Barbara's Blog

The year's longest night, but mild, sunny, and windy in Southern California. As an early Christmas gift, I got this, this morning - a nice, starred review in Publisher's Weekly. Set in Roaring ’20s Hollywood, Hambly’s outstanding sequel to 2021’s  Scandal in Babylon  showcases the author’s wit and her compassion for the underdog. Tinseltown glamor girl Kitty Flint has rescued her widowed British sister-in-law, Emma Blackstone, from a dismal paid companionship in England. Now Kitty’s constant companion, gofer, and Pekinese-brusher, plucky Emma wavers between longing for Oxford’s dreaming spires, where she hoped to study archaeology, and her fascination with corrupt Hollywood and her cameraman lover. Then early one morning, director Ernst Zapolya, an old boyfriend of Kitty’s, phones, wanting to speak to Kitty, but Emma tells him she isn’t home. Ernst says it’s about a matter “on which lives depend. Maybe many lives.” A murder ensues. In the search for a killer, Kitty and Emma mu...

Between finishing up the semester, reading research papers, prepping the final lecture of the course (which has to change every semester, since the last part deals with, "Where are things now?"), getting enough sleep, and doing the necessary maintenance (exercise, physical therapy, meditation to keep myself more or less sane), it's been a daily choice: Do I write, or do I do the dishes? This is being written shortly before bed-time, after I've finished school-prep for tomorrow, which got pushed back into the evening so I could do some actual work, i.e. writing. (I'm sorry to say the dishes are still not done). I did have a lovely Thanksgiving with my family, and a second lovely Thanksgiving with my friends. Saturday, as I said in an earlier post, was the LosCon science fiction convention near the LA Airport. It was an easy Lyft ride in the days when I lived down there. Now... not so much. At least it wasn't raining. And what with one thing and another, the con...

  Plans for appearances in the next couple of months - if there are no major emergencies or variant plagues in the meantime... NOVEMBER 26 - LosCon 48 - loscon.org/48/ - LAX Marriott in Los Angeles - The con is from the 25-27 (Thanksgiving weekend) but I'll only be there the Saturday, the 26th, signing books and participating on panels. Masks required, proof of vaccination required. FEBRUARY 17-19 - Gallifrey One Dr. Who convention - gallifreyone.com - also at the LAX Marriott - I should be there all 3 days, signing (I'm not sure which day) and being on panels and running around the halls in costume. Masks required, proof of vaccination required. SOMETIME IN MARCH - The Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Book Show - more information as I get it.

  My dad in uniform, probably sometime in the late '40s. 

  Here's a Halloween costume from years and years ago. I made it for a Costume-Con way back in the day: an Elizabethan werewolf. These days, my idea of a lovely Halloween is to turn off all the lights in the front of the house and watch Rocky Horror Picture Show in the back room. I was reminded, however, that I did actually at one point spend the night - actually 3 nights - in a haunted house. It was a bed 'n' breakfast in a town in Tennessee where I was researching my Civil War novel Homeland: I arrived late, about 10 pm, and was the only guest because it was off-season. I got in my jammies, got into bed, switched off the light, and I KNEW there was something in the room with me. I had NEVER experienced such a thing before, but I didn't have the slightest doubt what was going on. I turned on the light again and there was of course nothing there. Turned off the light. There was definitely something there. Turned on the light. Nope. Turned off the light. Whatever it was,...

  Still more fun with research that has pretty much nothing to do with New Orleans at Christmas of 1840, or Hollywood in May of 1924... (or the Winterlands while I'm writing a Further Adventure for the first time in AGES...) Instead I've been reading Katie Hickman's wonderful book, "Daughters of Britannia," about the lives and experiences of British diplomatic wives and daughters - the ladies who got dragged willy-nilly to places like Constantinople in 1661 (What WAS the proper etiquette when calling on the Sultan's harem?) or Kashgar, Central Asia, in 1898 (COULD one purchase Marmite in Azerbaijan?). These ladies were not diplomats themselves, but got roped into doing everything from coping with local servants (" 'Why do grammars only teach one such phrases as Simply through the courage of the champion's sword when what one wants to say is, Bring another lamp? ' ") to sewing shirts for British sailors who have been ransomed from the loc...

  Happy Birthday, John! (Still love your work).