Barbara's Blog

  Father's Day memories of a Classic '50s Dad: kind, responsible, worked hard for his family and his Church, loved nature and took us hiking and camping and to museums (and to Disneyland - back when it was affordable! - even though he hated crowds!). Loved us. Loved my Mom. Like the animals in the wild that he loved, he believed in teaching his young to survive on their own (bank accounts when we were in our early teens, "always have an emergency fund.") Fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Roman history, Zane Gray; told us about the Iliad and the Odyssey (and got us the Classic Comics versions when they came out). Like Hector in the Iliad, who says of his baby son, "I would like one day to hear men say of him, 'He's a better man than his father.'" Knowing him - having him as a mentor - was one of the greatest gifts of my life. Love you, Dad! In other news: The next Benjamin January novel, "Murder in the Trembling Lands", will be out next month...

  HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Here is a deeply unflattering picture of me on the beach this morning, wearing 4 layers under my gi and looking like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, after doing 1100 sword-cuts with my iaido group at sunrise, a dojo tradition of "spirit training." After the Misogi - as it's called - we walked down to the ocean, to watch the waves materialize out of a horizonless gray eternity of fog.

    Finally, I've had the time (and the mental energy) to thrash through the tiring and complicated process of uploading two new further adventures onto Amazon Kindle! I will upload them onto Smashwords (or its new twin, Draft-2-Digital) in a few days. It's been a very stressful couple of years, between tight deadlines, a summer of travel, assorted pressures from the Outside World, and some necessary house and car repairs. (I feel like I'm just starting to come out of the first phase of grief over my mother's passing, almost three years ago, and that slows everything down.) But, the stories are up on Kindle and people tell me they've downloaded them successfully, so I didn't screw that up. There have been a couple of changes to the Amazon-Kindle system in the past couple of years and I wasn't sure I was doing the upload properly, but evidently even the Table of Contents in Cat's Paw works. (I had my doubts). Cat's Paw is John Aversin and Jenny Wayn...

Dad in his Marine days. Prior to that he was in the Army at the end of WW-2. He served in China, but would never talk about it. A salute to America's Veterans.  

  In honor of Halloween - though this picture of me and my dear friend Allan Rothstein was taken a day or so after Thanksgiving, sometime in the '80s, at a LosCon in LA. We competed in the Masquerade as Hades and Persephone. In other news, I finished the 22nd Benjamin January mystery - working title "Chalmette" (since it deals with a long-cold case of a disappearance, and with Ben's service in the Battle of New Orleans). The editor says the title doesn't say "mystery" to her and it will probably be changed. I'll keep you posted. I was very pleased when my preliminary research for the mystery at the core of the plot turned out that the hypothetical situation I'd come up with actually existed: there really WAS a villainous mastermind behind nefarious deeds! I turned the manuscript in Monday and have been in severe post-partum depression ever since - which usually happens when I turn in a manuscript. Here's another picture of me at a Costume-Con...

  It's official! I will be one of the eight Guests of Honor at the 2026 World Science Fiction Convention, held in Anaheim, August 27-31 2026. (And I get to celebrate my 75th birthday at the con!) https://www.lacon.org/ Other Guests of Honor include artist Tim Kirk (whose work I've loved since the early '70s!), screenwriter and producer Ron Moore, cartoonist Colleen Doran, engineer Dr. Anita Sengupta, Stan Sakai (Go, Usagi!), fan GoH Geri Sullivan, and Toastmaster and illustrator Ursula Vernon - truly amazing company to be in. I am sort of speechless - and just very glad that people think my work is good. Thank you to the con committee!

  Whew! Back from the Celsius 232 Fantasy Festival in Aviles, Spain - a truly wonderful gathering and unlike any other convention I've been to. Other than the fact that everyone around me was speaking Spanish most of the time - though the Festival's amazing organizers, Jorge, Diego, Lu, Tomas and many others provided me with translators, and a lot of people spoke English - THANK YOU, ALL! But, whereas most conventions in the US take place in hotels and convention centers, Celsius has panels, presentations, and workshops in a dozen venues all around the small area of the city's Renaissance-era center.  That picture is of the hotel they put me up in, a 17th century nobleman's palace now doing business as the Palacio Hotel. (I felt like I was visiting Don Simon Ysidro at home). The window looked down on the town square, with a view of an old church and the sound of the town hall bells ringing the hours. Large events took place in the city cultural center's auditorium, ...