Father's Day and Update

 

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, after being delayed for a couple of months by technical problems at the publisher.

A very nice review in Booklist:

"Summoned to witness a duel outside New Orleans during the raucous Carnival season, Benjamin January is tested both as a surgeon and as a sleuth when he determines that the victim was shot not by his rival but by an unknown third party. Another mystery writer might have titled this The Case of the Duplicitous Duel, but in the twenty-first installment of her popular historical murder mystery series, Hambly ensnares her surgeon/piano player/teacher/detective protagonist in an intricate case that harkens back to those confusing days of the War of 1812,

when New Orleans was the epicenter of battles involving British, French, Spanish, and American troops. At stake are tons of buried silver, deeds to abandoned property, and the restoration of a plantation owner’s reputation. Such crimes, however, are merely master researcher Hambly’s means to an end, for her storytelling talents lie in the setting of the scene. Hambly’s 1840s New

Orleans is a deviously convoluted society laden with arcane rules of behavior for every segment of its elaborate social structure. Illuminating, challenging, and enlightening."

Other goings on here: I'll be a guest at the Celsius 232 convention in Aviles, Spain, again in mid-July (it's a wonderful convention and run by lovely people!), and I'll be at the Legends Expo Star Wars convention at the Burbank Marriott Convention Center, September 13-14 (probably dressed up in my Jedi robes again).

I've been buried under the deadline for the next Hollywood murder mystery - "Death at the Palace" - but am taking a little pre-turn-in rest before giving it a final read-through and sending it off. I'm very pleased with it (and hope the cameo appearance by the Marx Brothers works. It's always tricky to portray real people.). I'm using the break-time to pull together (I hope) a Further Adventures novella about the Ashers and Don Simon Ysidro.

And, as mentioned above, am rather unexpectedly having my house re-piped, so the cats will need therapy when it's over. (They're having sleep-therapy now on a Sunday when the workers aren't here. Reminds me a bit of those weird critters in Dali's "Persistence of Memory.") I thought a great picture of Dad (and us as children) would be better than a shot of what my front yard looks like now. I'm the child in the middle, taller than my sister though she's two years older. Not sure what she has in her hand - perhaps one of her pet lizards?