Barbara's Blog

  Whew! I seem to always be apologizing for not keeping up with my Social Media - and I apologize yet again. Since Thanksgiving I have been working down to the wire on the deadline for the third Hollywood mystery, Saving Susie Sweetchild - a bit darker than the first two, since it deals with the kidnapping of a child. But the manuscript is done, I really enjoyed both working on it and researching it (except researching the parts about actual kidnappings in the 'teens and '20s of the 20th Century. That was pretty awful). The stuff about how child stars were treated in the silent films was pretty scary as well. I HIGHLY recommend Diana Serra Carey's Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy? and Hollywood's Children . Benjamin January # 20 ( 20?!? ), The Nubian's Curse , will be out in January - in time for at least part of the holiday season, since the frame-story is Christmas-to-Twelfth-Night. And I hope to get at least a little down-time, to work (finally!) on more Further...

  Happy Thanksgiving to all! A very busy time of year here, even BEFORE the giant windstorm stripped the palm-tree in my back yard of ALL its accumulated dead fronds and deposited them in my front yard. (The nice folks from 800-GOT-JUNK? just drove away with an entire truck-load). Just finished the next-to-last polish of "Saving Susie Sweetchild" (Hollywood #3), and will get started (finally!) on a couple of Further Adventures before tackling the final polish and pulling together outlines for the next Benjamin January and the next Hollywood mysteries. Benjamin January # 20 - "The Nubian's Curse" - will be out in January, a little bit to my regret, since it has a Christmas framing-story and it would have been nice to come out for the holiday. But, it has gotten stellar reviews in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist - which tells me I'm doing my job. PW:  Hambly’s outstanding 20th whodunit featuring formerly enslaved doctor Benjamin January (after  De...

  More fun with research. I've been re-reading Sylvia Lovegren's book Fashionable Food - which is a history of food fads in the 20th century, complete with recipies. (!) From the '70s on (it goes up to the early '90s) it's a disconcerting journey down memory lane ("Hey, I remember fondue parties! I remember fern bars!") but the 1920s-30s are downright horrifying (and extremely useful, as I'm hoping to do at least several more Hollywood mysteries). Banana-and-popcorn salad garnished with mayonnaise? "Boil the spaghetti in salted water for 1 hour"? Not to mention the history of Chinese food in America... In other news, I will be a guest at the local LA convention, Loscon, Thanksgiving weekend. The convention is at the LAX Marriott Friday the 24-Sunday the 26th - I'll be there Saturday and Sunday, on panels and (I hope) doing a signing. And for those of you who live in the San Fernando Valley and are looking for a really tasty Mexican resta...

It's darker earlier, the nights are a bit more chilly, the neighbors are putting up all sorts of weird decorations in their yards, and it's time for the Halloween watchlist.  And as I was going through spooky stuff to watch and listen to, I unearthed an old favorite: David McCallum reading H.P. Lovecraft's "Haunter of the Dark." And boy, did McCallum get into reading that one! The man had a lovely voice, and wonderful delivery, even when Lovecraft's prose goes a little over the top. (Or a lot over the top. It takes a fine artist to deliver some of those lines with the audio equivalent of a straight face). Other Halloween favorites in the audio line (I listen to audio books while doing physical therapy exercises): Dan Starkey reading Wm Hope Hodgeson's "The Whistling Room." I don't know the name of the fellow who reads my audio version of Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost," or Poe's "Masque of the Red Death." I think i...

  Happy Birthday, John! And in other news, finished the rough draft of the next Hollywood book (Saving Susie Sweetchild) - with a lot of work left to do! The rough draft is always the hardest, the second draft - the one where I need to line up the continuity and make sure I explain WHY somebody is making attempts on Our Hero's life - is in some ways nearly as much work, but a lot more fun. I think someone once described the rough draft as akin to what I think is called a "table read" in drama - the characters are all sitting around in sweatshirts and jeans just getting the dialog in line. Second draft is adding in costumes and settings and lighting and music.

  A picture of Mom from 2012 - inevitably and joyfully with Dad. Today would have been her 95th birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom! Glad you get to spend it with Dad! Love you!

My apologies, yet again, for the long delay between posts. On top of it being a very stressful semester (since February) the past two weeks have been - not good. Once the final mopping-up is done all will be well. A welcome high spot was a twilight picnic with friends at the Old Zoo Meadow in Griffith Park, to see the Independent Shakespeare Company do "Julius Caesar." It's not my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, but I always enjoy the ISC (who are in a different union than the Screen Actors Guild, and they came out and announced their solidarity with SAG and the Writers before the show). The production was wonderful - in many ways very Shakespearean, because it was all done on a single stage with nothing but four or five cubes for props; all done with words, and sound effects, and lighting, and sheer excellent, creative direction. (The costumes had a vaguely Klingon vibe that was very effective). I had a couple of minor quibbles with some of the choices made in the p...

  And, Happy Father's Day, Dad! Love you always!

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Sir Paul!

  Just finished going through the boxes that got moved from the old house to this place four years ago. Much of it was taken straight from the storage sheds, without being opened. For very good reasons I had to check every box, and found some things I'd been searching for for years - sometimes decades. The above sketch is of my two Pekes, Smudge and the Eternally Beautiful Kismet. With it I found the poem I wrote about Kismet - who is the model for Buttercreme in the Hollywood books. I know it's sort of conceited to post your own poetry on a website, but this is for her. FERAL IN HER DREAMS Queen-bitch of the hunting-pack, she leaps, The elk in terror scattering – In vain the flight of the biggest buck Through rock and wood and stream. He shall not lose her, huntress of the steppe: Gold fur rippling, brown eyes gleaming red in the swollen light of the amber moon.   She bays, and the pack bays with her. She runs, and the pack streams after. But hers the greater speed, the sprin...

  As I'm wrapping up my semester of teaching History-11 (US from pre-Columbian to Reconstruction), I came across this photo, which I took at the garage where I'd have my car serviced back when I lived down in Westchester (on the west side of LA). This was about 5 years ago. For reasons best known to themselves, someone in the mechanic shop that occupied the place before MY mechanic moved in, painted this map of the US (I presume that's the US) on the wall. I counted 46 states, but am at a loss as to what some of them are supposed to be. There was something else - I couldn't work out whether it was Alaska, Hawaii, or Numenor - off the west coast.  Completely aside from WHY someone would think this was necessary to their shop's decor, I did wonder about their source material. I'm not saying I could produce an accurate map of the US from memory (particularly not on an 18-foot wall) -  though I do remember one night at the condo I used to live in, (which belonged to...

Happy Mother's Day to Mom! Miss you every day. Miss Dad, too. Glad you're together.  

  On or about the first of February - 6 days before my Western Civilization class was due to start at the community college at which I have been an adjunct instructor for the past 17 years - I was contacted by the History Department that a) my class had been cancelled due to low enrollment (community college enrollments have been in the toilet for several years) and b) they could offer me another class, this one in US History. I accepted, knowing it would be pretty rough. I had taught US History many times, before the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, and I switched over to "synchronous" classes - I lecture to a Zoom meeting attended by students of the class - I learned very quickly that, although I can lecture in a live classroom from scribbled notes, I need a full script for a screen performance. Otherwise, I freeze. Over several years of live-screened lectures, I scripted Western Civ - that's what I usually teach - and had my standard exams and written assignments. I ha...

  And, two more EXCELLENT reviews for One Extra Corpse, which will be released a week after Iron Princess. (I'm sorry - it just worked out that way!) Starred Review in Booklist: In this sequel to the excellent Scandal in Babylon (2021), it’s been several months since the recently widowed Emma Blackstone came to Hollywood from Britain and promptly extricated her new employer, the famous movie star Kitty Flint, from a murder charge. Now, in May 1924, Emma feels like her new life in Tinseltown might finally be calming down. Until film director Ernst Zapolya, who happens to be one of Kitty’s (many) former lovers, says he has a problem only Kitty can solve. And Kitty can’t possibly do anything without Emma’s help. Hambly, who’s known primarily for a series of novels featuring the nineteenth-century sleuth Benjamin January (although she’s published in multiple genres), knocks this second in her Silver Screen series out of the park. Everything feels just right: the characters are abundant...

  The Iron Princess - my first fantasy novel in 16 years - will be available February 28: pre-order on Amazon is available now. It's a story I've worked on, on and off, for almost ten years, and I'm delighted that it's finally going to see print. As I think I've said before, it involves Princess Clyaris - Clea, known to her friends and followers as the Iron Princess (in contrast to her older sister, the Golden Princess) - and her complicated battle against not only otherworld monstrosities, but her own family. Like Queen Elizabeth I, she has to pick her way around the debris of her father's matrimonial chaos while trying to figure out who is responsible for the appearance of these deadly - and rapidly multiplying - creatures, when it may in fact be Dear Old Dad... or somebody who's using him as a pawn. The fact that she has to blackmail the most evil wizard in the world into working for her doesn't help matters. Fingers crossed!

  Happy Birthday, Dad, on what would have been your 98th! Miss you a lot. Love you always.

  Yet more fun with research! Just hours after I put up my last post, I scored a Guide to Paris written DURING THE TIME BENJAMIN JANUARY WAS LIVING THERE - 1829, smack in the middle of the "Bourbon Restoration." Just glancing through it, it contains LOTS of useful, mundane details, like what rooms rented for, and how much you'd have to pay for a haircut, and what cafes were in operation in the Palais Royale (not to mention who were the good actors, and who were the lousy ones, in every theater in town). (And an exhaustive catalog of EVERY WORK OF ART IN THE LOUVRE). (This guy was thorough). I love this kind of stuff! Most of my old Baedeker Guides date from the early 1900s, so this was a real find! (And it's a PoD reprint, so it was cheap). One of the things that delights me about this is that it gives a contemporary table of British and French money, which will make future Ben January books which involve Paris MUCH easier - I'm ALWAYS trying to track down how muc...

  As I usually do, I wrapped up New Year's Eve reading a collection I made of my favorite haiku (and watching "More American Graffiti"). I arranged them seasonally (in proper haiku fashion), from New Year to New Year:     "Let myself go to bed.      New Year's Day      is only a matter for tomorrow."      - Buson A lovely holiday season, spent with family and friends. I now have about a month before I start teaching again, and am working on getting more sleep, and getting as much done as I can on the rough draft of Benjamin January # 20 (!), "The Nubian's Curse." Rough draft is always exhausting, involving as it does stopping every ten words to look up when the word "opthamologist" was first used, and what divorce law was in Mississippi in 1840. I feel like I'm constantly apologizing for not posting more frequently, but it's always a struggle - do I sleep, or post? In a week or two I have to start putting together materials fo...