Stuff going on.

Next weekend - Feb. 6-7-8 - I will be at the Gallifrey One Dr. Who Convention, at the LAX Marriott Hotel. I'll be on a couple of panels, and doing a signing - and my lovely niece (or niece-in-law) Sara will ALSO be on a couple of fan panels. Usually Gallifrey co-incides with Strategicon, which is held at the hotel next door (the LAX Hilton) but this year, because of the NBA All-Star game, Gallifrey was moved up a weekend from its usual time-slot - so I'll miss doing the heavy cruise of the Strategicon dealer's room that I usually do.

However, I'm hoping that my first official incursion into the Dr. Who universe will be released by then (it's scheduled for "February"): the audio adventure from Big Finish, "The Kraken of Hagwell." As far as I can tell, it seems like it will only be released digitally, but I'll check in the dealer's room (I don't listen to audio-books on my computer, for a variety of reasons) - also, it appears that it's only being released as a half of a "Legacy of Time" set, part of Big Finish's "Companion Chronicles" series (i.e. adventures narrated by one of the Doctor's traveling companions - in this case, to my delight, the Brigadier, wonderfully brought back by voice actor Jon Culshaw). Further information when I get it.

The other thing going on is a really nice review in Booklist for "Death in the Palace," the fourth Hollywood 'Silver Screen' mystery. Release is scheduled for March. I think because of turnovers in editorial staff, I haven't yet received a cover illo.

“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” Such is the case of the strange letter actress Camille de la Rose, aka Kitty Blackstone, receives from Manhattan millionaire Clark Dexter offering her $50,000 to marry him for one week, followed by an uncontested and all-expenses-paid divorce.
It’s 1924, and the Depression is a few years away. Dexter’s offer would outpace her salary as one of Hollywood’s leading ladies, so it’s tempting. Fortunately, Kitty’s sister-in-law and personal assistant, Emma, is the voice of reason, and when Kitty follows her advice and turns down the proposal, it is accepted, instead, by her screen rival, Darlene Golden. Both stars are heading to New York for the shooting of their latest movies, so Darlene will have the opportunity to seal the deal. But when an actress is found dead in the city’s leading vaudeville theater, and Golden’s understudy goes missing, Dexter’s bizarre proposition takes on criminal proportions. Hambly’s fourth installment of her sprightly Silver Screen historical mystery series sparkles with a zesty blend of Hollywood glitz and Big Apple corruption." (Review by Carol Haggas)

In fact, there really was a millionaire in the 1920s who was offering random women $10,000 to marry him for three days. Additionally, I realized I had to make some mention in one of the series of the spectacular - and unresolved to this day - death of producer-director Thomas Ince. I wasn't going to touch theorizing about what actually happened, but I had to at least mention it as a peripheral detail.

Everybody have a lovely weekend.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy New Year!

Image
  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.
Read more

New Further Adventures!

Image
    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...
Read more

Father's Day and Update

Image
  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...
Read more