englishman walked out the house; he did not walk out of the house. But I’ve never found a copyeditor yet who didn’t insist on putting that of in there.

One of a copyeditor's tasks is to tell me when she doesn't quite follow the action in the story, as in:

That's fine; I seriously appreciate it. She can also save me from some really, really silly mistakes, as in:

Or:

If I were lazy, I could just skim through the manuscript, stopping only where I see the little blue bubbles. But this is my last chance to change anything in the manuscript before it goes to the typesetters, so I actually read over it three times. On the final pass, I reversed one significant change that I'd made at the editing stage at the request of my editor. It has bothered me ever since I did it, and so with my editor's blessing I put it back the way it was. And no, you can't see that page, because it would be a spoiler!

A Cool Change

2010-09-29T11:37:00.003-05:00

What’s your favorite time of year?

My mother always used to say her favorite time of year was autumn. She thought perhaps it was because her birthday was in September. But I never understand how anyone could possibly love the fall, even though my birthday is in September, too.

For me, autumn meant going back to school (I hated school as a kid). It meant waking up to frigid wet mornings and dark grey skies and the looming gloom of endless winter to come. But summer… Ah, summer meant long carefree days of blue skies and golden warmth; it meant running through sun-kissed fields with my horse or curling up on a shady porch with a book. Even later, after I moved away from the frigid northwest, I still loved summer. Summer meant my girls home from school, days spent searching for seashells beside a roaring surf or exploring castles on a sunblasted Spanish hillside or hiking through the Australian bush.

Then I moved to New Orleans, where summer brings a wet suffocating heat that never relents, not even at night, along with a wary realization that a hurricane might be forming just over the horizon. It is my practice every morning when I wake up to throw open my doors and windows. The cats love it and it airs out the houses, but in the dog days of summer that humid blast of heat is a real penance I can tolerate for only so long. Well, this morning I opened the front door and literally squealed with delight as a soft cool breeze buffeted my face and actually raised goosebumps on my arms. Ah, I thought, fall at last!

And then I remembered my mother and how fall was always her favorite time of year, and for the first time I understood why that little girl growing up in New Orleans had loved autumn so much.

Still Alive

2010-09-23T11:35:00.003-05:00

Writing and life (including plumbing problems you don't want to hear about) have consumed my days too much lately to leave time for blogging, but I hope to do better next week.

I'll be going to Bouchercon in San Francisco in October and will be on a panel on Saturday, for those of you who'll be in the area. More on that later.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the engraving, it's of Covent Garden Theatre.

Eid Mubarak and Happy New Year

2010-09-10T14:30:00.007-05:00

'Eid al-Fitr is one of two major holidays in Islam, the festival of the breaking of the month-long fast of Ramadan. For Muslims, it's a time for eating and drinking, visiting friends, giving presents, wearing new clothes, and visiting the graves of the dead. Think Christmas and Easter and All Saints Day, rolled into one. "Eid" is of course the holiday itself, while "mubarak" means "blessed." So, to all my Muslim friends, Eid Mubarak.

Coincidentally, this weekend is also Rosh Hashanah. So to all my Jewish friends, Happy New Year!

Photo from merinews.com.

Dropping the Veil on Jumping the Shark

2010-09-07T12:04:00.003-05:00

Remember when you were a kid and you heard words but didn't quite interpret them correctly? How you could happily sing, “My country, Tisovee”? Or think people get “Oldtimer’s Disease” when they start getting forgetful? Well, I have a confession to make: I did something similar with the expression “jumping the shark.” And I only just realized it.

After a bit of research, I’ve learned that the expression dates not to the time when the infamous Happy Days episode first ran in 1977, but to a decade later when (to quote Fred Fox, the poor guy who actually wrote the episode in question) “Jon Hein and his roommates at the University of Michigan were drinking beer and had Nick at Nite playing in the background. They started talking about classic TV shows when someone asked, ‘What was the precise moment you knew it was downhill for your favorite show?’ One said it was when Vicki came on board ‘The Love Boat.’ Another thought it was when the Great Gazoo appeared on ‘The Flintstones.’ Sean Connolly offered, ‘That's easy: It was when Fonzie jumped the shark.’ As Hein later recounted, there was silence in the room: ‘No explanation necessary, the phrase said it all.’ ”

Well, it just so happens that in 1987, I was living in the Middle East. In those pre-ubiquitous-Internet days, that meant I was effectively cut off from popular American culture. I then moved to Australia. I first ran across the expression sometime in the late 90s in a book on writing I’d checked out of my local Adelaide library. I’d never seen the original Happy Days episode (I was in Germany at the time that aired!), so the association didn’t click. But I did know a movie about sharks, so somehow I got the idea fixed in my head that “don’t jump the shark” was based on the suspense-building technique used in the movie Jaws and basically referred to the principle of increasing viewer tension by revealing the extent and nature of a threat gradually rather than letting readers see it clearly in its entirety from the get-go.

I didn’t realize my mistake until just a few weeks ago, when I read a blog post by John Connolly in which he wonders if he’s jumped the sharp with his latest book (verdict from Steve, who just finished it: no). And then, in that way these things have of happening, I ran across Fox’s article "First Person: In defense of 'Happy Days' ' 'Jump the Shark' episode" in the in the LA Times.

So now, in addition to chuckling over another instance of my oft-exposed ignorance of American culture from decades past, I am also left with a writing truism in need of a colorful descriptive expression. I guess I just need some college kids and a lot of beer.

For those of you who know Steve Malley and are wondering how he fared in the recent earthquake, he left this message on the previous post: "Hi Candy, just wanted to let you know that I'm all right. Conditions aren't too bad here-- having to boil our water is about the worst of it."

Katrina Plus Five

2010-08-28T11:40:00.002-05:00

I suppose eventually a time will come when August 29th rolls around and passes without me giving it a second thought.

I’m not there yet. Every year, New Orleanians watch with an uneasy kind of awareness as the temperature climbs and the anniversary of Katrina approaches. Part of it can be put down to good old fashioned fear: when the Gulf heats up and we enter those six dangerous weeks that stretch from August 15th to September 30th, it’s hard not to start each morning by nervously casting an eye over the “Tropical & Hurricane” section of weatherunderground.com. But there’s also the realization that even if we squeak through another season without getting clobbered again, during this last week in August we’ll still be hearing those howling winds in our dreams, still find ourselves in quiet moments remembering sights and smells and moments of weakness and despair we don’t really want to revisit again.

For the first couple of years after the storm, I used to mark the day by getting together with a group of Katrina survivors for lunch at Voodoo Barbecue on St. Charles Avenue. We’d eat and talk and laugh about the ridiculous horrors of those days, then we’d go on a “Misery Tour” to assess the city’s progress or lack thereof. But in 2008 our anniversary luncheon had to be cancelled because we were all evacuated for Hurricane Gustav, and after that we never started the tradition up again.

This year, Steve and I will be spending the day working on one of the rebuilding projects on our house that is still not quite finished, five years on. But at some point I know we’ll stop to open a bottle of wine and sit around with my two daughters and laugh about the days when roofs hung in trees and the phones didn’t work for eight months and National Guardsmen with machine guns patrolled our streets.

Notice I said, “laugh about” it? In reality, there was probably nothing funny about those days. What’s funny about seeing a coffin and a jet ski washed up on a railroad embankment? About feeding a couple dozen cats in two different neighborhoods for months because their owners abandoned them and then couldn’t pluck up the courage to come back for them? About burying your aunt in a graveyard up the river because the cemetery where her husband is buried is still underwater?

But laugh, we will. For as the years pass and life as we once lived it in Katrinaville becomes a memory rather than a current reality, I’ve realized that the two most important lessons I’ve carried away from those days are both contradictory and yet oddly complementary. Katrina left me with an unflinching, visceral understanding of the fragility of all that we tend to take for granted in our everyday lives. You never forget that kind of up-close and personal demonstration of one of life’s most fundamental but easily ignored realities, which is that the veil of civilization is whisper thin and unbelievably fragile and can be shredded and ripped away in an instant.

And yet I don’t think I ever laughed as much as I did in those months after the storm, when every day confronted us with startling, sublimely ridiculous new examples of a world gone topsy-turvy. It wasn’t just me; we all laughed. We made jokes about stinking refrigerators and blue tarps and a few things we probably really shouldn’t have been joking about. Which brings me to the second lesson I learned, or what perhaps could more accurately be called a new appreciation or even a sense of awe, for the power of the human spirit to keep on laughing, no matter how dark the days.

Cheers, everyone.

Dorchester’s Digital Gamble

2010-08-25T12:02:00.003-05:00

In the newest installment of that painful saga known as the Continuing Convulsions of the Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, Dorchester gobsmacked the industry this month by announcing that they are getting out of the ink and paper business. As of September, all Dorchester titles will be available in e-book format only.

Dorchester was the oldest independent mass-market publisher in the United States (“mass-market” is the industry term for a standard-sized paperback). We’re not talking about a small press: Dorchester regularly releases about 30 new books a month. Some 65% of their releases are romances, but they are also significant publishers of horror, Westerns, and thrillers. Their Leisure Books imprint is all horror and thrillers.

So why did Dorchester do this? Well, according to CEO John Prebich, their retail sales fell 25% in 2009, and the figures for 2010 have been even worse. As shelf space for mass-market titles in retail outlets like Walmart shrinks, publishers are having a harder time simply getting their books into stores. About the only part of their business that is doing well is e-books which, according to Prebich, have been showing “remarkable growth” and are expected to “double again” in the next year.

But getting rid of all print books does seem a bit extreme, given that digital sales accounted for only 12% of their total. And while that is significantly higher than the industry-wide average (said to currently be 8%), we’re still talking 88% of their customers who choose to read their books on paper rather than on electronic screens.

Prebich has admitted that the company will be looking at lower revenues, but hopes to make up for that with improved margins. No more warehouse fees. No more printing costs. No more sales force (seven Dorchester sales reps are out there right now, looking for new jobs.) Dorchester is making noises to the effect that e-books that do well may be released later in trade paperback size on a print-on-demand basis, but no one is holding their breath.

In researching this posting, I read that Prebich claims their authors have been “receptive” to the move, which sent me into hysterics. Every author I know who has books with Dorchester and every agent who has a client with books at Dorchester is in fits over the situation. You see, this development also hits authors who have moved on to other houses but whose backlist is still with Dorchester. Part of the concern comes from the perception that Dorchester is teetering on the brink of financial insolvency. There are rumors that many royalty and advance checks are not arriving. I’ve been told that under the terms of Dorchester’s contracts, in the event the company goes under, rights to books will not become part of any bankruptcy settlement but will revert to the individual authors. But the fact is, no author likes to see their books go out of print—or never make it into print in the first place.

Apart from the trauma felt by authors who have books with Dorchester, this development is troubling for the entire industry. Dorchester was known in the business as a house that didn’t pay large advances but was willing to take a chance on books that were “different.” If you were a new author who’d written something “weird” like a romance set in India or ancient Rome, it didn’t matter how wonderful that book was, the fact remained that the big houses were unlikely to even look at it. Dorchester would. Dorchester was publishing paranormal romances when no one else was. Dorchester is the only major publisher that still has a line of horror. Many of today’s bestselling authors, like Sabrina Jeffries, got their start at Dorchester.

If Dorchester goes under, the biggest losers will be the reading public.

(And if you're curious about the picture at the top, it's a photo Amazon's UK warehouse.)

Hallelujah!

2010-08-18T11:14:00.007-05:00

Martin Cruz Smith is one of my all-time favorite writers. For me, sinking down into one of his books is a giddy, delicious treat. Because he's one of those rare authors who has resisted corporate publishing's demands to produce a new book every year, it isn't a treat I get to enjoy very often. But Three Sations--the latest Arkady Renko novel--has finally been released.

You can read the New York Times review here.

I haven't ordered it yet because I'm trying to find an autographed copy. There aren't many writers whose books I'll go out of my way to get signed, but Martin Cruz Smith is one of them. Unfortunately, his refusal to play in the publishing game means his signed books are hard to get. The only one I have--Red Square--I found by chance. So I'll probably have to admit defeat and simply buy an unsigned copy. I'm not going to be able to hold out for much longer...

SOLA’s 2010 Nottoway Retreat

2010-08-15T17:02:00.006-05:00

Writers’ retreats are intended to provide writers with a moment out of time, a chance to get away from the preoccupations and stresses of daily life and simply focus on writing. SOLA (the South Louisiana chapter of RWA) holds their annual retreat at Nottoway Plantation, which is up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, in sugar cane country. (We won't talk about the year Hurricane Gustav took off the plantation’s roof.)

The Nottoway Retreat is a time for writers to hone their craft in workshops, to relax with other writers, to soak up the ambience of one of the South’s most gracious antebellum homes, to eat fine food, drink wine, listen to a certain inimitable Cajun raconteur, and, um, line dance (no, you don't get to see pictures of that).

This year Steve and I gave a workshop on plotting, but we went up a couple of days early just to relax, explore the plantation, walk along the river levee, and generally have time away from stuff. (That's a sugar cane field beyond Steve, in case you don't recognize it.)

I came home energized to get back to work on my Lady of Shalott book (I still haven’t settled on a title) and yet sublimely relaxed. Which I suppose is the whole point of a writers’ retreat, so I can honestly say it worked!

My Cat Monday: Huckleberry

2010-08-09T16:42:00.005-05:00

I’m feeling fed up with writing today, so I thought I’d blog about Huckleberry instead.

As far as Huckleberry is concerned, he’s the King of the World—or at least, he should be. In a well-aligned universe, a cat as big and beautiful as he is--and with such a regal tail!-- would be an only cat. But the Fates were cruel. Instead of being sole ruler of all he surveys, Huckleberry lives with a family that keeps inviting other felines to share what should be Huckleberry’s private fiefdom. The results are often not pretty.

The only cat Huck vaguely tolerates is Thomasina, who served as his adopted mother (we got them the same weekend; he was a six-week-old kitten, she was a two-year-old rescue cat who’d just had her own litter taken away). But even Thomasina only rates the bottom bunk.

Life would be easier if Huck weren’t so smart. He learned long ago how to open doors with lever handles, with the result that I finally gave up and changed all the doorknobs in the house. He’s also refined the psychological torment of his fellow [dumb] cats to an art form.

Yet although tries very hard not to show it, he’s actually secretly a sweetheart. He loves to be carried around like a baby. He even puts up with Danielle dressing him in Santa suits and Mardi Gras hats. (She says it’s good for him to have his ego taken down a few pegs every now and then.)

He would never condescend to sit on your lap or cuddle up next to you. Yet he trails me from room to room all day long, and he pines so terribly when I’m away that I take him up to the lake with me when I go on writing retreats. He’s not exactly fond of the car ride, but he does love being an only cat for a few days.

Seun Update

2010-08-05T12:08:00.004-05:00

An update for those of you who remember my post some time back about Seun, my daughter's incredible friend from Yale Law School who was working so hard on a drive to increase bone marrow transplant volunteers while battling leukemia himself. By late last winter Seun's illness had advanced to the point he could no longer wait for a suitable bone marrow transplant to show up. So he underwent the procedure with cord blood instead. Cord blood transplants do not require as exact a match, but the odds of survival (already long) are considerably reduced.

The procedure--which includes killing every immune cell in your body--is nasty, and the road to recovery is long and horrific. But if anyone can make it, it's Seun. He is now out of the hospital and is doing yoga and lifting weights to rebuild his strength. He's still planning to try to compete for Nigeria in the next Winter Olympics, and has recently started flying again. Oh, and he's studying for the NY bar exam, brushing up on his French, working again, taking gourmet cooking classes, and recently finished filming an ESPN documentary.

If you want to be inspired and amazed and uplifted, visit Seun's blog,here.

On Updating Websites, and an Interview

2010-08-02T10:19:00.004-05:00

This past weekend I updated my websites to reflect the new books that will be coming out, and in the process I decided to scrap the old home page of my C.S. Harris site.

When I first put up the Harris site, I subscribed to the adage that one should have a home page that loads onto the screen in its entirety. But in practice that proved to be very restricting, and in time it also just began to feel static. The new format enables me to showcase both books--What Remains of Heaven, which is coming out in trade paperback this week, and Where Shadows Dance, which will be released in hardcover next March. The new format also makes great use of the new book videos. I'd been questioning the time I spent to make them, but seeing them on the website reassured me. One of these days soon I'll probably redesign the C.S. Harris site; Shadows will be the fourth book released under this design, and while I still like it, I also have a yen for something new. Sort of like that itch you get to buy a new coat, or redo a tired garden bed.

Also, I have an interview up at a wonderful site called Paperback Dolls. As more and more newspapers cut their book sections, on-line sites like this one are becoming increasingly important sources of news about books and reviews of new releases. I've done a lot of interviews in my life, but I think the "Paperback Proust" section of this one definitely ranks as the most unique! I also must apologize because in rereading it, I realize I can't add or subtract. I started trying to get published eleven years after I first attempted to write a book, not sixteen years. (You'd think a mother would remember when her own children were born...) Anyway, you can read the interview here.

Final Thoughts on Book Videos

2010-07-28T12:57:00.003-05:00

Last one, I promise:

So, how effective are these things, anyway? I honestly don’t know. I personally can’t imagine buying a book simply on the basis of a book video, but I have seen some that were so boring I’ve thought, “Jeez, if the author bores me this badly in two minute, I’d be in tears after fifty pages.” (Which is probably unfair, because writing a book and creating a video advertisement are two very different talents.) So I suspect the first rule of book video production should be, Try not to bore your reader.

How? KEEP IT SHORT! The ones I just did are 40 seconds and probably would have been better at 30 seconds. Book videos are inherently boring, and it’s important to remember that we live in the MTV/Sesame Street Age. The most you can hope for is to convey to your viewer/potential book buyer a feeling for what your book is about. And I use the word “feeling” deliberately; you want to capture the overriding emotional impact of your story. Forget trying to cram in all of your characters’ motivations and problems. Forget showcasing all your clever plot twists and turns. Give me a taste, tease me, and then get out.

And even if you have all the money in the world, think twice about getting actors—even very, very good ones—to dramatize a scene from your book. Almost all the ones I’ve watched came off as just plain silly. Think about movie trailers: they don’t show us an entire scene. Hollywood tempts us with choice snippets—great visuals, clever lines—taken here and there from the movie, all presented in a fast format. I’ve seen authors who made dramatized book videos gush about how wonderful it was to see a scene from their book brought to life by actors. Great for the author, maybe; a bit of a yawn for everyone else. (The only exception to this I’ve seen is the book video for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which—since the title cues you in to expect something—is funny. But I personally would have cut it more; until the final payoff, it gets boring.)

If you don’t feel up to doing your own (although believe me, at this level it’s easy), there are companies that do book videos, probably the best-known being Circle of Seven Productions. They jumped into the business early and actually managed to trademark the term “book trailer.” I kicked around their website before sitting down to write this and I must say their videos are much better than they were when I looked at them three years ago. You can get an el cheapo version similar to my Sebastian videos for $350, which isn’t bad since it also includes limited distribution. Prices escalate rapidly from there, with actors flown in from LA, a production crew coming to your house to interview you, etc. et$$$. They also will distribute author-made videos for a price starting at something like $150, with their highest distribution package at $850 (this highest level is even an extra $800 for their own clients).

If you do your own, remember to respect copyright. When I sent my trailers to NAL, they sent me a legal release form. Obviously they’ve had trouble with authors including copyrighted photos or music in their book videos. No one sues faster than the music industry.

So what do you do with your video once it’s made? Mine are up on Facebook, on my website (eventually), here on my blog, on my publishers’ websites, and I’ll be sending them to any online sites that interview me (one coming soon). I notice that CSP sends their book trailers to libraries via “Overdrive”, whatever that is. One could undoubtedly be more aggressive in distributing them, but I have a book to write! Which as far as I’m concerned is the major problem with all this self-promotion crap: it takes authors away from what they do best. Writing.

Book Trailers, Part II

2010-07-25T12:39:00.003-05:00

The book video for The Babylonian Codex:

Some thoughts on the making of this trailer: This one was much easier to do than the two historical mystery trailers and turned out much more effective, I believe. The main reason it's more interesting and striking is because, since it's a contemporary, I could incorporate photographs. All of these shots are my own photos from a couple of recent trips (that's my daughter, in Fez, staring at the camera in that one shot; it has a strange, haunting quality, doesn't it?). The winged cherub is a picture I took in St. Louis cathedral last fall, never dreaming I would use it this way. The nice part about relying on my own photos is that I didn't need to worry about copyright violations.

But what really makes this trailer dramatic is the great score. Where did the music come from? Again, the need to respect copyright makes things difficult. But a composer and musician named Kevin MacLeod has a wonderful site up on the Web with all different sorts of music, all categorized, which is free to anyone who wants to use it. All he asks is a donation and credit, which I was more than happy to give him. He has some great stuff, and I would highly recommend him to anyone.

I did all three of these trailers in a day and a night. Many of those hours were spent relearning the program. I also devoted a lot of time to looking for music (even after I found MacLeod, I needed to listen to a lot of clips to find ones that were just right). And I tried out different photos and some variations in the text before I settled on what I liked best.

Will I make another one? Yes; it was fun. But for my next historical mystery trailer, I plan to take the time to search out photos that I can use to make it more like the Codex trailer.

Next up: the Shadows trailer, and some thoughts on just how effective are these things, anyway?

Book Trailers Revistied

2010-07-22T19:28:00.005-05:00

I've heard from more than one source that the overriding message coming out of Thrillerfest last week was that publishers expect authors to do ever more self-promotion. We hear this all the time, but the voices of the publishers are becoming strident. So in response, I decided to make a book trailer for the upcoming trade paperback release of What Remains of Heaven.

Long-time readers will recall that I did one for Why Mermaids Sing three years ago. At the time, I didn't actually expect it to have much of an impact on sales. My real motive was to make my publisher happy at a time when they were very unhappy about the state of my hometown post-Katrina. But I stumbled across that trailer the other day and was stunned to see that nearly 4,000 people had watched the video in the last few years. Now, I suspect most of those who watched it were already readers, or maybe they clicked on it by mistake, but what the heck. If it makes my publishers happy...

Of course, in the intervening three years I had totally forgotten how to make the dang things, so the learning curve was steep. By the time I finished it (many bleary-eyed hours and much muttering later) I decided to charge ahead and make a couple of more while I still knew what I was doing. So I also made trailers for Where Shadows Dance and The Babylonian Codex.

The Babylonian Codex turned out by far the best, in my opinion, largely I suspect because I had photos I could use for it. The historical mysteries' results were less satisfactory because I could only use the cover. I tried interspersing prints of old London but somehow they weren't right, so I fell back on the cover. And my editor couldn't send me the cover art minus the title, etc, because I'm told it's illegal to use it that way, so I was restricted to the actual cover with all that pesky writing, which made it even more difficult.

More to follow!

My Own Private Idaho

2010-07-20T19:21:00.008-05:00

I spent a significant chunk of my formative years in the mountains of Oregon and Idaho. The whisper of the wind moving through a stand of pines, the glint of sunlight off a deep blue glacial lake, the roar of a snow-fed mountain stream…all these are a part of who I am. But I last saw Idaho some nineteen long years ago, when I flew back from Australia to bury my father on a shady hillside overlooking the university town of Moscow. This summer, I journeyed back in the company of my daughters and my sister to bury my mother’s ashes there, too.

I expected the sight of my father’s grave to be wrenching, and it was. Yet I also found an unanticipated but nonetheless real peace in knowing that my mother was, finally, where she wanted to be—beside the man with whom she had shared so many incredible years of her life. That sad task complete, my sister and I then took some time to reacquaint ourselves with Idaho—and to share it with my girls.

I’d forgotten just how clear the lakes and rivers of Idaho are; how breathtakingly magnificent the mountains, how gloriously clean and fresh and oxygen-saturated the air. We drove up the St. Joe River, meandered around Coeur d’Alene and Pond Oreille lakes, even spent a couple of days down in McCall. It was more than a trip down memory lane. It was a reconnection with a time and a place that was dearer to me than I’d remembered.

Of course, much has changed in the last twenty or thirty years. Some cities like Coeur d’Alene and Boise have grown in ways one might regret. Yet Moscow has turned into a charmingly pleasant town, with gourmet restaurants, cute little coffee houses, exquisite bakeries, and a jazz band that played beside the square’s fountain during Saturday’s farmers’ market. And the land—the endless miles of forest-covered mountains and wide-open spaces—is much the same as it always has been, still hauntingly empty, still heart-stoppingly beautiful.

All of which made for a painful yet ultimately soothing and uplifting trip.

Gotta Love Kirkus

2010-07-18T21:37:00.003-05:00

I spent a big chunk of the weekend cleaning up files on my computer and organizing material for updates to my websites. In the process I ran across a Kirkus review of What Remains of Heaven that I'd never seen before. It's vintage Kirdus at their snarkyest best, and it made me laugh out loud. Here it is, for your pleasure:

What Remains of Heaven, by C.S. Harris
Review by Kirkus Book Review
"Who killed the cleric in the crypt? When the 1812 renovations to St. Margaret's, Tanfield Hill, accidentally bash a hole through the sealed entry to its crypt, there are two ghastly surprises. The dead body of Bishop Prescott, staunch abolitionist and leading contender for the soon-to-be-vacated post of Archbishop of Canterbury, lies sprawled across yet another dead body, this one partially mummified with a jeweled, Italianate dagger in its back. Bow Street, recognizing a matter too delicate for its own clumsy hands, calls upon Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin (Where Serpents Sleep, 2008, etc.). Within the compass of a few short weeks the aristocratic sleuth is shot at, horsewhipped, attacked with a meat cleaver, half-drowned and forced to kill three men himself. Undeterred, he accepts the responsibilities of fatherhood that have been impending ever since his reckless night with stubborn feminist Hero Jarvis, whose father had good reason to want Prescott dead; uncovers enough illegitimacies to keep the Town atwitter for generations; suspects both his father and Hero's of treason in aid of the colonies; and finds time to visit a prescient nanny-turned-witch who has secrets to impart about his own parentage. The mystery includes a smattering of political and church intrigue among a welter of family ties so intricate that a scorecard might have helped."

Kirkus almost disappeared late last year, but was rescued at the last hour. Most writers hate Kirkus, but they've given me some great reviews in the past and the fact that they're known to be parsimonious with their praise makes it all the more valuable when it comes.

Title Suggestions

2010-07-14T15:52:00.003-05:00

A huge Thank You to everyone for the enthusiastic response to my previous post.

I’ve compiled the suggested titles, leaving out only those with words that have already appeared in previous titles, such as die, sleep, sing, fear, and shadows. I’ve also changed a few suggestions that used “where” or “what” to “when” or “why.” I hope I’ve listed them all, but I just made it home after a brutal 24-hr flight from hell, so I’m a little the worse for wear. If anyone has any more suggestions, please feel free to jump in with them.

Here they are. So now tell me, what strikes your fancy?

When Legends Fall
When Legends Rise/Arise
Why Legends Arise
When Legends Wake
When Legends Lie
When Legends Hide
When Legends Weep
When Legends Curse/Are Cursed
Who Legends Chase
When Legends Speak
When Legends Meet
When Legends Breathe
When Legends Collide
When Legends Revile
When Legends Are Lies
When Legends Reign
When Legends Forget
When Legends Cry
When Legends End
When Legends Live
When Legends Dwell/Roam
When Legends Kneel
When Legends Veil
When Legends Echo
When Legends Weave
When Legends Drift/Float
When Legends Speak
Why Legends Rage
When/What Legends Mourn
When Legends Fade

Why Fables Survive

Why Maidens Weep/Cry
When Maidens Rage
When Lily Maidens Lie
Whom Maidens Lament
When Maidens Dream
Whom Maidens Spurn

When a Lady Lies Dead
When Death Lies Hidden
Why/When Morning Never Comes
When Dawn Never Comes

When Knights Weep
When Knights Descend
Why Knights Regret

Why Camelot Wept

When Sirens Call
When Sirens Rise
When Sirens Dwell
Who Speaks for Arthur
Who Speaks For Camelot

When Mirrors Curse
When/Why Mirrors Deceive/Live
When/Why Mirrors Crack

When/Why Whispers Curse

Who Defends the Web
Who Weaves the Web
Who Delights in Webs

When Kings Fall
When Kings Reign

Why Blind the Night
When Ravens Mock

Thoughts, anyone?

Title Quest

2010-07-06T11:47:00.003-05:00

Titling books is always tricky. I was pleased with the titles of my first three Sebastian books--What Angels Fear, When Gods Die, and Why Mermaids Sing. Then I ran into a snag with my fourth book. I don't recall the exact original title, but it had the word Virgin in it and that scared the Powers That Be. I called the fifth book What Hell Marks; the word "hell" was also too scary, so after much to-ing and fro-ing, they changed it to What Remains of Heaven. More drama ensued over the title of Book Number Six; Where Shadows Dance was actually the title I had envisioned for my seventh book. Which means I find myself stumped for a title for the manuscript I am now starting. Since I like to have a title on a book while I'm writing it, I thought I'd throw the process open to suggestions.

Without giving too much away, the murder victim--a beautiful but troubled young woman--is found in a boat floating at Camelot Moat, a real place just north of London. Since the victim--we'll call her Gabrielle, for now--is a scholar of the Arthurian legend, the tales of King Arthur play a significant role in the mystery, with a hat tip to Tennyson's Lady of Shallot. The book takes place when little Alfred is three years old, and the murder victim is his aunt.

This needs to be a "When" or a "Why" title, or a "Who", although those are tricky (a title I'd love to use for a future book is, Who Bells the Kat?) I'm considering using the word "legend", as in, When Legends BLANK,but I'm open to anything.

Suggestions, anyone?

New Contract!

2010-07-02T23:53:00.004-05:00

The revisions for Where Shadows Dance landed in my editor’s inbox on Tuesday evening at 6:35pm New York time. The next day, I received a call from my agent saying, “They’re offering us a contract for two more books.”

At which point, I went, “Huh? But… But… I haven’t sent them a proposal yet!”

I’ve been in this business a while—when Babylon and Shadows come out I will have published sixteen books—but this is the first time anyone has offered me a contract without seeing at least a couple of chapters and a synopsis. Considering how close this series came to ending at Number Five, it's pretty amazing. In case you can’t tell, I’m just a tad excited about it.

At any rate, I can now announce that there will definitely be a Book Seven and a Book Eight in the Sebastian St. Cyr series.

Flying High into the Sky

2010-06-28T12:56:00.005-05:00

I grew up the daughter of an Air Force officer. As a child, my life was filled with blue uniforms and the roar of jet engines. Some of my earliest memories are of drums and taps and nights at the officers club with men and their wives warbling, “Off we go into the wild blue yonder…” My mother was blessed with one of the world’s most godawful voices, but she loved to sing that song.

I heard that song again this weekend, when I watched through tear-swelled eyes as my older daughter graduated from COT (Commissioned Officer Training School) at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. My mother has been dead for three months now, my father for nearly nineteen years. But how I wished they could have been there, too, to share that moment. I know they’d have been as thrilled as I was.

Sam is currently in medical school and will go on active duty as a doctor when she graduates. I am very, very proud of her. Since Steve and I started writing thrillers, I’ve found it ironic how many people have acridly questioned our patriotism simply because our vision of what this country’s future should be doesn’t match theirs. My father was an Air Force colonel; my husband is a retired Army colonel; my sister was a Marine captain and her husband a Marine major. Now my daughter is an Air Force Second Lieutenant. We have always been a military family. And so it begins again.

Congratulations, Second Lieutenant Proctor.

Steampunk

2010-06-21T12:13:00.006-05:00

My children and my agent both frequently accuse me of living under a rock. So it’s probably no surprise that when my long-suffering agent, Helen, recently commented that the cover for Where Shadows Dance has a “steampunk look to it,” I went, “Huh?”

In my defense, I had heard of books that are in this genre, I just hadn’t heard of the genre itself. (Does that make it better, or worse?) At any rate, those of you familiar with the genre can now go away snickering. Those of you who live under a rock, too, might be interested in hearing what I discovered from Le Google.

Picture a world where steam drives not only trains but also all sorts of other anachronistic inventions like computers and airships; where women wear corsets and red satin, and life has a distinctive Victorian flavor and aesthetic. Throw in lots of brass and clock gears, perhaps a dragon or maybe even a vampire, and you have steampunk.

Steampunk existed even before someone slapped a label on it (the labeler was K.W. Jeter, back in the early 80s, although the genre has really taken off in recent years). Basically it’s a subgenre of sci-fi and speculative fiction, with the occasional fantasy elements. Some steampunk novels are alternative histories; some self-consciously adopt the style of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and Mary Shelley (all of whom are obvious sources for the movement).

There are even subgenres of this subgenre. “Flintlock fantasies” are set in the Regency or Napoleonic eras, when steam power was still in its infancy. “Western steampunk” channels the old Wild Wild West TV show (and movie remake) and melds with other subgenres, such as “weird west” and “science fiction westerns.” There is “steamgoth,” which is supposed to be even darker, although I get the impression steampunk is already pretty dark. And I’ve no doubt that someone out there is writing a steampunk romance or steampunk erotica.

The enthusiasm for this re-imagined Victorian world has become so great that the genre is no longer confined simply to books. There are steampunk computer role-playing games (“Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura”), steampunk music, steampunk-influenced interior decorating and design; there are even annual steampunk convention in both the States and the UK.

My own personal reading tastes have never run to science fiction or fantasy, so I didn't see any fiction that caught my fancy. But I do admire the spirit of invention and the renewed interest in craftsmanship and traditional materials the movement is inspiring, and it all looks like a lot of fun.

This old stove has been retrofitted with a hi-end electric Miele halogen cooktop and two electric ovens; the copper bowl at the base of the fancy water filter is for the owner's dogs. If you're interested in seeing more of a steampunked house, take a look at this.