Happy Thanksgiving to All

 



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 Death and Hard Cider) combines an eerie murder mystery with a vivid depiction of the antebellum South. ...When Benjamin is reunited with Arithmus Wishart, whom he hasn’t seen in nearly 16 years, a mystery from his past comes roaring back. In 1825 France, Benjamin met Deverel Wishart, who claimed that he found Arithmus in a Sudanese desert, and that, though the man spoke “no known human language,” he possessed remarkable mathematical gifts. Not long after that, Deverel was found dead during a ghost hunt in a supposedly haunted chateau, and Arithmus, who disappeared soon afterwards, became a suspect. ... Hambly isn’t content to rest on her laurels—she packs this installment with dueling timelines, fastidious period detail, and a consistently surprising investigation. This long-running series still shows plenty of life. 

Booklist:

If you’re counting, this is the twentieth Benjamin January mystery .... January... has lost none of his appeal over the course of the series; if anything, he’s more interesting now than he was at the outset, because the author keeps revealing new facets of his character. ... It’s fascinating to see Hambly apply the cold-case format to an historical mystery, to see January, in the absence of any of today’s forensic techniques, uncover the long-buried truth. ... we feel like we’ve been transported to a different time and place. Wonderful.


I'm happy, because I love haunted house stories, and have long wanted to do one for January. (My other haunted house story was, of course, Children of the Jedi). And also, it's nice to know that reviewers aren't getting tired of the series. (Because I'm sure not).

 And in the meantime, Thanksgiving weekend is also LosCon, the local LA science fiction convention. I'll be there Saturday and Sunday, on panels concerning vampires, research, writing in a magical world, and using myths and archetypes, as well as doing a signing Saturday. I simply haven't had time to get my act together to enter the Art Show. It's been a very busy couple of years.  

This in addition to holiday salads, buying gifts, and making itty-bitty sandwiches for a Christmas Tea. Oh, and doing research about New York in the 1920s.

Everybody have a lovely week-end.


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