This blog fell into disuse when my life got complicated. I am leaving it here as a resource because it still contains some twelve years of essays on any number of things. For updates, please check my website at csharris.net. 

WHEN FALCONS FALL Wins RT's Reviewers' Choice Award, and a Visit to Poisoned Pen

Here's a fun picture from my visit to the Poisoned Pen in Arizona last weekend. This is such an great bookstore, it's always a pleasure to visit it. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and met some amazing writers I wish I'd had a chance to get to know better.

In other news, my little rescue, Kit-Kat, has not been gaining weight despite eating a ton. A trip back to the vet confirmed that her nasty tapeworm infestation is gone, but likely left her with a leaky gut, and she is showing some worrisome fluid in her belly. She's now on steroids, and I'm spending a lot of time fretting about her. We've decided she's older than originally thought, probably at least 10-12. So she's not a young cat, but we're hoping we can help her pull through this.

And, finally, it's just been announced that WHEN FALCONS FALL has won RT's Reviewers' Choice award for best historical mystery of 2016, which is a tremendous honor. Thank you, RT!

Some Updates, and Saying Goodbye to Angel

Where to begin? I've been pretty godawful sick this last month, which is lousy timing considering my latest Sebastian book, WHERE THE DEAD LIE, was released this month. But I think I'm starting to pull out of it.

My trip to Houston was fun. Thanks to everyone who came to my signing at Murder By the Book. I'll be in Scottsdale, Arizona, this Saturday at the Poisoned Pen, so if you're in the area, do stop by!

I was terrified we were going to lose Angel while I was in Houston, but thankfully he waited until the day after I came home to say goodbye.  He was my mother's cat until she died 7 years ago, and so in a sense it was like losing my last thread to her. But I also loved him dearly for his own sake. He was an exuberantly affectionate cat, sitting on my lap while I wrote and sleeping curled up in the crook of my arm every night. He was 18 years old and had been failing for the last couple of months, but it's still been really, really hard to lose him.

And then there's this complication:

She showed up outside my door the Thursday before Angel died, and was so skinny I called her "My Skeleton." After repeating (over and over again) "I don't need another cat!" and feeding her umpteen cans of food outside (for some reason she can't seem to eat dried) for 12 days without much improvement, I finally scooped her up yesterday and carried her off to the vet. Fortunately her tests for nasty cat diseases were negative, although she was horribly infested with fleas and worms. She's now in isolation until that clears up, and then I'm not sure what I'm doing since I had promised Roscoe and Peanut I was going to let them out of their three-room apartment (Roscoe is a Big Mean Cat who picks on other cats, so I had kept him separated from Angel). This little girl acted virtually feral outside, one of the reasons I hesitated to bring her in (that, plus the old flea collar). But now that she's inside she has surprised me by being very friendly. She really is a pathetic thing, and since Skeleton is an unkind name, she's now Kit-Kat. But she's still a skinny, scruffy mess.

Beyond that, I've turned in the proposal for Sebastian #14, WHO SLAYS THE WICKED. And I've just learned they lost the model they used for the last few covers--he's gone off to be a fireman. So we'll be having a new guy for the cover of WHY KILL THE INNOCENT. Fingers crossed he looks the part!

Interview Podcast

I did an interview last week with Susan Larson for The Reading Life. It's a great interview, and you can listen to it on podcast here: http://wwno.org/post/reading-life-john-barry-and-cs-harris

I talk about the background of Where the Dead Lie and my ideas for the future of the series, as well as my new standalone historical, Good Time Coming. My interview is second, and comes at around 13:40.

Coming' at Ya in One Week!

One week from today, Tuesday, April 4, is the official release date for WHERE THE DEAD LIE, the twelfth in the Sebastian St. Cyr series. To whet your appetite, here's a sneak peek at the beginning!

Chapter 1

Monday, 13 September 1813: hours before dawn

The boy hated this part. Hated the eerie way the pale, waxen faces of the dead seemed to glow in the faintest moonlight. Hated being left alone with a stiffening body while he dug its grave.

He kicked the shovel deep into the ground and felt his heart leap painfully in his chest when the scrape of dirt against metal sounded dangerously loud in the stillness of the night. He sucked in a quick breath, the musty smell of damp earth thick in his nostrils, his fingers tightening on the smooth wooden handle as he paused to cast a panicked glance over one shoulder.

A mist was drifted up from the Fleet to curl around the base of the nearby shot tower and creep along the crumbling brick walls of the abandoned warehouses beyond it. He heard a dog bark somewhere in the distance and, nearer, a soft thump.

What was that?

The boy waited, his mouth dry, his body tense and trembling. But the sound was not repeated. He swiped a ragged sleeve across his sweaty face, swallowed hard, and bent into his work. He was uncomfortably aware of the cloaked gentleman watching from the seat of the cart that waited at the edge of the field. The gentleman had helped drag Benji’s body over to the looming shot tower. But he never helped dig. Gentlemen didn’t dig graves, although they could and did kill with a vicious delight that made the boy shiver as he threw another shovelful of dirt onto the growing pile.

The hole was beginning to take shape. Another six inches or so and he’d—

“Hey!”

The boy’s head snapped around, and he froze.

A ragged, skeletally thin figure lurched from the gaping doorway of one of the tumbledown warehouses. “Wot ye doin’ there?”

The shovel hit the ground with a clatter as the boy bolted. He fell into the newly dug grave and went down, floundering in the loose dirt. Feet flailing, he reared up on splayed hands, found solid ground, and pushed off.

“Oye!” shouted the ghostly specter.

The boy tore across the uneven field, his breath soughing in and out, his feet pounding. He saw the gentleman in the cart jerk, saw him gather the reins and spank them hard against his horse’s rump.

“Wait for me!” screamed the boy as the cart lurched forward, its iron-rimmed wheels rattling over the rutted lane. “Stop!’

The gentleman urged the horse into a wild canter. He did not look back.

The boy leapt a low, broken stretch of the stone wall that edged the field. “Come back!”

The cart careened around the corner and out of sight, but the boy tore after it anyway. Surely the gentleman would stop for him? He wouldn’t simply leave him, would he?

Would he?

The boy was sobbing now, his nose running, his chest aching as he fought to draw air into his lungs. It wasn’t until he reached the corner himself that he dared risk a frantic look back. That’s when he realized the skeletal figure wasn’t following him.

The man—for the boy saw now that it was a man and not some hideous apparition—had paused beside the raw, unfinished grave. And he was staring down at what was left of Benji Thatcher. 

Enter to Win the Entire Sebastian St. Cyr Series! (well, at least the series so far)

Penguin is giving away a set of the entire Sebastian St. Cyr series, up to and including an Advance Readers Copy of Where the Dead Lie. The link to enter is:

https://sweeps.penguinrandomhouse.com/enter/enter-sebastian-st-cyr-mysteries

You can enter until 11:59 ET on March 29th. Unfortunately, entry is restricted to U.S. residents only. But it's a pretty cool offer. Good luck!

WHERE THE DEAD LIE Upcoming Events

I've finally finished Sebastian St. Cyr #13, WHY KILL THE INNOCENT (coming April 2018) and now started on Sebastian #14, WHO SLAYS THE WICKED (coming April 2019).  If you've been following my family's various health issues, I can say that Peanut is now fully recovered, fat, and sassy, Angel (who recently had his 18th birthday) is still hanging in there (although he gave us a scare by first getting a bad cold, then by falling off the dryer and hurting his back), and my son-in-law has just undergone a scary surgery which hopefully will fix or at least improve his long string of health crises. We're now 72 hours out from that.

AND things are about to get hectic with my upcoming book release. Here is my current schedule. If you live anywhere in the area of one of these events, I hope you can come by and say hi!

1. Jane Austen Literary Festival

Saturday, 1 April 2017, 2:45 pm

Panel and book signing

Old Mandeville Trailhead

675 Lafitte Street

Mandeville, Louisiana

2. Garden District Book Shop

Book signing 

Tuesday, 4 April 2017 

6-7:30pm

The Rink

2727 Prytania Street

New Orleans, Louisiana

3. Murder by the Book

Book signing 

Saturday, 8 April, 4:30pm

2342 Bissonnet St

Houston, Texas

4. Poisoned Pen

Cozy Con 

Book signing

22 April 2017, 1-4 pm

4014 N. Goldwater Blvd

Scottsdale, Arizona

In other news, WHEN FALCONS FALL, Sebastian #12, is now out in trade paperback. My publisher has switched their paperback reprints from mass market size to trade because, bluntly, the market for the little paperbacks is drying up and a lot of outlets don't carry them any more. The New York Times has even quit printing a mass market paperback bestseller list, which is really hard for me to wrap my head around! 

It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, the change has on the paperback sales, although the truth is my sales have always been strongest in hardcover and ebook. But I know the switch will be rough on all you OCD types out there. Believe me, I understand.  

Hold Onto Your Carriage Strap . . .

So I guess I'm not doing so well on my New Years Resolutions! Oh, well...

At any rate, here is the charming review Kirkus just gave WHERE THE DEAD LIE. They think the book is a tad "bleak." Because Kirkus has a tendency to give away too much, I have edited it slightly. But be sure not to miss the last couple of sentences; they're real charmers!

In Regency England, a viscount pursues the sadistic killer of London's most vulnerable denizens. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, and his former comrade in arms, surgeon Paul Gibson, have seen more than their share of violent death in wartime. But neither one can look calmly at the body of Benji Thatcher, a street urchin who [was tortured and murdered]. The death of one more homeless pickpocket is unlikely to cause a stir among most of fashionable London, but Gibson and Sebastian specialize in solving crimes that others can't or won't. 

Sebastian's wife, Hero, is a social reformer who's writing a series of articles about the poor of London, and while she interviews some of the street children who knew Benji, Sebastian uses the testimony of an old soldier who saw and interrupted someone digging Benji's grave as a starting point for finding out what happened not just to Benji, but to a number of other homeless children who've disappeared. The owner of a secondhand store helps direct Sebastian to a brothel catering to clients who like their prostitutes young, and contraband copies of a book by the Marquis de Sade bring Sebastian closer to identifying the person responsible for the pitiful collections of children's bones buried near the shallow grave meant for Benji. Unfortunately, Sebastian's suspects—an actor, a French count, a dissolute marquis' heir about to marry into Sebastian's family, and an even more highly connected person who's also a relative of Hero—all have alibis. 

But Sebastian's power-hungry father-in-law presents the biggest obstacle to his sleuthing in a tale that, despite top boots and tall hats, velvet spencers and gowns à la grecque, and even a cat named Mr. Darcy, is a far cry from the world of Jane Austen. Harris (When Falcons Fall, 2016, etc.) is as determined as her lead couple to explore London's underbelly. Hold onto your carriage strap: the tangle of familial, criminal, and political conflict makes for bleak reading.

A New Year

Do you make New Year's resolutions? I read the other day that one should call them "intentions"--the theory being that relabeling them might make them less intimidating and help us feel less of a failure when we inevitably stumble.

I usually do make them, and they're typically the same ones every year: eat healthily, exercise more, get more sleep, stop wasting time. I actually do eat healthily most days (the result of some twenty years of making the same resolution), and I exercise when my aching joints allow. The sleep and time-wasting are still a work in progress.

Another of my resolutions this year is to be better at keeping this blog. I do like to be upbeat on it because nobody needs a Debbie Downer, and last year was such a rolling series of disasters that I found it increasingly hard to strike the necessary note. Maybe this year . . .

I can tell you that having my girls home for Christmas was beyond wonderful (and Maddie and Zydeco! I've really missed those two. Look how big and fat Maddie is!). My little Peanut is now just fine. One thing I learned from our vet is that runts of the litter, when they hit 7-8, usually start having health problems. So another of my resolutions is to spoil her. She's not complaining.

I'm back at work on my next Sebastian book (tentatively entitled Why Kill the Innocent), and the end is finally, finally within sight. I've reached the point where I'm more than anxious to move on to #14 (Who Slays the Wicked--love that title). I'm also looking forward to the release of WHERE THE DEAD LIE, coming in April. It has already received a nice Publishers Weekly review, which I should be able to share soon. This is undoubtedly my darkest book, by far. I wonder why?

I will be going over to San Antonio again in few weeks to be with my daughter while her husband undergoes major surgery. Another of my resolutions this year is to try to stay calm and meditate more.

We'll see how I do.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

I have both my girls coming home this holiday season: Samantha and her husband (and Maddie, Zydeco, Loki, and Odin, too) are here already, and Danielle and Ryan arrive the day after Christmas. The fact that they're all going to be here at the same time set me on a mad scramble to paint Dani's old room and get it fixed up with a double bed in time for the holidays. But everything is now finished--room painted, bed delivered, tree up, house decorated, presents wrapped. I've shelved my writing until after the new year (with just 35 pages left in the 13th Sebastian book!), and now I'm simply settling down to enjoy my family and the holidays.

It's a full house, with eight cats, one dog, four people, and two more soon to come (thankfully Danielle's two cats aren't coming, too!), but Maddie is the Queen and she knows it. She is SO BIG, and still as sweet (and bad) as ever. She especially likes the village under the tree. Ahem.

Huckleberry always loved the tree and village so much that I must admit it was hard putting it up without his help. BUT, my little Peanut is still on the mend, and while I can't completely relax, I think she is going to make it. And my son-in-law, while still so terribly ill, was able to make it here for Christmas, so we are thankful for that. And Steve is now walking well enough that he was able to put up the crown molding in Danielle's room (that was the one room in the house that didn't have it).

I know things could have been so much worse, but this has been a pretty awful year, so here's hoping for a better 2017. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Some Updates

First, an update on Peanut: She's still with us, and while I don't want to jinx anything, she seems to have turned a corner. She's now eating on her own and is bathing herself, and we've been able to stop the subcutaneous fluids. It's been a hard (and expensive!!!) two weeks, and we're still not relaxing entirely, but we're hopeful. She also now officially hates my guts.

And here's a lovely review of my new standalone historical, Good Time Coming, from the Historical Novel Society:

https://historicalnovelsociety.org/the-personal-loss-of-war-as-illustrated-in-c-s-harris-good-time-coming/

Release Day!

Today is the U.S. publication date for GOOD TIME COMING, my standalone historical, that should now be available everywhere in all formats.

I'd planned to do all sorts of promotional things for this book, but they all collapsed in the face of the awful year that has been 2016. At the moment we're fighting to keep alive our little Peanut, the runt of the litter my daughter rescued just seven years ago. So I will post links here to two interviews I've done in which I talk about the book and my writing. The interviewers asked some great questions and are well worth the read.

The first is with Layered Pages at:
https://layeredpages.com/2016/12/01/interview-with-best-selling-author-c-s-harris/

The second is here:
https://nicoleevelina.com/2016/11/28/interview-with-bestselling-historical-novelist-c-s-harris/

More soon, hopefully. I just want this year to end.

PW's Review of GOOD TIME COMINGhttp://csharris.blogspot.com/

My new standalone historical, GOOD TIME COMING, has received a wonderful review from Publishers Weekly. Here are a few excerpts (I'm not printing the entire thing because I thought it gave away a bit too much of the story):

In a distinct departure from her popular Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series, Harris tells a powerful story of war's destruction of property, people, hopes and morals during the Civil War in Louisiana. This is top-notch historical fiction, thoroughly researched and vividly presented, revealing the Civil War in all its brutality. . . 

. . . an excellent story, full of suspense and historical detail.

I've also received a starred review from Booklist, but I can't put that up until it's officially out on November 15.

AND while I'm still waiting for final approval from New York, I think I may have a title of Sebastian #13: Why Not the Innocent?

Fall!

When I was a kid, my favorite time of year was always summer. It was a no brainer: no school, and long days spent playing outside in the sun or reading, reading, reading. As the mother of young children I still loved summer, spent largely at the beach or exploring the Adelaide Hills with my girls. Then I moved to New Orleans. Summers here are brutal and endless, and my heat tolerance seems to have gone away. So my new favorite season is autumn, when the mornings are actually cool and I can work out in the garden without suffering heat stroke. It's wonderful.

I'm still chugging away at my next Sebastian book, #13, which still has no title (yeah, I'm starting to panic about that). It should be finished by now, but I am having a hard time concentrating thanks to the election. (I will be so glad when it is over!) I've also been doing the research for the World War II novella I'll be writing. Research is always fun, and it's the one thing that can distract me from obsessively reading about the you-know-what.

My new standalone historical, GOOD TIME COMING, has received some wonderful reviews, including a starred review from Booklist. I hope to get those up next week. In other news, Steve is gradually improving, but my son-in-law had surgery last week and we're waiting on test results. Scary times. On a lighter note, here's a picture my daughter sent me of Maddie, who's growing up fast. She and Zydeco may be coming to stay with us again. More soon.

Lots of Stuff

Yeah, I know I've been MIA again. So, THINGS:

First of all, I've spent the last few weeks going over the galleys for WHERE THE DEAD LIE, coming in April 2017. This is always exciting because it means the book is that much closer to going into production. I've also been correcting the galleys for the paperback version of WHEN FALCONS FALL. Penguin has decided to shift the paperback releases from mass market size to trade. Some people love trade paperbacks, some people hate them. (And others with my OCD tendencies will no doubt object to their collection of the series now being in different sizes--grrr.) The rationale for the change is that outlets such as Target prefer trades and others such as Barnes and Noble keep trades in the store longer than mm. My mm sales have always been sluggish since my readers tend to buy my books when they first come out in either hardcover or ebook.  So basically they are looking for new readers who typically buy trade paperbacks. Anyway, here's the cover for the new trade reprint. I asked them to put more of the original blue and green coloration back in the painting, and they sorta did.

Bouchercon was fun but a bit hectic, and marred by the fact that the hotel had a bad case of mold in their ventilation system. Katrina left me with mold-agrevated adult-onset asthma, so that's part of why I've been missing the last few weeks. Anyway, my panel was great, and Andrew Grant proved to be a fantastic moderator. But what I want to know is, Why do I look like a little kid in this picture? Am I really this short?! Or was everyone else on that panel tall?

And now for the big reveal: I am taking part in a new historical mystery anthology with Susanna Kearsley, Anna Lee Huber, and Christine Trent. Currently titled THE JACOBITE'S WATCH and pitched as in the tradition of The Red Violin, this collection of four novellas will range from the mid-1700s until World War II and tell the story of an infamous pocket watch that wrecks havoc in the lives of those who seek to contain its mysterious force. My novella will be the final one, set in World War II in Kent. The anthology is scheduled to be published sometime in 2018, and should be a lot of fun. So more on this to come.

And, finally, thanks to everyone for your kind thoughts on our recent troubles. My son-in-law is improving daily (although a diagnosis as to what caused his near-death experiences is frighteningly still elusive . . .) Steve has his cast off and is slowly regaining strength in his leg; I've now hurt MY leg and can barely walk. (I'm beginning to think it's a curse . . . ) Fortunately, I no longer have the dog to exercise, although Steve and I both miss Maddie and Zydeco desperately. We're looking forward to them coming to visit at Christmas. (Oh, yeah, my daughter and s-i-l will be coming, too!)

Bouchercon

Bouchercon, the premier mystery convention, is happening this week in New Orleans, and yes I will be there, if not exactly with bells on. 

I'll be on a panel at 9:30 am Friday in Mardi Gras Room D. Also on Friday I'll be doing a Sebastian St. Cyr book signing at 2:40 in the Bookworm. AND I'll be signing Good Time Coming at 12:40 on Thursday in the Bookworm. This standalone historical isn't officially released in the States until December, but they will have copies there for sale. 

In other news, I took Zydeco and Maddie back to San Antonio this past weekend, which was an extraordinarily hard thing to do. One can grow enormously attached to furry little guys in six weeks. But my son-in-law is slowly improving, and he really wanted his friends back to cuddle while he convalesces. Plus, with the convention coming up, I would have needed to board Zydeco for five days and that would not have been good for his psyche. We were hoping Steve would be walking well enough by this week to take over while I was gone, but a few weeks ago he tried to do too much, fell, and broke his right leg (yes; really). So now he's in a cast. Thankfully it isn't a bad break.

But I really missed my tail-wagging companion on my walk this morning. And sitting down to write without little missy's help is just wrenching. On the other hand, Angel is very glad to have his house and people back to himself.

More on GOOD TIME COMING

Here is the cover copy!

I killed a man the summer I turned thirteen . . .

Thus begins C. S. Harris’s haunting, lyrically beautiful tale of coming of age in Civil War-torn Louisiana. Eleven-year-old Amrie St. Pierre is catching tadpoles with her friend Finn O’Reilly when the Federal fleet first steams up the Mississippi River in the spring of 1862. With the surrender of New Orleans, Amrie’s sleepy little village of St. Francisville – strategically located between the last river outposts of Vicksburg and Port Hudson – is now frighteningly vulnerable. As the roar of canons inches ever closer and food, shoes, and life-giving medicines become increasingly scarce, Amrie is forced to grow up fast. But it is her own fateful encounter with a tall, golden-haired Union captain named Gabriel that threatens to destroy everything and everyone she holds most dear.

Told with rare compassion and insight, this is a gripping, heart-wrenching story of loss and survival; of the bonds that form amongst women and children left alone to face the hardships, depravations, and dangers of war; and of one unforgettable girl’s slow and painful recognition of the good and evil that exists within us all.

On a related note, there's been some confusion about pub dates here and overseas, as well as ebook sales and preorder dates, but I think I now have them figured out. Sort of.

The hardcover version of the book is currently available for preorder both here and overseas. It will go on sale in Britain and related countries at the end of August and in the US and Canada at the beginning of December. The ebook will not be available in Britain until it is available here in December (weird, I know, and I don't have a clue why). The ebook will not be available any where for preorder until six weeks before it goes on sale in the States, so  that means preorders should be available in mid-October. Again, I don't quite understand the delay, but that's the way it's set up. 

A Book Giveaway

THE CONTEST IS NOW OVER.

The winners are:

The books are going to:
Winter's Child by Margaret Coel - Diane Johnson
Blood Defense by Marcia Clark - Becky Denham
Who Buried the Dead by C. S. Harris - Penny Tuttle
Death in the Off-Season by Francine Mathews - April Schilling
Books of a Feather by me - Laurie Metz
Knit to be Tied by Maggie Sefton - Tom Williams
The Last Good Place by Robin Burcell - Author - Robin Gandy Harsh
What You See by Hank Phillippi Ryan - Judi Robins
Dead Man's Switch by Tammy Kaehler (author) - Kasey Dunham

And special congratulations to our GRAND PRIZE WINNER (all 9 books!) - Liz Caldwell

Winners, please send your mailing addresses to the contest coordinator at jenel (at) jenellooney (dot) com by August 30 to claim your prize. 

Thank you so much to everyone who entered. I hope you had as much fun with this giveaway as we did!