Kirkus Reviews WHAT DARKNESS BRINGS

Kirkus Reviews occupies a special niche in the publishing world. They're known for flaying authors unmercifully, for being cantankerous and curmudgeonly, but also for being that rare, lone voice that will dare to say the emperor has no clothes. A lot of authors cheered when the publication almost went under three years ago, but I've always liked Kirkus, perhaps because they gave When Gods Die a star (a starred Kirkus review is truly a rare thing). Their reviews often make me laugh out loud--even when they make me wince. So here it is:



Napoleon and Prinny, England’s Prince Regent, both lust after a 45-carat blue diamond.

After Daniel Eisler, a gem merchant with a fascination for the occult and a sideline in blackmail, is shot dead in his untidy house, magistrate Bertram Leigh-Jones catches Russell Yates, a homosexual profligate, standing over the deceased and whisks him off to Newgate to await trial. Sebastian St. Cyr, still devoted to his first love, Kat, now in a marriage of convenience with Yates, steps in to prove him innocent. This noble decision not only endangers his own pregnant wife, Hero, but pits him against her father, Lord Jarvis, half the cutthroats skulking around Haymarket, and certain French agents Napoleon sent across the channel in pursuit of a diamond looted from the French crown jewels during the Revolution and thought to have been in Eisler’s possession. Was Eisler killed to retrieve the magnificent blue diamond? Was he slain by someone so in debt to him he had to let Eisler debauch his wife as partial repayment? Or did the Prince Regent himself target Eisler to reclaim the diamond that had been pawned by his loathed wife, Caroline? Jenny, a doxy who was hiding in a priest’s hole during Eisler’s demise, knows whodunit. But can Sebastian locate and save her from assassination and Yates from the gallows before it’s too late?

A lively foray into early-19th-century politics, treacheries and moral indiscretions, though fans of the series (When Maidens Mourn, 2012, etc.) will lament Hero’s relegation to a back seat this time around.

from Kirkus Reviews.

Book Video for WHAT DARKNESS BRINGS

The book video for What Darkness Brings is now up on YouTube. (Due to a slight hitch, I'm reposting this, so my apologies to those of you receiving duplicates.)



Publishers seem to love these things, but I've always had the feeling that the only people who watch them are people who already buy my books. What do you think?

Is That a Lightbulb I See Before Me, On the Cover of My New Regency Mystery?

Last week I posted the new cover for What Darkness Brings, due out next March:

Then one of my observant readers, Jan, pointed out that there was an electric light fixture in the picture!

If you only knew how many times I stared at that cover without seeing that light! I suppose my excuse (and it's a feeble one!) is that I was so focused on the male figure in the picture, I didn't see much else. I'm prohibited from showing you the original, but I can say that in the first version of the cover, the male figure did not look anything like I thought he should, to put it mildly. He had short hair, and no Mr. Darcy-like sideburns. He was also as pale as a vampire, his hair looked half gray, and he could have been forty-five years old. I sent them photos of Regency-era men's hairstyles and said, Please can you make his hair much longer and darker? And give him sideburns and more color? And tighten up his neck and give him more pronounced cheekbones and make him look a bit leaner and, and, and...

Yet in all that back and forth, I never looked up at the church gable and said, Oh, by the way, is that a lightbulb?

Of course, once it was pointed out to me, the danged thing stuck out like a proverbial sore thumb. I immediately sent a panicked email to my editor, and we've just this morning received word that, Yes, there is time to photoshop that oops out of the cover. I'll be posting the new version when it becomes available. From now on, my editor and I will be going over future covers with a magnifying glass!

So bless you, Jan. And yes, you most deserve a reward! Please see my response in the comments section of the previous post.

Update: Here's the new, corrected version.

New Cover!

Finally! Here it is:

So what do you think?

What Darkness Brings

I don't think I posted this before. At any rate, here is the cover copy for What Darkness Brings, book number eight in the Sebastian St. Cyr series.



The death of a notorious London diamond merchant draws aristocratic investigator Sebastian St. Cyr and his new wife Hero into a sordid world of greed, desperation, and the occult, when the husband of Sebastian’s former lover Kat Boleyn is accused of the murder.

Regency England, September 1812: After a long night spent dealing with the tragic death of a former military comrade, a heart-sick Sebastian learns of a new calamity: Russell Yates, the dashing, one-time privateer who married Kat a year ago, has been found standing over the corpse of Benjamin Eisler, a powerful gem dealer. Yates insists he is innocent, but he will surely hang unless Sebastian can unmask the real killer.

For the sake of Kat, the woman he once loved and lost, Sebastian plunges into a treacherous circle of intrigue. Although Eisler’s clients included the Prince Regent and the Emperor Napoleon, he was a despicable man with many enemies and a number of dangerous, well-kept secrets—including a passion for arcane texts and black magic. Central to the case is a magnificent blue diamond, believed to have once formed part of the French crown jewels, which disappeared on the night of Eisler’s death. As Sebastian traces the diamond’s ownership, he uncovers links that implicate an eccentric, powerful financier named Hope and stretch back into the darkest days of the French Revolution.

As the killer grows ever more desperate and vicious, Sebastian finds his still-new marriage to Hero tested by his loyalty to his first love, especially when Sebastian begins to suspect that Kat is keeping secrets of her own. And when matters reach a crisis, Sebastian must face a bitter truth—that he has been less than honest with the calm, fearless woman who is now his wife.

Finished! (well, almost...)

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.

We Have a Title!

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.)