Writer Unboxed - The "Connect Kitty" Approves

While we all want to stay on top of what’s current about craft, be alerted to the latest conferences, and connect with fellow writers on social media, staying informed about the business side of writing and publishing is some (or many) might say, a necessary evil. To save you from spending hours scrolling through websites to find insights into the business side of writing, we’ve curated a list of recent posts for you to dig into or peruse at your leisure. We hope you’ll find value in these and share the links with anyone else who might want to keep up with the latest. Well, 2023 has started off with a publishing bang. Lots of news, everything from AI’s increasing presence to suggested prison time for our literary guardians who refused to remove banned books—our librarians. AI Artificial Intelligence and the growing questions and concerns surrounding it, continue to make headlines. A decade of research is generating a more powerful and more mature breed of A.I. A link to the best AI writing software. A writer lets her AI “assistant” write her bio with some pretty funny results, and editor and author, Tiffany Yates Martin, muses about what AI may mean for authors. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/technology/generative-ai-chatgpt-investments.html https://foxprinteditorial.com/2023/01/12/what-does-ai-mean-for-writers-i-asked-it/?fbclid=IwAR26nkrhkttyWECNyrPJWvq3u_dxurJeVJxBPHzXYAczbSjwHaR_SRnbK5Y https://www.thepassivevoice.com/25-best-ai-writing-software-for-2023-best-picks/ https://janeroper.substack.com/p/my-new-intern-helped-write-this-post?fbclid=IwAR2lAeNylq2XOOUhEiCp748sO8lDi3RFIlcZaJjTCdknH5YhpqmFI6xT5bA Audiobooks AI enters audiobook territory as Apple unveils AI narrated audiobooks. Will the rising demand for audiobooks create opportunity for authors or will new auto-narrated audiobook creation simply expand the offering of text-to-speech technology. And a boom in Spanish language audiobooks. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/04/apple-artificial-intelligence-ai-audiobooks?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR1ehtu0IlGnu5TTRy9j9qAZoVy8PY8teNM9DsayOWIroc-PSq7FiM6BzAU https://medium.com/@elisechidleyauthor/audiobooks-the-future-of-publishing-d604c499be05 https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/bookwire-expands-its-text-to-speech-audiobook-offer-with-google-play-books/ https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/sonic-boom-spanish-language-audiobooks-are-soaring/ Book Banning and Book Shaming At least one state wants prison time for librarians who refuse to remove banned books, and a New York Times opinion piece takes a look back at the fallout from “American Dirt.” https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/north-dakota-weighs-ban-sexually-explicit-library-books-rcna66271?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/opinion/american-dirt-book-publishing.html Book Conferences Check out some of the book Conferences, Fairs and Festivals slated for the first half of 2023. https://admin.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/91209-select-book-conferences-fairs-festivals-january-june-2023.html?ref=PRH31DC42C11CC5&linkid=PRH31DC42C11CC5&cdi=321A47B01E594547E0534FD66B0AE227&template_id=6179&aid=randohouseinc45523-20 Bookstores In a surprising turnaround, Barnes & Noble plans to open 30 more stores. https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR2hhrdP7MJkRfe9voC9tCrEXBSJMdTyIFFacNDAMODWlrf8HqvXX43blz0 Environmental Concerns French publisher, Hachette Livre intends to use 100-percent renewable energy by 2026, by reducing overproduction, freight, and more. An shining example for publishers in the US? https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/frances-hachette-livre-a-30-percent-carbon-reduction-by-2030/ International Publishers The first report from the Börsenverein on the German book market’s 2022 performance depicts “a major economic challenge,” and the UK’s Independent Publishers Guild is planning a digital showcase of books in the guild’s collective stands at the London Book Fair in April of this year. https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/germanys-borsenverein-2022-book-sales-down-2-1-percent/ https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/exact-editions-to-showcase-ipg-publishers-books-at-london-book-fair/ Libraries Digital lends at libraries at record levels. How often do you borrow ebooks from the library? https://www.thepassivevoice.com/record-number-of-libraries-surpassed-one-million-digital-lends-in-2022/ Publishing News and Trends A new report says that publishers are planning to create most of their revenue through subscriptions and memberships. Also, with negotiations stalled, Random House and the union have agreed to employ an independent mediator to help end a strike that has stretched on since early November. And New York Magazine talks about what Penguin Random House’s Failed Bid to Eat S&S Means for Publishing. And Centrello, president and publisher of Random House, retires after 23 years. https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/brace-for-an-explosion-of-automated-or-semi-automated-media-publisher-insights-from-reuters-institute/ https://www.thepassivevoice.com/markus-dohles-big-flop-what-penguin-random-houses-failed-bid-to-eat-ss-means-for-publishing/ https://www.thebookseller.com/news/centrello-president-and-publisher-of-random-house-retires-after-23-years?ref=PRH31DC42C11CC5&linkid=PRH31DC42C11CC5&cdi=321A47B01E594547E0534FD66B0AE227&template_id=6179&aid=randohouseinc45523-20 https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/91377-harpercollins-harperunion-move-to-solve-labor-dispute-with-independent-mediator.html Publishing Predictions A look back at 2022 and a few predictions for audiobooks, digital sales, and self-publishing 2023. And it’s all good. More on the Harper-Collins strike. https://www.thepassivevoice.com/laurie-mcleans-crystal-ball-publishing-predictions-for-2023/ https://prismreports.org/2023/01/23/harper-collins-worker-author-solidarity/ Sales in 2022 Taking a look back at book sales from 2022 and making some not-so-certain predictions for 2023. https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/us-2022-sales-in-the-rear-view-mirror-second-highest-at-npd/ https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/aaps-october-statshot-us-revenues-down-5-1-percent-year-to-date/ Have you come across any opportunities or news dealing with the business side of publishing? I’d love to hear from you in the comments. [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

B- Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin September 27, 2022 · Forever Romance Witchful Thinking is a dreamy, magical, sensual novel that is enchanting. It also put me to sleep. It has all the whimsy and sweetness of, say, Practical Magic, but none of the page-turning conflict or excitement that might keep one glued to the story. It’s the chamomile tea of books. Our story involves a family of witches who live in Freya Grove, a seaside town that boasts a carnival every year, a cakewalk that is more competitive than I recall cake walks being, a karaoke contest, and other enjoyable pursuits. The heroine, Lucy, is a witch who teaches high school, and I’m so very pleased that she has an actual recognizable job as lately my books have been full of increasingly odd professions like “erotic baker” and “erotic stationary designer.” Just to keep me on my toes, Lucy also creates tea blends and reads tea leaves as a side gig. Lucy is very settled in her family town, but she longs for excitement, and when a wish turns into a spell, she finds herself baking French desserts, singing karaoke, and flirting with her childhood love, Alex. Alex, our hero, is a merman (!!!) who is back in town after wandering the world as a photographer and going through a bad breakup with his fiancee. His parents surprise him with the gift of a house, which he intends to sell as soon as possible since he never stays in one place. He’s so sure that he will never settle down that he believes he can’t possibly be Lucy’s soulmate. Lucy is also sure he’ll leave and that therefore this must be a temporary thing. But as Lucy helps Alex get his house ready to sell, the bond between them grows more powerful. There’s a ton of atmosphere in the book. If whimsical small town kitchen witch tropes aren’t your thing, then this will not work for you. There’s also home renovation, mostly limited to home redecorating. You can’t start a new paragraph without tripping on an old spellbook or a ship in a bottle or some very tasty sounding iced tea blends. That’s not a complaint, just a statement of fact so y’all know what you’re getting into. Lucy and Alex have great chemistry, but this is one of those books in which there is no real reason for the lovers to be apart and everyone, but everyone, knows they will end up together if they just stop getting in their own way, so I got pretty impatient with their romance. Like all the supporting characters, I felt a deep desire to yell at them to get over themselves already,get married and have some cute little merbabies. I liked that the romance took a long time to develop, because I think that’s realistic, but I didn’t like all the hand wringing about it. My favorite thing about them as a couple was Alex’s constant and unconditional support of Lucy’s new adventures. At one point Lucy runs a race and is mortified to come in last. His response to her question, “What will people think?” is to help her think back to the response she got as she staggered past the finish line, and the pride and applause she got from the crowd. It’s a truly lovely moment of affirmation. The closest thing this book has to an antagonist is Lucy’s cousin Ursula, who is trying to plan her (Ursula’s) wedding to a man she CLEARLY should not be marrying. Ursula is demanding and insecure and kinda mean but she is also so transparently miserable that I just felt awful for her. This book leaves Ursula hanging, presumably as sequel bait, and I felt so stressed out by her unresolved unhappiness that I couldn’t fully enjoy Lucy’s HEA. I liked that this book was, generally, very cozy and low-key, but its very slow-burn cozy vibe also meant that I kept putting it down and walking off and forgetting all about it. I also felt that there were a lot of story elements that didn’t get enough attention. In fact, I ended up having my own set of wishes for the book. I wish it had: A more detailed explanation of the magical system, its history or tradition, and how the rules of it work for those who have magic. A more detailed explanation of what it is like to be a merperson. A full story in which everyone gets a resolution instead of being left as sequel bait. More clarity about what the wish spell does and how it works. More information about Alex’s house and the gnomes who live in it and the complicated history of the house. More recognition of the fact that Lucy has a full time job as a high school teacher and that the fact that she teaches teenagers all day is, in itself, an amazing achievement. This is a gentle, whimsical, slow-burn romance and I think that some people will like it very much. Personally, I found it to be both too gentle and unsettling, depriving me of a happy ending for supporting characters while also having a glacial pace. It’s a fine comfort read and those who love these kinds of tropes and can deal with very low conflict and slow plot will enjoy it. View the full article

The transcript for Podcast 548. Enthusiastic Sex and Podcasting (not at the same time) with Emily Nagoski has been posted! This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks. ❤ Click here to subscribe to The Podcast → View the full article

Rocking. Gentle at first. A lullaby. Rock-a-bye baby. Then harder. Rougher. Her head banged against glass. Her body rolled back the other way and she was falling. Onto the floor. Hard. “Ow. Shit.” Her heart spiked and her eyes shot open. “What the fuck?” She rubbed at her throbbing elbow and stared around. Her eyes felt like someone had rubbed grit into them. Her brain felt like wet sludge. You’ve fallen out of bed. But where? She sat up. Not a bed. A wooden bench. Running around the side of an oval-shaped room. A room that was moving from side to side. Outside, gray sky, swirling flakes of snow. Glass all around. Nausea swept over her. She fought it down. There were more people in here, sprawled on the wooden benches. Five of them. Bundled up in identical blue snowsuits. Like her, Meg realized. All of them here in this small, swaying room. Buffeted by the wind, snow caking the glass. This isn’t a room. Rooms don’t move, stupid. She pushed herself to her feet. Her legs felt shaky. Nausea bubbled again. Got to get a handle on that, she thought. There was nowhere to be sick. She walked unsteadily to one side of the room-that-was-not-a-room. She stared out of the glass, pressing her hands and nose against it like a child staring out at the first snow of Christmas. Below—way below—the snow-tipped forest. Above, a frenzy of flakes in a vast gray sky. “Fuck.” More rocking. The roar of the wind, muted by the thick glass all around, like a hungry animal contained behind bars. Fresh white splatters hit the glass, distorting her vision. But Meg had seen enough. A groan from behind her. Another of the blue-clad bodies was waking up, unfurling like an ungainly caterpillar. He or she—it was hard to tell with the hood on—sat up. The others were stirring now too. For one moment, Meg had an insane notion that when they turned their faces toward her they would be decomposed, living dead. The man—mid-thirties, heavy beard—stared at her blearily. He pushed back his hood and rubbed at his head, which was shorn to dark stubble. “What the fuck?” He looked around. “Where am I?” “You’re on a cable car.” “A what?” “Cable car. You know, a car that hangs on cables—” He stared at her aggressively. “I know what a cable car is. I want to know what the hell I’m doing on one.” Meg stared calmly back. “I don’t know. D’you remember getting here?” “No. You?” “No.” “The last thing I remember is . . .” His eyes widened. “Are you . . .are you going to the Retreat?” The Retreat. The deliberately ambiguous name made it sound like a health spa. But it didn’t imbue Meg with any feelings of well-being. On the contrary, it sent schisms of ice jittering down her spine. The Retreat. She didn’t reply. She looked back outside. “Right now, we’re not going anywhere.” They both stared into the gray void, more patches of snow obscuring the glass. A snowstorm. A bad one. “We’re stuck.” “Stuck? Did you say we’re stuck?” Meg turned. A woman stood behind her, around her own age. Red hair. Pinched features. Panic in her voice. Possibly a problem. Meg didn’t answer right away. She regarded the other people in the car. One was still curled up asleep, hood over his face. Some people could sleep through anything. The other two—a short, stout man with a mop of dark curls and an older, silver-haired man with glasses—were sitting up, stretching and looking around. They seemed dazed but calm. Good. “It looks that way,” she said to the woman. “Probably just a power outage.” “Power outage. Oh, great. Bloody marvelous.” “I’m sure the car will be moving again soon.” This from the bearded man. His previous aggression had dissipated. He offered the woman a small smile. “We’ll be fine.” A lie. Even if the car started moving, even if they reached their destination, they were not going to be fine. But lies were the grease that oiled daily life. The woman smiled back at the man. Comforted. Job done. “Did you say we’re on a cable car?” the older man asked. “I don’t remember anyone mentioning getting on a cable car.” “Does anyone remember anything?” Meg asked, looking around. They glanced at one another. “We were in our rooms.” “They brought some breakfast.” “Tasted like crap.” “Then . . . I must have fallen asleep again—” More confused looks. “No one remembers a thing after that?” Meg said. “Not till they woke up here?” They shook their heads. The bearded man exhaled slowly. “They drugged us.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” the red-haired woman said. “Why would they do that?” “Well, obviously so we wouldn’t know where we’re going, or how we got here,” the short man said. “I just I can’t believe they would do that.” Funny, Meg thought. Even now, after everything that had happened, people struggled to believe the things that “they” would do. But then, you can’t see the eye of the storm when you’re inside it. “Okay,” the bearded man said. “Seeing as we’re literally stuck here with time to kill, why don’t we introduce ourselves? I’m Sean.” “Meg,” said Meg. “Sarah,” the red-haired woman offered. “Karl.” The short man gave a small wave. “Max.” The older man smiled. “Good to meet you all.” “I guess we’re all here for the same reason, then?” Sean said. “We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Sarah said. “Well, I think it’s pretty safe to assume—” “To assume makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘you’ and ‘me.’ ” Meg stared at Sarah. “My boss used to say that.” “Really?” “Yeah. Used to annoy the fuck out of me.” Sarah’s lips pursed. Max broke in. “So, what do you…… I mean, what did you all do, before?” “I taught,” Sarah said. Quelle surprise, Meg thought. “I used to be a lawyer,” Max said. He held his hands up. “I know— sue me.” “I worked in bouncy castles,” Karl said. They looked at him. And burst into laughter. A sudden, nervous release. “Hey!” Karl looked affronted, but only mildly. “There’s good money in bouncy castles. At least, there used to be.” “What about you?” Meg asked Sean. “Me? Oh, this and that. I’ve had a few jobs.” A gust of wind caused the cable car to sway harder. “Oh God.” Sarah clutched at her neck. She wore a small silver crucifix. Meg wondered how many more reasons she could find to dislike the woman. “So we’re an eclectic bunch,” Max said. “And ‘ass’ or not, I assume we’re all heading to the Retreat?” Karl said, raising his bushy eyebrows. Slowly, one by one, they all nodded. “Volunteers?” More nods. Only two types of people went to places like the Retreat. Volunteers and those who had no choice. “So, is now the time to discuss our reasons?” Max said. “Or shall we save that for when we get there?” “If we get there,” Sarah said, looking at the steel cables above them nervously. Sean was eyeing the sleeping figure in the corner. “Do you think we should wake up Sleeping Beauty?” Meg frowned. Then she stood and walked over to the prone figure. She shook his shoulder gently. He rolled off the bench and hit the floor with a thud. Behind her, Sarah screamed. Meg suddenly realized two things. She knew this man. And he wasn’t asleep. He was dead. Excerpted from The Drift by C.J. Tudor. Copyright © 2023 by Betty & Betty Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. View the full article

Gianna Theodore in Kyle Abraham’s Our Indigo: If We Were a Love Song. Over the past year I have read and reread Angelica Nuzzo’s book Approaching Hegel’s Logic, Obliquely, in which Nuzzo guides the reader through Hegel’s Science of Logic. Nuzzo presents the question of how we are to think about history as it unfolds amid chaos and relentless crises. How, in other words, are we to find a means to think outside the incessant whirr of our times? The answer she provides is one I find wholly satisfactory: it is through the work of Hegel that we are best able to think about and think through the current state of the world, precisely because his work is itself an exploration of thinking—particularly Science of Logic, as Nuzzo eloquently explains: Hegel’s dialectic-speculative logic is the only one that aims at—and succeeds in—accounting for the dynamic of real processes: natural, psychological but also social, political, and historical processes. It is a logic that attempts to think of change and transformation in their dynamic flux not by fixating movement in abstract static descriptions but by performing movement itself. By tracking the movement of the mind, a movement that is incessant and fluid, we are best equipped to study the crises of our time as they occur. In particular, we are best able to examine and analyze the structure of capitalism itself, a structure which is formed by exchange value and is thus a system of infinite repetition and reproduction. A system of infinite plasticity—appropriating everything it comes in contact with. A system, in other words, akin to that of the mind. Hegel does not merely explain how the mind works but enacts its very movement. He places us in the center of its whirr. —Cynthia Cruz, author of “Charity Balls” For the past few months, I’ve been reading novels about white women settlers in colonial and post-independent Africa. Many of the protagonists I’ve encountered are coming of age; their journeys are heroes’ journeys, culminating in a coupling that enshrines, perhaps paradoxically, their so-called independence, a process that is almost always set against an independence movement, whether a successful or an ongoing one. In Nadine Gordimer’s The Late Bourgeois World, published in 1966 and set during apartheid, Liz Van Den Sandt is already divorced. Her ex-husband, a militant communist who has disavowed his Boer upbringing, has just drowned himself. She feels no sympathy for him, although she is convinced that his tactics (acting as a rogue bomber, and then as an informant once he was caught) were righteous: “he went after the right things, even if perhaps it was the wrong way,” she tells their son, who is completely undisturbed by the news of his father’s death. “If he failed, well, that’s better than making no attempt.” But Liz herself seems without conviction altogether: having left political life, she has now taken as her part-time lover a man with good taste and no political conscience. Nevertheless, she feels herself distinct from the consumer-driven white women around her, “the good citizens who never had any doubt about where their allegiance lay.” When she is asked by a former black political ally (another sometimes lover) to take a potentially risky action, she can see no reason not to. And yet she hesitates and finds excuses, seeing in her ally’s pleas only what she imagines he projects onto her. I don’t know if I liked or disliked the book. Some parts I found pleasurable, and other parts painful and intolerable. But as a data point, I found its cynical literalism intriguing. “A sympathetic white woman hasn’t got anything to offer,” she muses, “except the footing she keeps in the good old white Reserve of banks and privileges.” In exchange, all she can hope for is the possibility of sex, “this time or next time.” —Maya Binyam, contributing editor Recently, I’ve been obsessed with a video recording of a performance I saw last April at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston: three works by the choreographer Kyle Abraham, among them the haunting Our Indigo: If We Were a Love Song. Abraham has become well-known for large-scale collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, and Sufjan Stevens. But Love Song is understated: it’s a curation of solos, duos, and trios set to Nina Simone, each of them a private moment or choreographic journal entry. The dance makes me want to move and groove, while also rooting me to the spot, so arresting is its beauty. In a solo set to Simone’s “Little Girl Blue,” Gianna Theodore coils her way across the space in a sequence of delicate and acrobatic floor work. In a kind of silent break dance, she lays her whole body weight into the ground only to spring back up in time with the music. “Why won’t somebody send a tender blue boy,” Simone sings, as Theodore moves effortlessly between crouching and standing, “to cheer up little girl blue.” In the video, Theodore appears against a shocking yellow-and-white tile wall wearing a simple navy dress. Though the close-up shots elide some of her larger movements, they also draw me close to her private sensations and memories. Watching Theodore’s blue dress trail on the ground, her hands checking the hem as she kneels, I encounter my own sense memories: the silhouette of my grandmother, dancer-thin behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, humming along to Nina Simone. To see Abraham’s work performed by his company, A.I.M., is a particular treat, so fluent the dancers are in his physical language. You can catch them performing Our Indigo: If We Were a Love Song in New York at the Joyce Theater April 4–9. —Elinor Hitt, reader View the full article

The Duke Heist The Duke Heist by Erica Ridley is $1.99! This is book one in a new series and was mentioned on a previous Hide Your Wallet. Elyse was super excited about the heist element and I feel like the other books in the series have been talked about positively here. A NYT bestselling author kicks off a new Regency series of “irresistible romance and a family of delightful scoundrels” as a woman looking to recover a stolen painting accidentally kidnaps a duke instead. (Eloisa James) Chloe Wynchester is completely forgettable—a curse that gives her the ability to blend into any crowd. When the only father she’s ever known makes a dying wish for his adopted family of orphans to recover a missing painting, she’s the first one her siblings turn to for stealing it back. No one expects that in doing so, she’ll also abduct a handsome duke. Lawrence Gosling, the Duke of Faircliffe, is tortured by his father’s mistakes. To repair his estate’s ruined reputation, he must wed a highborn heiress. Yet when he finds himself in a carriage being driven hell-for-leather down the cobblestone streets of London by a beautiful woman who refuses to heed his commands, he fears his heart is hers. But how can he sacrifice his family’s legacy to follow true love? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Spinster and the Rake The Spinster and the Rake by Eva Devon is 99c! This is the first book in the Never a Wallflower historical romance series. The book description says it’s a mix between My Fair Lady and Pride and Prejudice. Have you read this one? The marriage game is afoot in this clever blend of My Fair Lady meets Pride and Prejudice with a twist! Edward Stanhope, the icy Duke of Thornfield, likes his life in a certain order. Give him a strong drink, a good book, and his dog for company, and he’s content. But when he goes to his library and finds a woman sitting in his chair, petting his dog, what starts as a request for her to leave quickly turns to a fiery battle of wits, leading to a steamy kiss that could ruin them both if they were caught. So of course, damn it all, that’s when Edward’s aunt walks in, and thereafter announces Miss Georgiana Bly is the future Duchess of Thornfield. Georgiana was content to be a spinster, spending her days reading and working to keep her family out of debt. But now her days are spent locked away with a growly duke, learning how to be the perfect duchess, and her nights spent fighting the undeniable attraction to a man who was never meant for her. As their wedding day approaches, the attraction between them burns hot and fierce, but is it enough to melt the duke’s chilly facade? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. She Gets the Girl She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick is $1.99! This is a new adult romance that was mentioned on both Cover Awe and Hide Your Wallet (Tara’s pick!). Did any of you pick this one up? She’s All That meets What If It’s Us in this swoon-worthy hate-to-love YA romantic comedy from #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Five Feet Apart Rachael Lippincott and debut writer Alyson Derrick. Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. Keeping her on the other hand…not so much. Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mom. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just…hasn’t actually talked to her yet. Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her. As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling…for each other. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Satisfaction Guaranteed RECOMMENDED: Satisfaction Guaranteed by Karelia Stetz-Waters is $2.99! Both Tara and Shana reviewed this one and gave it an A: Shana: I stayed up late reading Satisfaction Guaranteed because I just couldn’t put it down. This book reminded me why I love contemporary romances—experiencing the heady rush of falling in love through characters that feel so real, they could walk off the page and into one of my dinner parties. Reading this brought me such joy. Opposites attract in this playful and laugh-out-loud rom-com from Lambda Award finalist Karelia Stetz-Waters. Cade Elgin has a life and career in New York City, and she’s determined to get back to both as soon as possible after her aunt’s funeral in Portland. However, when she unexpectedly inherits her aunt’s sex toy store — and has to save it from foreclosure — Cade realizes she’s not going anywhere. But making Share the Love profitable won’t be as easy as Cade had hoped. Her new partner has an infuriating lack of business sense, and an infuriating ability to turn Cade on. Selena Mathis knows that nothing is more important than saving Share the Love. Not her pride, not her inconvenient attraction toward her new business partner. Cade may be more buttoned-up than Selena usually goes for, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to turn the store around. But the more they work together, the harder it becomes for Selena to ignore her growing feelings for Cade. And she starts to wonder if there is something more important than saving Share the Love. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

Nils and Beth are back with another buddy read book review. This time round, one of their most anticipated books of the year! It’s been a long wait, will it be worth it? Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural. But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will. Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is expected for release on 28th February 2023 and is available to pre-order: US – Bookshop.org | UK – Waterstones All quotes used are taken from an early ARC and are subject to change upon publication. What were you expecting going into this one? Beth: After absolutely loving the Daevabad trilogy, I couldn’t wait to explore a new world from Chakraborty. I think she’s become an auto-buy author for me, but also, because I’d read Daevabad with you Nils, I was very much looking forward to buddy reading her again. Nils: I felt the same, we had such a blast reading Daevabad together and Chakraborty is wonderful at creating stories and characters which hold enough depth and nuance to discuss in great detail, doesn’t she? They’re always so three dimensional. I was very much hyped for Amina Al-Sirafi, I’d been hearing about this book for over a year through Chakraborty’s Instagram page and every bit of it sounded like something I’d absolutely love. I wasn’t wrong. Beth: She’d been teasing us for quite some time! The tantalising little bits Chakraborty had been sharing about her new book, the extracts and art on instagram etc, really got me excited – I love a nautical/piratical fantasy, and Chakraborty was setting it in the Middle East, in the middle ages, with older protagonists and a female m/c. It was just everything that was ticking my boxes and after Daevabad and The Stardust Thief, I wanted to read more fantasy set in the Middle East inspired by mythology and folklore from that part of the world. Nils: I actually haven’t read any nautical fantasy books, or none which I can recall, so this was something new to me. Yet the idea of Amina being this infamous gutsy female pirate putting her crew back together for an adventure ticked all my boxes. I also knew it would feature themes of motherhood, cultural identity, and that it would be set in the Middle East with an ethnically diverse cast, so I was even more excited. What are our first impressions? Beth: Straight off the bat I knew this wasn’t going to let me down. Before we get to chapter one, we have a note from our narrator about the text we’re about to read, and I absolutely loved that. Nils: Same! The opening line begins with “In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate” and for our narrator to be unapologetically a person who holds such strong faith, thoroughly warmed me. Beth: Yes, that’s such a great point! I’m so used to reading fantasy religions that are quite often based on Christianity; the only other fantasy I’ve read which includes the Muslim faith is Daevabad! I really enjoy framed narratives and taking into account the voice of the narrator as a character in of themself. As narrators go, they made me feel in perfectly safe hands, and throughout the story there are little breaks where our narrator interacts with our protagonist whose story they’re telling, and it just lifted the whole experience for me. Nils: I agree, having a framed narrative worked perfectly for this book, it added character and set the tone for the story which was about to unfold. It compelled me to dive right in. Get it, dive?!! Beth, how many nautical puns can we add??? Beth: Nils. No. Nils: It has to be done!! Beth: Stop making a splash Nils: Aye, aye! Beth: But going back to first impressions, the narrator’s note sets us up perfectly for a story of a woman who doesn’t allow age and motherhood to hold her back. When we actually meet Captain Amina al-Sirafi in the first chapter, she’s witty, she suffers no fools, and she leads us straight into action. It was such an exciting beginning, wasn’t it Nils! Nils: Absolutely! As soon as we meet Amina we realise how capable, strong willed, defiant and protective she is. Her first scene we see her facing a demon to save two witless teenagers from being devoured. Her legendary exploits certainly ring true and her personality fits the tales told about her, even if they are a little exaggerated. You know what I really wasn’t expecting though? The humour! The banter! As much as I love books which can make me cry, I’m also a sucker for ones which make me laugh. Chakraborty has shown she excels at both. Amina and her motley crew made me laugh beginning to end. Beth: I was expecting great banter and dialogue, but you’re right, I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so funny! “She looks like a giant.” His companion squeezed my bicep. “ By God, woman. What do you eat to be built like some sort of warhorse?” “Your father’s-” This time they hit me hard enough that I shut up. I was a bit disappointed there wasn’t a map in the arc! I had the UK version, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, with beautiful illustrations of waves between each chapter. But it says map to come and I’m gutted because I know it’s going to be something beautiful and intricately illustrated or something. I swear, this is how they get reviewers to still buy the book even after they’ve had an arc. I’ve gone ahead and pre-ordered the signed exclusive Waterstones edition… It will help to have a map reading this one though. I made a google map and saved the various locations mentioned! Nils: I had a beautiful US ARC which included the illustration of waves too and of a ship, I’m guessing Amina’s ship the Marawati, above each chapter number. However, I really wanted a map too, I wanted to visualise how far our characters had travelled and spot where they were headed next. Beth really helped by showing me pictures of all the locations she could find, they looked beautiful and looked like they held such charm. Beth: “Ok Chakraborty must be exaggerating here, her descriptions make this place sound –googles– wow no ok her descriptions are spot on” Let’s discuss the characters! Beth: Not to throw any dispersions on any other aspect of Chakraborty’s writing, as they most definitely do not deserve any, but her characters are hands down absolutely the best aspect of any of her books and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi continue that tradition! Nils: Very true! I always instantly fall for Chakraborty’s characters too and I knew Amina would be no exception after I read this: “People have this idea of mothers, that we are soft and gentle and sweet. As though the moment my daughter was laid on my breast, the phrase I would do anything did not take on a depth I could have never understood before. This woman thought to come into my home and threaten my family in front of my child? She must not have heard the right stories about Amina al-Sirafi.” I love seeing fiercely protective mothers, and a large part of Amina’s motives are to keep her daughter, Marjana, safe. Beth: I loved what Chakraborty did here. The narrator’s note painted a picture of a fearsome pirate who sailed the seas making enemies in every port, tricking authorities, and living a successful life on the high seas. What we see now is an Amina who has retired, is living in the arse-end of nowhere with her mother and daughter, keeping her head as low as possible to hide her daughter from the various dangers created from such a colourful life. Her honesty immediately captivated me. She is fiercely protective of her daughter, and when she’s forced back to a life on the sea, that’s the key driving force. But I loved her willingness to accept that actually, there’s a part of her that wants to go back, that has missed being a nakhudda (captain). Mothers can only be motherly – I love how Chakraborty challenged this. Nils: Beth you’ve echoed a lot of the same thoughts I had regarding Amina’s character, but I’d like to add, and I know this is something we discussed on WhatsApp, that as a female POC character it was fantastic to see she was a woman who allowed herself to desire men, to feel lust, and make no apologies for it. Chakraborty challenged the male gaze and represented the female gaze, where we too can enjoy the same kind of pleasures as men do. Beth: Ooh yes, we discussed this a lot didn’t we! For me, it was great seeing an older female character, a mother, expressing her desires to the reader. She described the men she came across by their appearance and whether she found them attractive or not. We’re used to female characters in fantasy books only ever being described by whether or not they’re pretty, so I loved the way Amina applied this to new men she came across! The first couple of chapters we meet Amina and her family, and once she’s been tasked with the main objective of the plot, what follows is a Getting the Gang Back Together montage, and it’s a trope I bloody love. As Nils mentioned above, the cast was diverse and that was fascinating to follow. I thought Chakraborty did an incredible job representing just how many different peoples and faiths were living and operating around the coast of the Indian Ocean – how that part of the ocean drew so many people together. Nils: Chefs kiss to Chakraborty for representing different faiths, nationalities and ethnicities without having prejudice amongst them. Amina’s crew come from all walks of life but they are all so accepting and respectful of their differences. Beth: I don’t think there was a single character I disliked. Our main characters are Amina’s crew: first mate Tinbu, Mistress of Poisons Dalila, and Father of Maps Majed. There’s a ship’s cat, Payasam, who frankly we do not get enough of. Of the crew, Dalila was hands down my favourite. She is hilarious, mysterious, and eccentrically dangerous. On the outside she seems quite gruff and independent, but you can see there are deep undercurrents (happy Nils?) of hurt. Nils: I have such fondness for the whole crew too. Tinbu our first mate, is a gifted archer but has a knack for getting into trouble. Dalila, my beloved Mistress of Poisons has a reputation for experimenting and blowing things up, but she is a gem and Beth I would happily sail the seas with her. Albeit with one eye constantly upon her! Majed, our talented Father of Maps never steers the crew wrong and he’s so endearingly loyal. Payasam is one adorably useless cat. Beth mentioned her favourite trope above so I’ll say one of mine: found families. Together this crew all make the best found family, don’t they? Beth: Argh yes found families! Amina and Majed have their own families that depend upon them, but they also have their family of the crew, and Amina’s blindness to how they see her as family was something beautiful to watch her overcome. Nils: That was definitely a highlight for me too. Shall we talk about Raksh? I know Raksh is a character who we can’t say much about for spoilery reasons but he was certainly one of our favourites! Morally grey, cheeky, will happily run away from a fight and leave you in the shit and never shy to ask for sex, Raksh was a character who was consistently entertaining! Beth: He was absolutely hilarious and certainly had a healthy, um, appetite. (I wouldn’t count this as a spicy read, Chakraborty does the whole “draws the curtains” thing) We should definitely talk about Chakraborty’s villain. Falco Palamenestra is a Frank who has kidnapped the scholarly daughter of one of Amina’s crewmates. After building Amina up as a fearsome, borderline villainous character herself, Chakraborty needed someone evil enough to be a convincing adversary, and I think she really blew us out of the water with this one. There were moments, when Falco was discussing his past, that I thought perhaps we’re going to get a complicated villain who we can reluctantly sympathise with… and then he went batshit. Nils: Falco is villainous in an unnerving quiet way. At first he comes across as a reasonable, charming man, one who has a vision of a world where he’s not forced into the Holy crusades, he actually seems noble. It’s easy to forget the atrocities he’s committed yet it isn’t long until we see his true desire is, like most men during that time period, power. His words are nothing but sugar coated lies. As Amina herself said: “I genuinely could not tell if Falco wanted to seduce me, hire me, or cut my throat and hang me in the cave to perform nefarious magic with my blood.” Beth: He represented that Western white male power of controlling narratives and the evil that can be accomplished just with the power of words and persuasion and coercion. He was a very clever villain. We’ve skirted around some of the themes, so let’s go into those in more detail. I wanted to teach my daughter ro read the waves, and the night sky, to see her eyes widen with wonder and curiosity when I took her to new places, new cities. I wanted to give her all that I’d had to take, positioning her to enjoy opportunities I could never imagine. Beth: So yeah, motherhood’s a big one! Nils: Yes, motherhood and that guilt of wanting to be more than a mother and retain a part of yourself is strong throughout. “Our hearts may be spoken for by those with sweet eyes, little smiles, and so very many needs, but that does not mean that which makes us, us, is gone. And I hope… part of me hopes anyway that in seeing me do this, Marjana knows more is possible. I would not want her to believe that because she was born a girl, she cannot dream.” I love how Chakraborty illustrates that in women following their dreams, doing what makes them happy, keeping their identity, is inspiring their children to do the same, to be strong. Especially their young girls. Beth: Maternal guilt is something I’ve suffered a great deal with, I don’t think any mother is immune to it. I found myself really relating to Amina through this particular shared experience, and I really appreciated Chakraborty exploring these emotions and representing them. Amina’s not the only mother in the story, and her version of motherhood isn’t the only one either. I thought Chakraborty did a great job exploring the different ways people can be mothers, can be there for their families. Being a physical presence at home is one thing, protecting and nurturing, but sometimes a part of that process is knowing when to step away also. Understanding that your child has myriad needs. I found Amina’s arguments with her own mother fascinating in that regard. But like you say above, one of my favourite messages here was what we tell our daughters. What we give them, how we can help them find their identities. Nils: In fact the theme of identity is also prominent throughout as many of the characters are not always what they first appear to be. You see Amina might be a fierce captain but she’s gentle and fair to those she holds dear, Dalila appears cold hearted and hot tempered but there’s a sense of loneliness beneath, and Dunya, who is the granddaughter, and daughter of an old crew member, who Amina is sent to rescue, struggles with the confinement and expectations of her family versus who she really wants to be. What is so alluring about being aboard Amina’s Marawati is that everyone is free to express their real identity. Beth: It makes me think of the stories we tell about ourselves and how they hold up to the reality of ourselves. For example how Amina tells herself she never visited Dalila because it was safer for all involved that way and Dalila doesn’t need her anyway, when actually she couldn’t have been further from the truth. Stories do that, don’t they, branching out like a sapling searching for sunlight? By the time centuries have passed and that sapling is a mighty tree, there are more branches than can be counted, sprawling in widely different directions. I think the power of stories was an interesting thread. Falco had hunted Amina down on the power of the stories he’d heard about her. I loved the exploration of the role of stories in society, how they can shape expectations, how they can be used for different purposes. How important it is who gets to tell the stories. Those of us who make the sea our home carry libraries in our head; a fact I have tried to impress upon many a land-dwelling intellectual. The scholars who travel the world to study could learn just as much if they would speak to the sailors, porters, and caravan hands who ferry them and their books to such faraway lands. And of course, all this is wrapped up in a story being told to a narrator in turn relaying it to us, just like in Chakraborty’s metaphor of the spreading branches above. What about Chakraborty’s inclusion of mythology and magic? Beth: This is going to sound mad, but I wasn’t expecting a great deal of magic this time around? I thought there’d be a sea monster or two, but that would be it. I’m not sure why. So, whereas there isn’t anywhere near the levels of magic we saw in Daevabad, I was pleasantly surprised by how much magic there was! I thought Chakraborty balanced it so well; that it’s a very human story that magic encroaches into. Nils: I was glad to see some familiar Arabic mythological figures from Daevabad in this novel too though , one in particular made me smile! Beth: Yes! There are some lovely surprises! Nils: However, going back to the theme of stories, I love that a lot of the mythology and fantastical aspects in this book change throughout as the truth behind their origins is revealed. You see Amina’s mission goes from finding kidnapped Dunya to also finding a fabled artefact, one with enough power to cause catastrophic consequences. Yet with every story revealed about this artefact we learn that it is very less romanticised than what early scholars had recorded. Beth: I’m trying to step carefully so as not to spoil anything! But I loved all the snippets of story behind the artefact, they were a brilliant addition. Chakraborty includes an Author’s Note and Further Reading, which was a lovely insight into her basis of research that led to wanting to tell this story. It was very much a focus on the mundane human lives around the Indian Ocean, so of course it’s only natural that the stories of those places would work their way into this one. We all build upon the stories that came before us. Chakraborty mixes real historical figures and elements of Arabian mythology to create myths and stories in her own world. Nils: Her passion for Arabian history and mythology really shines through. I love how Amina’s character was also a feminist version of Sinbad the Sailor. Beth: There is of course a sea monster, as per the US cover. I thought it such an imaginative mix of kraken and scorpion, it sounded truly horrifying! When it first turned up, Chakraborty really ramped up the tension, it was so ominous! What were your overall impressions of the book? Nils: Chakraborty has worked her magic once again and delivered an epic feminist tale quite like no other. This is a story which celebrates being a mother who longs for more, it is a celebration of faith and a stark reflection upon the atrocities committed by Western invaders. This novel is filled with passion and heart. Yet at its core this is a phenomenally entertaining read with the most loveable ragtag seafaring crew. Beth: Chakraborty cementing herself as one of the best storytellers of our time. On the face of it, a swashbuckling adventure filled with daring rescues and magic. But as Nils says, there’s so much thought-provoking depth, perspectives to consider, representations that don’t get shared enough. This is a story of page-burning action, mysticism and magic, and so much heart. I also really appreciated that this works as a standalone story, it has a satisfying resolution; but Chakraborty has left the odd door ajar should she want to return. And I sincerely hope we can. Favourite quotes? Beth: Chakraborty’s writing is just divine! There were so many lines I sent to you Nils! Whether they’d made me laugh out loud, or whether I found them particularly thought-provoking, or just that they were so beautiful. After the Daevabad trilogy I considered Chakraborty a great story-teller, but this book has certainly elevated her even higher. She took one look at me, inhaled like an arrow being drawn back, and shouted, ‘Have you lost your mind?’ I would not want her to believe that because she was born a girl, she cannot dream For the greatest crime of the poor in the eyes of the wealthy has always been to strike back. To fail to suffer in silence and instead disrupt their lives and their fantasies of a compassionate society that coincidentally set them on top. To say no. (there are so many more quotes I’d include if I could Nils!!!) Nils: Yes Beth, Chakraborty’s prose is so superbly crafted. I’ve shared quite a few quotes already but here are two more that really made me think. “It is a difficult thing to destroy your child’s innocence. To tell her the mother she adores is not the “best mama in the world,” but a real person who has done terrible, unforgivable things.” And this quote is so damn powerful: “We are the women in the streets the others watch from behind their screens. Accordingly, we are often granted less honor, our bodies assumed to be available for the right price or simply invisible. I have cast a judgmental eye straight back, dismissing the rich women behind the screens as pampered dolls.” The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is expected for release on 28th February 2023 and is available to pre-order: US – Bookshop.org | UK – Waterstones All quotes used are taken from an early ARC and are subject to change upon publication. The post THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL-SAFIRI by Shannon Chakraborty (BUDDY READ BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article

During my prolific writing days, and even during my not prolific writing days, when I’d hear the term “writer’s block,” I believed it to be a self-indulgent myth. Either you were writing or you were not. You sit your ass in your chair and you write or you get up from your chair and decide you will not write. I could give you a lot of reasons, excuses, lamentations for why I haven’t completed my next novel. I bet some of you know a lot of these reasons, excuses, lamentations, too, and likely 89.999% of them are valid. We can talk about how others may say that giving up writing for any length of time is for those who really aren’t dedicated to the craft, but that’s bull-taters. I sacrificed quite a lot for my writing in time, family, social life, etc, so I really don’t want to hear how I am not dedicated to my craft. I’ll guess many of you sacrificed much as well. Life can toss crappy curveballs and we sometimes must make decisions on what we feel is important, and sometimes the writing is not the more important thing: GASP! I know! I never thought I’d say that! Is this the eighth sign of the apocalypse? Before the multi-year-slump, I could spit out a novel like it was nuttin’—doesn’t mean all of them were publishable but writing the words never was a problem and creating characters I loved wasn’t either. I wrote the first draft to Sweetie in 30 days (a challenge I gave myself) and it’s one of my all-time favorite published novels and loved characters. Writing created an excitement and contentment in me that nothing else could touch. Never. Ever. Never. Ever. Never. Ever. NEVER EVER did I see a world where I was not writing. But stuff happened and the writing stopped. And stopped for quite some time. And nowhere in all the time I was not writing did I believe in writer’s block. Nope. But then I opened a novel I’ve had in my computer files, one that I’ve fiddled around with from time to time, here, there, yonder, skippity do dah day. The novel has good bones. It has interesting characters that excite me. I have no doubt I am a good writer. I have no doubt I can create good characters. I’ve known my “severe limitations” when it comes to plots/outlines, and it never before stopped me from sitting my ass in the chair and writing til my ass was numb. But there I was scrolling through the novel and liking what I saw. I inserted a little here, moved a page there, renamed two characters who begged to be renamed. I had a little quiver of excitement build and I thought, “I have missed this part of me.” You know, the part where writing was like an important appendage before it’s been cut off and left with some phantom limb feeling…? And then, out from the cantankerous ether …. Anyone who has ever had an anxiety attack knows how it can be insidious, sneaky, like a noxious fog rolling in—one minute the sky and trees and birds are clear and then comes the smoky clawed tendrils wrapping around and through and within before they grasp and pinch and squeeze and the beautiful world begins to disappear until there is nothing but dense grey-white and the grey-white soaks into your brain and there is no thinking or creating, there is only a foggy confusion and your eyes feel so very wide as they try to see through a dense fairy-tale forest, you know, the part of the fairy-tale where the character is about to be devoured by the unknown, and everything becomes weirdly scary, shaky, and just wrong. I stared at my novel and all the words bulged out at me. The characters turned their backs on me. And every bit of joy I’d felt that I was writing again drained from my body and pooled onto the floor. I, much like our unlucky character in the dark-misted forest, had been devoured. Oh I tell you what! Writer’s Block then felt real! That phrase loomed in the goo of my brain with a sickly green glow. WTF? I’ve had some anxiety attacks in my lifetime, but never ever while writing. I closed my laptop, picked up my remote, and turned on the television to something funny. Laugh, Kathryn. Goddammit Laugh! Like fog will do, the grey-white receded, lucky for me rather quickly-ish, but I wasn’t about to invite the anxiety back. Nuh Uh. The laptop looked sad sitting there, so I took my laptop to my study and left it there. Yet…. I saved Black Moon Cove to my desktop. The next morning I opened it, just a peek. My gut swirled and twirled, just a bit, but I told myself and I’ll tell you too, “Yes, you are afraid. And it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to worry about failure. It sucks to fail but the world still turns, so try again or try something else, or do not. It’s okay to decide you don’t want to publish it at all. It sucks that if the novel is published, it may not sell all that well, but you are not alone in this and that may bring a tidbit of comfort. It’s okay to feel angry. It’s okay to be down right pissed. It’s okay to feel envy over another writer’s success, but don’t let that envy turn sour; envy can be motivating or it can be debilitating: decide. It’s okay to feel grief over losses and missed opportunities. It’s okay to feel exhausted and burned out and wondering if you just do not want this for yourself any longer. But if you don’t write the diggity-ding-dang book you’ll never know how this story turns out—yours and your characters.” And I will open that novel again. And I’ll hope the nasty mean fog that may come will be a little less dense and disorienting. And I’ll hope tenacity works until writing once again becomes a part of my body—the severed limb will grow back (or it will not … but that’s another essay). I want to be where the writing is as it used to be—the One Constant that brought joy and sanity to my life. Where writing will once again be what keeps my head clear of clouds instead of the cloud creator. I’m going to open that novel and open that novel and open that novel time after time after time until I am done, even if it takes me fifty-galleven years. Or, I will not. All up to me, right? And if you are feeling what I am feeling, then it’s all up to you, right? We do the best we can in writing, in life. We are writers even if we are not writing. Yes, I said that. Believe what you will, but I am a writer and I always will be. It’s in my marrow. If I never write another book, then that sucks but gosh I have written and written and written and I’m proud of those thousands and thousands of words. What about you? Do you Believe? [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

Authors writing spy thrillers, or crime novels laced with espionage, often hook readers with declassified intelligence. By our nature, we want things we can’t have; we want to place our eyes on what we’re not allowed to see. To be sure, information governments once classified in the name of national security is by its nature sexy and provocative. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s role in the study of UFOs, for instance, is catnip for any generation. Declassified information is forbidden fruit that’s fallen off the tree, now ripe for eating. What once was a nation’s crown jewel lies on the ground—abandoned and discarded—beckoning like that glowing green crystal in Superman. (Of course, I’m referring to declassified information rather than the pure product. Criminal and civil penalties exist for those who unlawfully obtain, handle, or disseminate classified information.) Sources for tantalizing declassified information vary, but treasure troves exist at the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) and through investigative reporting. In the past, much of the investigative reporting stemmed from major newspapers; namely, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Today, however, online publications provide juicy nuggets of intel. Beyond the CIA’s interest in UFOs, noteworthy examples of historic declassified treasures include the Watergate scandal, the Pentagon Papers, and the Bay of Pigs. In the last few decades, NARA has released interesting material from the Cold War era, including most of Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Papers, and in the coming months and years it will unveil new records concerning the Global War on Terrorism. Earlier this month, NARA declassified an additional tranche of records concerning President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. This document dump likely piqued the interest of Stephen King, who studied the Warren Report and related NARA disclosures before writing 11/22/63, a thriller where the protagonist travels back in time to prevent Kennedy’s assassination. What’s more, Tom Clancy based most of his novels on declassified information. In fact, his material was so provocative that many accused him of exposing classified information. (The bigger the controversy, the larger the book sales.) And Brad Meltzer obviously spends considerable time researching the historical archives to find material for his novels. It is no surprise that one of Meltzer’s best fictional characters is a young archivist named Beecher White. In the early 2000s, I played a role not unlike that of Beecher White. I was on a team of U.S. Department of Justice lawyers who sifted through boxes of the Reagan Papers for declassification purposes. Each box was categorized into different topics: Just Say No, Assassination Attempt, First Woman Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, AIDS, Line-Item Veto, etc. Notwithstanding your political stripes or views of certain presidents, reviewing boxes of presidential documents transports you into the past like a time machine. Dust covered the countless bankers’ boxes, and our team scoured their contents in small offices in a building on New York Avenue in Washington, D.C. We worked into the witching hours, eating junk food and pouring over records that would forever change history, unearthing national gems. There was one topic that proved most fascinating: Ronald Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate speech in June 1987. This was the memorable speech where, with the Berlin Wall as a backdrop, President Reagan extolled General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Multiple boxes contained sensitive drafts that chronicled the evolution of the speech. Experts on world affairs knew Reagan’s speech would be historic, and several themes dominated the tension among numerous drafters and reviewers. The “tear down this wall” line, however, caused most alarm within the State Department and National Security Council. In fact, Reagan’s National Security Advisor—a forty-nine-year-old General Colin Powell—kept crossing out the phrase, worried that it would ratchet up Cold War tensions between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. Near the end of the box, Powell’s side appeared to have won the debate. The line had vanished in the final draft in the final box. But had it vanished? President Reagan famously said those words, some of the most memorable in world history. So…was there another draft? After leaving government, I worked for the same law firm as Secretary James Baker, one of Reagan’s closet confidants. Baker’s Washington, D.C. office, just a few blocks from where I had reviewed the Reagan Papers years early, had no desks or computers—only a couch, a few chairs, and a phone. I sat on a chair across from the couch and retold my story . . . and he finished it. He said that Kenneth Duberstein, Reagan’s deputy chief of staff, rode with Reagan to the Berlin Wall on that historic day. They traveled in a limousine together, and Reagan told him he was putting the line back in. “The boys at State are going to kill me,” he said, “but it’s the right thing to do.” The rest is history, and you can find the final draft at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Beyond declassified intelligence, other mysterious governmental information awaits the curious and crafty. One of the greatest joys of writing thrillers is that people—even strangers—want to discuss your projects. Those discussions often lead to interesting material. My inspiration for writing my first novel, Scavenger Hunt, was learning of the hidden eighth floor at the U.S. Department’s (DOJ) Main Justice Building in Washington, D.C. Few people, even DOJ lawyers, know that it exists, and my curiosity led me to ask more about it. The Main Justice elevators only access seven floors, but eight sets of office windows paint the outside of the building. After weeks of inquiry, a building custodian took me on a tour. Scavenger Hunt walks the reader up the hidden staircase that connects the seventh and eighth floors and leads to the former Federal Bureau of Investigation’s ballistics lab, now dark and eerie, where the clandestine team of Operation Scavenger Hunt meets in secret. Weeks after submitting Scavenger Hunt’s final manuscript, I continued to dig up fascinating information. At an event in D.C. in May, I ran into a former U.S. attorney general. He asked me about my novel, only a few days from print, and we discussed the secret eighth floor of Main Justice. He then proceeded to describe a secret room above the attorney general’s office on the fifth floor. Before long, two other former U.S. attorneys general joined our conversation. They all knew about this hidden treasure, where, attorney general lore holds, Robert F. Kennedy “visited” with Marilyn Monroe. Learning of this revelation, I scurried away and emailed my publisher: Stop the press! You can read more about the “RFK Honeymoon Suite” in Chapter 2 of Scavenger Hunt. *** View the full article

This city is large and diverse. There are pockets of grinding poverty, pockets of middle-class respectability, pockets of wealth. There is corruption beyond a normal person’s belief, and incredible selflessness and valor. Intrigue worthy of a spy novel, and innocence and wonder. Eight hundred thousand-plus people living out their stories. And all too often, their stories merge with mine. –City of Whispers (2011) A classic hardboiled opening. It could have come from any of the guys – Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald – but it didn’t. Its author was Marcia Muller, recently fired from her magazine job because she kept embellishing the quotes (“they were more interesting,” she said). A great fan of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and Lew Archer, Muller had became increasingly exasperated by the fact that there were no hardboiled American women equivalents. If she wanted to read one, she realized, she was going to have to create one herself. So she did. Edwin of the Iron Shoes, featuring private detective Sharon McCone, was published in 1977. In 1982, Sue Grafton introduced Kinsey Millhone in A is for Alibi and Sara Paretsky did the same for V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only. But Marcia Muller was first – “the founding mother,” Grafton called her – and in 35 novels over 44 years, she proved that her p.i. could stand her ground with anybody. McCone grew up a Navy brat in San Diego, her father a chief petty officer who was always gone, leaving her mother to cope with five unruly children. Her brothers were rowdy males, “ever on the brink of juvenile delinquency,” her sisters rebellious females “ever on the brink of teenage pregnancy” (A Wild and Lonely Place, 1995). Sharon was the good girl, but a loner, even in her own family. Her siblings all looked like the Scots-Irish they were; Sharon seemed to have inherited all the genes of her one-eighth Shoshone grandmother and looked nothing like them. She was a cheerleader in high school, but as soon as she graduated, she forged her own path, becoming a department store security guard. However, “after a couple of years, I couldn’t see my life stomping through racks of dresses with a walkie-talkie in my purse” (Edwin of the Iron Shoes), so she went to Berkeley and studied sociology, financing herself with more security work at night, this time for a large agency that also tried her out on detective work. She liked it – but not the jobs she had to do, mostly involving wayward husbands and wives, and when she refused to do them anymore, she got fired and moved to San Francisco. There, she ran into a college friend named Hank Zahn, who hired her as the sole investigator for the poverty law firm he ran called the All Souls Cooperative, a place where most of the lawyers lived and worked together in a big old house. And that’s where we first meet her: twenty-nine, and a bundle of contradictions. She’s idealistic but hard-headed, gregarious but wary of entanglements, a good shot but unhappy with guns, sensible but with a wild side: “I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with danger. I’d run from it, balanced on its thin edge, plunged in headlong” (A Wild and Lonely Place). She’s obsessed with research, but sometimes uses less analytical methods: When interviewing people, she tries to “tune out the words and listen to what’s hidden in the spaces between them. To the pauses, the hesitations” (Listen to the Silence, 2000). At crime scenes, no matter how old, she leaves herself open to the vibes: “Sometimes places can absorb the emotions surrounding events that have happened there” (Where Echoes Live, 1991). She’s also passionate about justice, and the books are full of commentary and social issues: illegal immigration, gentrification, political corruption, gender inequality, racism, gun control, domestic violence, mental illness, human rights. That passion also leads her to make cases a little too personal sometimes, to care about them so much that she pushes too hard: “All too often when that happened, people around me got hurt” (Pennies on a Dead Woman’s Eyes, 1992). In Burn Out (2008), she steps back, realizing that she has “to let go of the idea that I could right every wrong and instead settle for righting only a few.” But that’s easier said than done. Some cases just mean too much, and the older she gets, the more she finds justice and the law to be increasingly at odds. When a friend of her is killed in Both Ends of the Night (1997), she says to her companion, “I keep waiting for some sort of…settling, whatever. For some sense of wanting justice, not revenge.” “Isn’t happening,” he says. “No.” And in The Shape of Dread (1989), she has at last run down a particularly cold-blooded killer and has her gun on him: “I could shoot him point-blank, I thought…should shoot him. No sense in letting this evil man live. No sense in going through the motions of arrest, trial, imprisonment, even execution, because it won’t make any difference….Give me a reason to pull this trigger.” She doesn’t pull it – but the mental cost stays with her. As do the many perils she faces throughout the course of her career. She is shot, stabbed, kidnapped, hunted, and put in a sinking boat to drown. Houses and buildings blow up or burn down around her. Planes she is piloting crash. Pitched battles rage. The cases come from everywhere, often as assignments, just as often from friends, family, acquaintances. Vietnamese refugees hire her for protection. A daughter wants to find her mother, missing twenty-two years. A companion from physical therapy suddenly vanishes. Her Berkeley days come back to haunt her. A bomber targets diplomatic sites around the city. A country music singer receives threatening letters. A hostage negotiator goes off the radar in Mexico. A B&B owner suffers a string of inexplicable bad incidents. A woman impersonates her around the city, creating havoc. Often the cases begin in one place, and as the investigation continues, veer off to some other place entirely. A supposed suicide turns into a story of murder, embezzlement, and sabotage. A shop owner’s death opens up a world of international art-smuggling. A woman’s disappearance embroils McCone in international war crimes. A search for stolen religious artifacts lands her, bound and drugged, in a paramilitary camp that is training for a coup. No wonder McCone is exhausted. Fortunately, she also has those friends, family, and colleagues to draw on for support…mostly. Her brother Joey is a screw-up. Her brother John is an ex-brawler who comes to her rescue more than once. Her sister Patsy is the B&B owner mentioned above. Her other sister, Charlene, is married to Ricky Savage, the country music singer similarly mentioned above, then divorces him, gets her PhD in finance, and marries an international financier. Their six kids, the “little Savages,” grow up in a variety of alarming ways, including Mick Savage, who ultimately becomes one of Sharon’s key investigators, though his mastery of computers and fondness for such books as Advanced Lock-Picking make his methods of acquiring information considerably dodgier than Sharon likes. Her mother, meanwhile, announces in book twelve, Where Echoes Live, that “I have left your father,” causing considerable family drama, and warns Sharon that she is like her father: “There’s another side to you, something…wild that can’t be contained.” What she means is revealed to Sharon in Listen to the Silence, when her father dies, leaving instructions for Sharon to look in the garage, where she finds papers documenting that….she isn’t his child, or her mother’s. She’s adopted, and that Shoshone blood is not one-eighth but one hundred percent, sending Sharon on an odyssey of self-discovery that leads to her true parents, and the devastating incidents that culminated in her becoming a McCone. Those parents, too, along with a newly-discovered half-sister and half-brother, will also become important characters in several of the books that follow, and the cases that fill them, including the murders of indigenous women in 2021’s Ice and Stone. McCone’s colleagues, too, evolve as the books continue. Though Sharon will always stay close to Hank Zahn and others at the All Souls Cooperative, the place becomes too corporate for her, with new partners wanting to kick her upstairs to a desk job, so in book fifteen, Till the Butchers Cut Her Down (1994), she takes the leap to open her own firm, McCone Investigations, with offices on the San Francisco piers, bringing with her Mick Savage, investigators Rae Kelleher and Charlotte Keim, and office manager Ted Smalley. As McCone Investigations, too, grows over the years, these people are supplemented by others such as disaffected FBI agent Craig Morland, former SFPD detective Adah Joslyn, and a one-time prostitute named Julia Rafael, in whom Sharon sees something of herself and who turns out to be a top-notch detective. Trust me when I say that many dramas ignite among all these many characters, infusing the series with a wealth of soap opera. Ultimately, McCone outgrows even McCone Investigations, and becomes a partner in McCone & Ripinsky International. Ripinsky, you say? Who’s this? Only the most important character in the entire series, other than Sharon herself. Sharon has had a few love interests in the books. The first was a homicide detective named Greg Marcus, who annoyed her at first meeting in Edwin of the Iron Shoes by calling her “papoose,” mocking her “woman’s intuition,” and asking “Do you really have an investigator’s license?” Grrr. It got better – a lot better – “but he still managed to piss me off on the average of once a week” (The Cheshire Cat’s Eye, 1983), and by the fourth book, it was over, though they stayed friendly through the years. The second love interest was a DJ named Don who was a tad clingy and wanted a family and…he didn’t last too long. The third was an eminent psychiatrist, for whom Sharon fell hard, and he for her, but he was married to a mentally ill woman, and in all conscience he didn’t think he could leave her: “He was an honorable man…but sometimes on cold, lonely nights, I cursed him for that honor” (The Shape of Dread). Then, in book twelve, Where Echoes Live, Sharon chases an environmental case up into the high desert of northeastern California, and meets a tall, lanky, widowed environmentalist and fellow pilot named Hy (Heino) Ripinsky, and she’s a goner, despite plenty of warning signs, like that large gap of unaccounted-for years in the 1970s when he might have been with the CIA…or something. “Underneath that laid-back exterior, he’s still dangerous,” a friend warns her. “A genuine crazy man who’ll go against anybody in any way.” He’s got his own reservations about Sharon – “You are the same goddamned stubborn, annoying kind of person as my late wife, and one man doesn’t deserve this kind of grief twice” – but he’s kind of a goner himself. And then he disappears. Sharon’s search leads her to a high-powered outfit called RKI – Renshaw and Kessell International – whose founders have similarly dark gaps in their pasts and now provide hostage recovery and counterterrorism services for corporations. They’re high-tech, unscrupulous, and Ripinsky does occasional work for them in exchange for autonomy on his own projects in the human rights area. That last part is nice, Sharon thinks, but, boy, are these guys shady. She doesn’t know the half of it. Renshaw and Kessell did unspeakable things in Southeast Asia in the 70s, and the things Hy saw and did there gave him “nightmares, tightly boxed demons, enough regrets to last ten lifetimes” (A Wild and Lonely Place). It takes Sharon several books to learn the complete truth about him, and to understand him and forgive him, and by that time, she’s done a little work for RKI herself. When that past comes thundering back to wreak its vengeance on both Renshaw and Kessell, it’s Sharon and Hy who pull the pieces of RKI back together. And the pieces of themselves, too. No secrets now. No conditions. An unbreakable bond the commitment-wary McCone never thought possible. “McCone,” he said through our linked headsets/ “I can’t think of a better place to do this than a mile high in our airplane….For about what seems like the hundredth time: will you marry me?…” The word was out of my mouth before I had time to argue with myself. “Yes.” (The Dangerous Hour, 2004) McCone has finally learned: “Hardboiled” doesn’t have to mean “lone wolf.”. Nor an end to the danger that keeps her balanced on the thin edge: A bullet knocks her to the dirt in the next book. *** Marcia Muller came to an interest in violence and crime naturally. In her first two decades, “my orthodontist shot and killed his wife and child; a friend’s mother was fatally stabbed by her husband; a plane carrying another friend’s father was blown up by a bomb; my next door neighbor in my college dormitory killed herself.” Yikes. Born in 1944, Muller says she wanted to be a writer from the time she could first read and write. “My father was a great storyteller. Every evening he would tell me a story when I went to bed. He’d make up fantastic stuff. He would act out different roles.” It isn’t surprising, then, that she’d written her first novel by the age of twelve, a tale about her cocker spaniel, complete with badly drawn illustrations. “It did have mystery elements,” she said. “I guess I knew where I was going.” Her college instructors did not, however. At the University of Michigan, her creative writing instructor told her she would never be a writer, “because you have nothing to say.” Opting for journalism instead, she earned a master’s, landed a job at Sunset magazine, and…”I was a terrible journalist. Whenever I interviewed somebody boring, I’d fictionalize the situation, put words in the person’s mouth.” And so ended that career. By the end of the 1960s, however, somewhat at sea as to what to do with herself, she discovered hardboiled crime fiction. It immediately resonated with her, but she became frustrated that women were constantly only the sideshow: dolls, vamps, victims. Maybe she did have something to say after all. “Sharon McCone was conceived in 1971, when an insistent and annoying woman’s voice in my head began demanding I pay attention to her. But as insistent as she sounded, at first she gave me few clues as to her identity. In fact, she seemed more intent upon impressing upon me who and what she was not” (McCone and Friends, 2000). What she was not was an existential loner, a tough guy, an alcoholic, a hardbitten cynic. McCone would be emotional, caring, surrounded by friends, family, and co-workers. She would be independent, powerful, surrounded by people, and at “a place she could go for poker games and all-night talking sessions.” She would evolve – her character would change and grow, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, “as close to a real person as possible. Like real people, she would age…experience joy and sorrow, love and hatred – in short, the full range of human emotions. Each of her cases would constitute one more major event in an ongoing biography” (“Partners in Crime,” The Writer, May 1997). It took a while to find someone who wanted to publish that biography, however – three manuscripts and five years of rejection. “It was a rocky start, and many times along the way, I was tempted to give up.” Finally, with Edwin of the Iron Shoes, she found an editor who liked it, at the David McKay Company, sold it directly to him, and sat back in 1977 to enjoy her new career. Which promptly collapsed. That editor left McKay, and nobody else there was interested in publishing her – in fact, McKay stopped publishing fiction altogether. It took another four years before Muller could find another home: “Four years later, the world of publishing had caught up and they were recognizing that, yes, there were female private eyes, there were female cops. The whole woman’s movement had affected what we were doing. So when I went to New York, I finally met an editor [Thomas Dunne at St. Martin’s] who immediately bought Ask the Cards a Question. It was the same publishing house where another editor had previously rejected it, proving the rule that it only takes one person to really respond to your work and get you into print.” Paretsky’s Indemnity Only, Grafton’s A is for Alibi, and Muller’s second book, Ask the Cards a Question, were all published within three months of each other in 1982. None of the authors ever looked back. In the meantime, Muller had met fellow crime writer Bill Pronzini, author most notably of the “Nameless Detective” series; they married in 1992, and remain married to this day, often collaborating with each other on novels, anthologies, and the reference book 1001 Midnights: The Aficionado’s Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction (1986). She is the winner of the MWA’s Grand Master Award (as is Pronzini), the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award (Pronzini, too, again), and the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement in Suspense Award (sorry, Bill). She has been a finalist for pretty much every American crime novel award that exists, including the Anthony, Shamus, Edgar, Barry, and Macavity; and won the Anthony for Wolf in the Shadows (see Essentials below) and The McCone Files, and the Shamus for Locked In (ditto). Muller has also learned to fly a plane, just like McCone and Ripinsky. And if you visit her, you just might catch a glimpse of her longtime hobby: making fully electrified, remarkably detailed miniature houses representing places where her characters have lived, including the All Souls Cooperative: “My hobby feeds my work. Helps me visualize certain settings. I’m down to doing some boxes now – no space for any more big ones. And repairs – the rooms and houses are always needing them, just like real houses. Sharon is not always with me, but she’s never far away.” ___________________________________ The Essential Muller ___________________________________ With any prolific author, readers are likely to have particular favorites which may not be the same as anyone else’s. Your list is likely to be just as good as mine – but here are the ones I recommend. Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977) I stood next to the car, waiting for the number ninety-three trolley to pass, its antennae zinging along the overhead cable. The lighted windows of the trolley were empty except for the driver and a lone passenger. It was two-thirty in the morning…. I’d been jerked from my sleep about forty-five minutes earlier by the insistent ring of the telephone and my employer’s voice saying, “Sharon, get yourself up and meet me over at Salem Street. Joan Albritton’s shop….” “Don’t tell me someone’s set another fire over there?” “Worse. A lot worse. This time it’s murder.” So begins the first Sharon McCone novel – you should always start at the beginning. An antique store owner is dead, stabbed with a bone-handled dagger from one of her own display cases, and as Sharon is about to find out, there are several suspects: a former lover, a socialite business tycoon, a group of high-powered real estate speculators. Each of them has a reason for shutting the victim down permanently; none of them has the scruples to keep from doing it. There is only one witness, and he can’t speak: Edwin, a mannequin of a little boy, his feet fitted with a pair of ornate iron shoes. He stands, staring at an oil painting on the wall. But if you know how to ask, he will speak volumes. A perfect introduction to a ground-breaking series. Wolf in the Shadows (1993) Beware of the wolf in the shadows. He is watchful and patient, and when he catches you, he will eat you – skin and bones and heart. There’s a crisis brewing at the All Souls Cooperative, but McCone has no time for that now. Her new lover, Hy Ripinsky, has vanished, and the only one who seems to know why is his boss Gage Renshaw, who thinks Ripinsky has double-crossed him during a hostage negotiation: “When I find him, I intend to kill him.” McCone has no choice but to fly to Mexico herself in an attempt to pick up his trail. Druglords, bandits, and murderers are all around her, the most dangerous man she has ever met pursuing her. With Wolf in the Shadows, the series takes a dramatic leap from crime fiction to international thriller, and McCone herself finds a depth and determination that she never knew existed. “Not since Nero Wolfe dropped five pounds has there been a more thrilling transformation,” said the Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun stated: “This may be Muller’s breakthrough book – the one that pushes her into the household icon realm.” You don’t want to miss it. Listen to the Silence (2000) Now I know that “always” is a lie. Now I know that in the end, death is the only certainty. Running home after her father’s fatal heart attack, Sharon gets the shock of her life going through a box labeled Legal Papers: A petition for adoption for four-day-old BABY GIRL SMITH, to be known as SHARON ELIZABETH MCCONE. Everything she though she had ever known about her past is a lie. Embarking on a search for her identity, she winds up at Montana’s Flathead Reservation, where more lies and evasion await her, secrets piled upon secrets, but also a family she never knew existed – and a desperate killer intent on silencing her for good. Sometimes the skeletons is one’s closet aren’t metaphorical – they’re all too real. A powerhouse story of discovery and obsession, with surprises up to the very last pages. Locked In (2009) and Coming Back (2010) A fantastic double-header, two books that work as one. A dark figure appeared only a few feet away and then barreled into me, knocked me against the wall. My head bounced off the sheetrock hard enough to blur my vision. In the next second I reeled backward through the door, spun around, and was down on my knees on the hard iron catwalk. As I tried to scramble away, push up and regain my footing, one of my groping hands brushed over some kind of metal – Sudden flash, loud pop. Rush of pain. Oh my God, I’ve been shot – Nothing. One late foggy night in July, Sharon surprises an intruder in her office, and is shot in the head. When she awakens, she’s in a hospital bed, a fragmented bullet near her brain stem. She can’t move, she can’t speak. Her mind is working, but no one knows it. She has locked-in syndrome, and no way to tell anyone she’s still in there. “Patients typically die within months,” a doctor tells Hy, “although some live for a few years.” But Sharon is having none of it. She blinks twice at Hy: No. “Are you here with me?” One blink: Yes. In the weeks that follow, all her colleagues work extra hard on their cases: that of a man knifed and disfigured, of a couple whose son has disappeared, of an identity theft expert whose own identity has been stolen, of a prostitute whose slasher death nobody seems to care about, of a burgeoning corruption scandal at City Hall. We see her people crisscrossing the city, digging for clues – and visiting Sharon at her bedside, pouring their day out for her, her attentiveness sometimes prodding them in directions they hadn’t thought of. It’s crisp and compelling, and a marvelous portrait of a group of dedicated professionals working toward a common goal, made all the more urgent by the medical setbacks that strike with no warning. Coming Back opens months later. Sharon is home, but relearning to walk, to speak, to show that she can still lead. “There are times I just…stall,” she tells Hy. “I lose myself in memories of all that lost time. People around here are starting to think I’m losing it.” She’s not wrong. “Sometimes she’s not as quick as she used to be. And she forgets details,” notes one of her detectives, wondering if there’s something easier she can be given, to another’s furious retort, “You act as if she’s some…cripple we keep on staff because she needs a job.” She begins to wonder if all of them are right – and then a fellow patient at her rehab center stops showing up, and when Sharon goes to her house to check on her, she finds a woman claiming to be her niece, and then, seventy-two hours later, the house is cleaned out and empty. Energized, Sharon pursues the case, landing in the middle of a story of international intrigue, rogue government agents, and covert assassination that is breathtaking to the end. Read ‘em both. You’ll be glad you did. ___________________________________ Book Bonus ___________________________________ Interspersed with the McCones are four other series by Muller. The first two, featuring museum curator Elena Oliverez (1983-1986) and art security expert Joanna Stark (1986-1989) are three books each and “were largely written out of financial necessity, because publishers were not paying that much for mystery novels at the time. It was not really enough to live on, but since I had few other recognizable skills, I needed to do more than one book a year to survive. “The Stark series was intended to only last the three books, with the personal story wrapped up in the last one. With the Oliverez books, I really burned out on the character. She was very young, and I couldn’t find anything more to say about her.” That latter series, however, did include a collaboration with Bill Pronzini, who in 1985 had created a nineteenth-century mystery featuring Secret Service agent John Quincannon and Pinkerton operative Sabina Carpenter. In 1986, he and Muller wrote Beyond the Grave, which had Quincannon partially solve a case in 1895 and Elena Oliverez complete it in 1986. Says Muller, “Although another Elena was under contract, I simply couldn’t come up with anything that could top or even equal Beyond the Grave, and I eventually persuaded the publisher to release me from the obligation.” Decades later, however, Muller and Pronzini were fooling around with some short stories featuring Quincannon and Carpenter, he writing the male character and she the female, and enjoyed it so much that they wrote five books about them from 2013 to 2017. They’re charming and well worth your while if you like historicals. Also in the mix are three books set in the fictional Soledad County on the California coast four hours north of San Francisco. Published from 2001 to 2005, they’re dark and brooding, and came about when Muller’s car broke down on the coastal highway one day, in a place where cell phones didn’t work. A few days later, she was talking to her editor “and I had a persistent vision of this woman standing beside the car at the side of the road. The book proceeded from there.” Muller has written a couple of other novels with Pronzini, as well, including a book that united McCone with Pronzini’s “Nameless Detective,” called Double (1998), and together they’ve produce a slew of anthologies, plus the reference book mentioned earlier. Muller’s short stories have also been gathered in such collections as Deceptions (1991), The McCone Files (1995), McCone and Friends (2000), and Somewhere in the City (2007). That last one also includes some Western stories by Muller, as do the collections Time of the Wolves (2003) and Crucifixion River (2007). “I really enjoy writing the Western stories,” she’s said. “I am fascinated by history and I love researching the historical aspects.” How good are they? One of the Crucifixion River stories, “Time of the Wolves,” actually won a Spur Award nomination from the Western Writers of America! ___________________________________ Movie/TV Bonus ___________________________________ The McCone series has been optioned at least twice by film companies, but, as is the case with so many film/TV options, they never reached the script stage. However, if you can, track down a 1991 made-for-TV movie called Into the Badlands. It consisted of three different stories about a bounty hunter, played by Bruce Dern, searching the West for a wanted outlaw. One of those stories was adapted from “Time of the Wolves,” the Spur Award nominee mentioned just above. Others in the movie include Mariel Hemingway, Helen Hunt, and Dylan McDermott – and it even got an Emmy nomination. ___________________________________ Meta Bonus ___________________________________ Greg Marcus: “What is it with you private operatives? You all sound like you’ve read too many paperback detective novels.” McCone: “Well, of course.” “Really? You read stuff like that?” “When I was at Berkeley, I worked nights as a security guard to make my tuition. When you sit hour after hour, watching over an empty building that no one in his right mind would want to break into, you’ll read anything.” He shook his head in disbelief. (The Cheshire Cat’s Eye) Don was reading a novel by Ross Macdonald, whose work I enjoyed even more than Hammett’s. “I got you hooked, didn’t I?” Mysteries were practically all I read these days. “It surprises me that a private eye would want to read about fictional ones,” Don said. “I mean, don’t mystery novels seem pretty unrealistic to you?” “That’s what I like about them. They’re so much more interesting than my life. When you spend a lot of your time interviewing witnesses and filing documents at City Hall, you appreciate a little excitement on paper.” (Leave a Message for Willie, 1984) Jane Stein was a pleasant surprise. With the typical snobbery of northern Californians for Tinseltown, I’d been anticipating someone flashy, a trifle tacky, perhaps loud. “It’s a pleasure to meet a real private investigator, rather than those cinematic horrors we’re always creating down south,” she said. “I’m glad you feel the way I do. I can’t watch those shows or films. I like mystery novels, but the way we’ve been portrayed on the screen….” (The Shape of Dread, 1989) –Featured image, author photo by Tom Graves View the full article

1. The 1934 Extinguishing of the Frank Clements and Elsie Hildreth Smith Family The coroner declared that there was no evidence that the house had been forcibly entered, but added that the investigation showed that the Smiths frequently did not lock doors and windows at night.—“Alabama Banker and Family Slain—Couple Were of Leading Families,” New York Times, November 26, 1934 As day began to dawn on Sunday morning, November 25, 1934 in Demopolis, a quiet little Alabama town of just over four thousand souls situated in rural Marengo County at the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers in the heart of the state’s old plantation belt, Gertrude Robertson, cook to Frank Clements Smith, cashier at Demopolis’ Commercial National Bank, his wife, Elsie Hildreth Smith, and their two young children Frank and Sabra, entered the Smith house—as she had for over a year now, ever since Clements and Elsie had wed on another Sunday morning a year and seven weeks ago on October 8, 1933—to make the family’s breakfast. Having prepared the meal and set the table, Gertrude called for the family to come and eat. Receiving no answer in the strangely silent house, the cook knocked and entered the Smiths’ master bedroom. There she confronted unimaginable horror, what the Demopolis Times four days later pronounced “[u]ndoubtedly the most shocking tragedy that has happened in the city of Demopolis.” Gertrude Robertson, a twenty-eight-year-old black woman who a decade earlier had born a son, Nathan, knew very personally the tragedy of the death of a child, for her boy had passed away earlier that year in July. Yet the Smiths’ cook could not have been prepared for the nightmarish tableaux which faced her now, in that grim bedroom. So appalling was her brief seconds’ sight of the occupants that she fled panic-stricken from the scene to the home, directly across the street, of the widowed Hannah Koch and her bookkeeper son Isidore, members of Demopolis’ once significant Jewish community, which numbered around 150 people at the time. Desperately beseeched by Gertrude, Isidore Koch entered the Smiths’ master bedroom and there found the entire family—husband, wife, toddler son and infant daughter—gruesomely slain, each and every one of them brutally shot to death. Clad in his pajamas, thirty-six-year-old Clements Smith lay on the floor by his and his wife’s bed, his forehead grazed by a bullet and a powder-scorched hole by his right ear. Thirty-three-year-old Elsie, fully clothed, rested across the foot of the bed with two bullet wounds to her chest. Her hands were crossed reposefully over her disfigured breasts, as if she were a stone sarcophagus effigy slumbering timelessly in a mediaeval church. Elsie’s three-year-old son by a prior marriage, Frank Alkire, who normally slept in his own room, lay on the bed beside his mother, dead like his stepfather from a shot to the head, while the couple’s infant daughter, Sabra, just six weeks old, lay tucked snugly in her netted crib, shot through her mouth. Police found two pistols in the bedroom. Under the bed was an old style “lemon squeezer” .32 short revolver, so named for the grip safety in its back strap, which made it necessary to firmly grasp the gun while depressing the safety lever to fire it. From the lemon squeezer three lead bullets had been fired. On a shelf in the closet there was also a blood-spattered, pearl-handled automatic pistol, which Clements had only recently purchased. From this weapon four steel-jacketed cartridges had been fired. Elsie, her son and Sabra had been killed by steel jacketed cartridges, Clements by a lead bullet. Scattered around the room were four steel-jacketed cartridges and a single lead bullet. Clements Smith Coroner Cedric C. F. Hickman, professionally affiliated with the B. J. Rosenbush Undertaking Company and Furniture Store in Demopolis, soon arrived to take charge of the house and bodies. By this time word of the murders had spread like fire through the small town and hundreds of people, foregoing church services, had gathered round the Smiths’ small but fashionable Spanish Revival home to witness the comings and goings of law enforcement and exchange thrillingly bloodcurdling speculations about just what horrors had taken place there. Sheriff Sam Drinkard, who appears to have rotated in and out of the county sheriff’s office with his elder brother Dwight Moody Drinkard, arrived next from the county seat of Linden, a little town of under one thousand inhabitants located seventeen miles to the south of Demopolis, to take charge of the murder investigation. The previous year both of the Drinkard brothers had been ignominiously hauled into federal court on a charge of conspiracy to violate the soon-to-be repealed National Prohibition Act by accepting bribes from Vester Ward, a farmer and moonshiner in the small town of Thomaston, eleven miles east of Linden; but they had been found not guilty and their reputations as lawmen evidently remained good, at least within the confines of Marengo County. Upon his arrival in Demopolis, Sam Drinkard summoned Officer George Burton Porter, an ambitious and keen-eyed young fingerprint identification expert from the city of Selma, a comparative metropolis of over 18,000 inhabitants located sixty miles to the east of Demopolis in neighboring Dallas County, to take the pistols back to Selma for testing. Officer Porter, who on his own initiative six years earlier had started Selma’s identification bureau literally from his desk drawer, was familiar with the Drinkard brothers, having worked with then Sheriff Moody Drinkard in 1929 on another brutal Marengo County murder case, when he had been called in to take fingerprints from the bloody axe used to bludgeon to death seventy-six-year-old James Richmond Moss, storekeeper and postmaster at the village of Hugo, located between Linden and Thomaston. Moody Drinkard had vowed then that to find the slayer of old Jim Moss he would get Officer Porter to “fingerprint every person in the county if necessary.” In reality, however, he locked up a dozen or more black people, ultimately securing a confession from a pair of Birmingham men who had come down to Marengo to visit some of their kinfolk. As they had five years earlier in the Moss murder case, Marengo cops initially looked for the culprit of the mass shooting at the Smith home among the county’s large black population. They quickly arrested and questioned John Robertson, the seventy-four-year-old yardman at the Smith house (it is unclear whether he was related to Gertrude), but soon set him free. The initial theory that the Smiths had been robbed and murdered by a home intruder dissolved after a wristwatch and rings on Clements and Elsie’s bodies, along with other assorted valuables, were found untouched in the house. Also quickly exonerated was Gertrude, who resided quietly and blamelessly with her elderly grandparents, James and Ella Robertson, at their humble place on Arcola Street, a couple of miles away from the Smiths’ fancy residence on South Cedar Avenue. Thus after several days the case remained officially unsolved, as newspapers around the country blazed horrific headlines about the affair (Demopolis Shooting Wipes Out Family). The slain Frank Clements Smith was the son of the late Andrew Reid Smith, in life an electric company executive and president of the Demopolis Commercial National Bank, and his wife Clara Estelle Clements Smith. When they married in 1893, Andrew and Clara were socially prominent natives of the city of Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama, located sixty miles north of Demopolis. Clara, “one of the most brilliant ornaments of Tuscaloosa society,” was a daughter of attorney Rufus Hargrove Clements and granddaughter of Hardy Clements, said to have been the wealthiest planter in Tuscaloosa County before the Civil War, owner of a thousand slaves, twenty thousand acres of land and declared personal wealth in 1860 of around nine million dollars (in modern worth). Seven years after Andrew and Clara moved to Demopolis at the turn of the century, the couple purchased Bluff Hall, an imposing, white-columned antebellum mansion overlooking the Tombigbee River that originally had been owned by planter-politician Francis Strother Lyon and his wife Sarah Serena Glover Lyon, a sister of Williamson Allen Glover of Rosemount plantation in neighboring Greene County, one of the great architectural showpieces of the South. Bluff Hall At Bluff Hall the socially ambitious Clara established herself as Demopolis’ reigning hostess, organizing such festive occasions as the 1915 fall harvest celebration of that “unique and exclusive dinner club,” peculiarly indigenous to the town on the Tombigbee, known as Ye Kanterberry Klan—not to be confused, of course, with the Ku Klux Klan, which had been revived, coincidentally (or not), that same year. The society page editor at the Demopolis Times painted this pretty, if precious, picture of the lavish event (to which I can but say, Ye Gods!): One of the most brilliant social functions which has taken place this season was the meeting and banquet of Ye Kanterberry Klan which occurred on ye night of the eighteenth of November at Bluff Hall, the magnificent home of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Reid Smith….From seven to eight Ye Klan held a reception of good fellowship…after which hour ye banquet was announced and the guests were ushered into ye banquet hall….Immediately following the dinner….Andrew Reid Smith was unanimously selected [Konsort] and escorted in pomp to ye throne by Ye Klan and crowned in stately grace by Ye Kommander. Aside from its gracious parties, Bluff Hall was noted for its lovely collection of Japanese curios, which had been sent to Clara by her wealthy brother Julius Morgan Clements, a mining geologist and engineer of international repute and a noted Asiatic traveler who was fluent in a dozen languages. It was at beautiful Bluff Hall that Andrew and Clara’s boys—Frank Clements Smith and his two brothers, Fenton Reid Smith and Charles Singleton Smith, all three of them short, slim, blonde and blue-eyed—grew to manhood with gilded prospects seemingly glittering enticingly before them. Although Andrew died from heart disease at the age of sixty-three in 1932, Clara still resided at Bluff Hall two years after her husband’s demise, when her middle son and his family died so horrifically within a five minutes’ drive from the mansion. On that other Sunday morning on October 8, 1933 when Clements had wed Elsie—“very quietly, with only relatives present,” the Demopolis Times reported—the ceremony had taken place at Bluff Hall with far less ostentation than had that Qwyte Kolorful celebration of Ye Kanterberry Klan. On the occasion of her second son’s quiet wedding Clara decorated the stately old southern home with “vases of dahlias, roses and other cut flowers” and the bride had “carried pink rose buds and lilies of the valley.” What flowers Clara placed on Elsie’s grave, and the graves of her son and grandchildren, after their gruesome violent deaths a year and seven weeks later went unreported. It was also at Bluff Hall on the Monday morning after the murders that a short funeral service was conducted on behalf of the fallen family. Two caskets were provided for the four family members, one for Elsie and her son Frank, and one for Clements and little Sabra, who had barely had a chance to live before she died. From Bluff Hall a funeral cortege made its somber way sixty miles northward to the city of Tuscaloosa, where, after another service at Trinity Episcopal Church, the dead were interred in the old family plot at Evergreen Cemetery. Bluff Hall Newspapers divulged that the late Frank and Elsie Smith had been “considered a very devoted couple by all who knew them” and that both of them had “seemed to idolize their children.” Man and wife alike were “great favorites in the circle of the younger married set” in Demopolis and Clements in particular was deemed to have a “gentle and pleasant disposition that makes friends.” These bouquets of praise thrown upon the dead couple only seemed to make their murders, and those of their children, yet more mystifying. At the coroner’s hearing held a couple of days after the discovery of the dead family, it was revealed that Clements and Elsie had spent Saturday evening at the home of the singularly named Mem Creagh Webb, Jr. and his wife Frances, another locally esteemed young couple with two small children of their own, leaving Frank and Sabra in the care of the redoubtable Gertrude Robertson. According to Chief William Bedford Davis of the Demopolis police, “the couple had quarreled at a party earlier in the night,” by which, presumably, he meant the get-together at the Webbs’ place. Around 9:30 p.m., the Smiths left the Webbs’ house, located on West Capitol Street just down from the old John C. Webb mansion, to drop off at the Demopolis Inn (Modern in Every Way), just two minutes away on West Washington Street, forty-three-year-old Austin Thomas Ars, a tall, brown-haired, gray-eyed accountant and Great War veteran who had been married for fifteen years but had no children. Clements and Elsie then returned to the Webbs’ house, where they remained until shortly after ten, when they left for home. Around 10:30, Clements entered his house and immediately dismissed Gertrude, informing her that “his wife would be in in a few minutes” and that he would give the infant Sabra her bottle of formula. Some in town had deemed this an odd circumstance, but Police Chief Davis, choosing his words with evident care, speculated that “Mrs. Smith and her husband might have preferred that the cook not see her on her return home and that she might have remained in one of the front rooms of the house as the cook took her departure for the night.” On a table police found a liquor bottle and two glasses containing remnants of whiskey. “What followed is problematical,” reported the Demopolis Times, but perhaps things were not so challenging at the Demopolis newspaper wanted its readers to believe. Admittedly, Coroner Cedric Hickman had clouded the matter by maintaining there was a “slight chance” that “an outsider might have been responsible for all the deaths.” Coroner Hickman—who belying his sober profession as a mortician, conducted a Demopolis dance orchestra, served as music director of the First Baptist Church and was celebrated, among the town’s white population anyway, for his performance in blackface minstrel shows (“His monologue with a broom will be remembered by all who saw it,” his 1961 obituary avowed.)—doubtlessly did not want to alienate potential future customers in Demopolis society and thereby made sure to handle the hearing with extreme discretion. However, according to the Selma Times-Journal, which was rather more forthcoming than the Demopolis Times, the Selma fingerprint man George Porter, the lead expert at the hearing, chattily confided to reporters that Clements had shot both himself and his family. Both of the discharged pistols in the bedroom, he explained, bore Clements’ fingerprints. Newsmen naturally pricked up their ears at this. “Frank C. Smith, Demopolis banker, snuffed out the lives of his wife and babies with a fusillade of shots and then turned a gun on himself—that is the theory Fingerprint Expert Porter, of Selma, will substantiate with scientific evidence before a coroner’s jury Tuesday,” was the blunt first paragraph revelation in another nearby newspaper, the Clarke County Democrat, located in the town of Grove Hill, sixty miles south of Demopolis. Voluble Officer Porter begged to differ with Coroner Hickman about the prospect of a home invader having been the culprit of the crimes, discounting the possibility entirely. He theorized, both on the stand and to the press, that after shooting his wife and children with the automatic, which he had carefully replaced on a shelf in the closet, Clements had shot himself with the old revolver, but had succeeded only in grazing his forehead with the bullet and stunning himself for a time. “The weapon used, a small caliber revolver with a ‘lemon squeeze’ handle that had to be pressed hard to fire the pistol, caused him to miss a vital spot,” Porter speculated. He believed that Clements, after lying in a stupor on the floor for an hour and a half, revived and finished the grim job which he had started, fatally discharging a bullet into his brain from the revolver, which fell under the bed. With ghoulish implication Porter added that at some point Elsie’s body had been “tampered with” after she had been shot, presumably by Clements. “There were two bullet wounds, one in each breast,” the cop elaborated, “and [Mrs. Smith’s] hands had been placed over each wound and her elbows pushed neatly down beside her.” Notwithstanding Officer Porter’s opinions—which were substantiated at the hearing by Dr. Claude Nicholson Lacey, the Demopolis physician who had examined the bodies—the six-man coroner’s jury, likely influenced by or simply sharing Coroner Hickman’s hope of pinning the crime on a home invader, balked at placing responsibility for the murders explicitly on Clements Smith’s shoulders. As Police Chief Davis dogmatically insisted, the Smiths “just weren’t the kind of people for that.” Instead the jury, after listening to over four hours of testimony from Officer Porter, Dr. Lacey, Sheriff Drinkard, Chief Davis, Gertrude Robertson, the Creaghs and others, merely allowed what seemed the bare, bald facts at this point: that Elsie, her son Frank and her daughter Sabra had been murdered around three a.m. and that Clements had committed suicide an hour and a half later around four-thirty. Since the jury in deference to the denizens of Bluff Hall had refused to assign responsibility for the murders of Elsie and her children, they naturally could not answer, or even broach, the question of why they had been murdered. If we assume the obvious, that Clements was the murderer, we are left to answer for ourselves the question of why a devoted husband and father who loved his wife and adored his children would so heinously have slaughtered them and then himself. Embezzlement is ruled out, for Demopolis police examined Clements’ books at the bank and found them to be, in the words of Police Chief Davis, “in good shape.” Since the jury in deference to the denizens of Bluff Hall had refused to assign responsibility for the murders of Elsie and her children, they naturally could not answer, or even broach, the question of why they had been murdered. A year after the tragedy Clement Eaton, a distinguished historian of the American South who was then chairman of the History Department at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania (apparently he was no relation to the Smith family), visited Demopolis, where he toured the town’s fabled old antebellum mansions, Gaineswood and Bluff Hall, and had his ear filled with lurid details about the recent ghastly killings. “I was told that the inheritor of Bluff Hall married a divorcee—one night he and she returned from a wild party, and later he found her untrue to him & shot her, her two children & himself,” Eaton confided that night in his diary, concluding sententiously: “In this beautiful home an unlovely home life must have existed.” Despite the fact that Eaton got some of the detail wrong—presumably none of the murders had been committed at Bluff Hall, where Clara still lived with her youngest son, Singleton Smith, and his wife and son—the whispers which the professor heard of a “wild party” and amatory unfaithfulness provide us with motive for Clements’ seemingly inexplicable act, in this lurid light one of the most extreme fury and despair. As the Linden Democrat-Reporter bluntly put it: “[I]t is believed that jealousy drove Mr. Smith to the breaking point.” What had happened between Clements and Elsie to prompt them to quarrel on that fateful Saturday night in 1934? Had the Webbs held a “bottle party” with some of their friends? What had occurred on the Smiths’ short drive with Austin Ars to the Demopolis Inn (and back)? Why had it taken the Smiths nearly half an hour to reach their home from the Webbs’ place on Capitol Street? (This should have been a four or five minutes’ drive at most.) And where was Elsie when Clements confronted Gertrude at their home? Was she inebriated, as Chief Davis seemingly implied, and unfit to be seen by the help? Was she even present at the house at all? In the findings of the coroner’s jury we have no solid evidence as to Elsie’s whereabouts between her departure with Clements from the Webbs’ house around 10:00 in the evening and her death, presumably in the bedroom of her own home, around 1:30 in the morning. In the astounding dénouement to a Golden Age detective novel—the sort of book so popular with Thirties fiction readers—it might have been revealed that Elsie actually had been done in by her mother-in-law Clara at Bluff Hall, which lay just a minutes’ drive around the corner from the Webbs’ place, with Clements serving as Clara’s fall guy. The home in which the murders were committed. Elsie Smith was, as Clement Eaton had noted, a divorcee—indeed she had been twice divorced. This is a point of interest, I think, whether or not one agrees with Clement Eaton and his Demopolis gossips that the dread word divorcee deserves a connotation of moral dubiety. Certainly newspapers at the time thought this was relevant, for in banner headlines many of them—the Demopolis Times excepted—damningly included, in reference to Elsie, the dread words SHE HAD BEEN DIVORCED. Yet as even those newspapers admitted, Elsie came from a respectable social background. “Her large family connections are of the very best, and she was quite a favorite among them” the Demopolis Times avowed of Clements’ bride. Although Elsie, the youngest of four children with three elder brothers, had been born in St. Augustine, Florida, where her father was a railroad conductor, she was descended from the Hildreth family of Jefferson, a planter village located a dozen miles southwest of Demopolis. However her mother, Willie Jefferies Alston, had died in 1910, when Elsie was just nine years old, leaving her father, Levin Hildreth, to raise the children. After World War One, Levin along with his youngest son and Elsie relocated to the mining town of Prescott in central Arizona, where he worked as a railroad brakeman. From then on it appears that his fair and fleet daughter ran footloose and fancy free. In 1920 Elsie Hildreth was lodging separately from her father in Prescott with a druggist and his family. On December 15 of that same year, Elsie, now nineteen, at her brother’s house in Prescott married twenty-four-year-old Riverside, California native George Battles Finch, 6’2”, 170 pounds, blond-haired and blue-eyed. Elsie, whom the Prescott Weekly Journal-Miner in a notice about the wedding described as “a well-known and popular member of Prescott’s younger set,” was dressed in “a becoming brown satin gown, with hat and shoes to match.” Despite Elsie’s purported popularity, however, “only a few intimate friends were present” at the ceremony. Recalling her and Clements’ later wedding, which was conducted “very quietly, with only relatives present to witness the ceremony,” can one sense a pattern of avoidance here? In Prescott, George Finch had superintended the Arizona Bus Company, but the new couple moved to his native Riverside in southern California, where George had accepted a position with the firm of J. W. Kemp, Cadillac dealers. Apparently Elsie left both Riverside and her husband just a few weeks later, however. Ten months after the wedding, the Prescott Weekly Journal-Miner reported tersely that “Mrs. Elsie Hildreth Finch…left [Prescott] to return to her former home in Alabama, where she will remain with relatives.” The romantic career of Elsie, who was now divorced and going by her maiden name, fades from view for most of the rest of the Roaring Twenties, although in Arizona she popped up occasionally in Prescott and Phoenix and in 1925 she wintered at the home of her brother Kent Hildreth in Palm Beach, Florida. Franklin Tomlin Alkire Four years after her winter sojourn in Florida, Elsie, now twenty-eight, was back again in Arizona, where on December 2, 1929 she wed strapping 6’1”, 190 pound, black-haired Josiah Franklin Alkire, a thirty-eight-year-old trader on the Navajo Nation reservation and son of the respected pioneer Phoenix rancher and merchant Franklin Tomlin Alkire. Like Elsie, Jay, as he was familiarly known, had been previously married and divorced. In 1931 Elsie gave birth to the couple’s son, named Frank in honor of his paternal grandfather, but the marriage had foundered by 1932, the same year in which Elsie’s father passed away. Elsie returned yet again to her relations in Marengo County, where she met and enchanted with her peculiar charms Clements Smith, a diminutive but dashing University of Alabama graduate and cashier in his late father’s bank who though in his thirties still lived with his parents at elegant Bluff Hall. Elsie briefly returned to Phoenix to obtain a divorce from Jay and then fatefully married Clements. At UA back in 1920 the school yearbook had portrayed the handsome young Clements, a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, as a dirty-blond and blue-eyed heart breaker: “How so much good-heartedness and pep can be combined in five feet four inches, has long been a wonder to us. A ‘top’ sergeant in SATC days [Student Army Training Corps] and the cause of many broken hearts and wistful glances.” Yet it appears to have been UA’s heartbreaker Clements Smith who in 1934 was mastered by his passion for his wayward wife and destroyed both himself and her, along with their innocent children. Bert Julius Rosenbush, Sr. In 2011 the Southern Jewish Historical Society sponsored a fascinating interview with Bert Julius Rosenbush, Jr., the so-called “last Jew in Marengo County” whose father, Bert Julius Rosenbush, Sr., at the time of the extinguishing of the Clements Smith family owned a Demopolis furniture store and funeral home which employed none other than Coroner Cedric Hickman. Although he was only five years old at the time of the slayings (his sister was just two), Bert, Jr. recalled with palpable and poignant sadness that the terrible violent deaths of this attractive young family had prompted his sensitive father, who was given the mortifying task of preparing the victims for burial, to abandon the funeral business for good and all. Just five years earlier Bert., Sr. himself had been wed, to Miriam Stein, in a widely attended ceremony performed thirty-five miles to the west at the Baptist Church at the little town of Cuba in neighboring Sumter County (no synagogue was available there); and their marriage had produced much happiness in both of their lives, along with their little boy and girl. Two years prior to the Smith murders, Bert, Sr., on his way back to Demopolis from the city of Birmingham, in his own ambulance had removed, with the assistance of his two trained nurses, the lifeless body of eighteen-year-old farmer Lawrence Daniel Garris, who had been killed when his truck overturned east of Demopolis, and prepared him for burial at his mortuary. “To forget is vain endeavor,” Lawrence’s grief-stricken parents inscribed on their dead boy’s gravestone; and, true to those words, Bert, Sr. found that he simply could not get the ghastly images of the bullet-felled Smiths—Clements, Elsie, Frank and Sabra—out of his mind: Rosenbush: [W]hen my daddy went in the business he went to Cincinnati and became a licensed embalmer. He practiced embalming along with running the furniture store with my grandmother until a tragic accident happened here in Demopolis. After that accident…it was just such a sad affair that my daddy decided to give it up. Interviewer: What was the accident? Rosenbush: It was…a man killed his family and they were about the same age as [my daddy’s] family. So, he just decided…just to stick to the furniture business and give up the undertaking part. Death seemed greedily to stalk and devour the Smith family during the Thirties and Forties. Both Clements’ elder brother, Fenton Reid Smith, and his sister-in-law likewise were taken in unexpected ways. In 1923 Fenton married Alice Portman Bright and later the couple moved to the Panama Canal Zone, where Fenton was employed as a plant manager with the General Electric Company. About eight months before Andrew Reid Smith’s own passing in 1932, his daughter-in-law Alice died from Spanish Influenza in the Canal Zone at the Gorgas Hospital (named for the famed native Alabamian disease battler William Crawford Gorgas). Nine years after his wife’s untimely death, Fenton himself perished in the Canal Zone at the age of forty-eight, when in 1943 he drowned while fishing for tarpon in the roiling waters of Gatun Spillway. The Smith family matriarch would have been forgiven for having found it all too much to bear, but she must have had more than an inkling of danger when Clements married Elsie back in 1933, for she knew well from her own family history the menace which lurked in mésalliances. Fifteen years earlier her previously divorced brother J. Morgan Clements, the bestower of her celebrated Japanese curio collection, had made an ill-advised marriage in 1908 to a beautiful brunette double divorcee, a certain Mrs. Josephine Burley, a stenographer of ambiguous antecedents from Butte, Montana. The couple had first met four years earlier, when Josephine had immediately won the mining expert’s sympathy by tearfully confiding to him that she was contemplating suicide over some bad mining investments which she had made. “The bride was well known among a select circle of friends who felt for her the warmest friendship, as her splendid womanly nature appealed to all her knew her,” the Butte Miner put it in words that, in my eyes at least, raise several red flags, adding reassuringly, if vaguely: “She is a woman of superior mental attainment and belongs to an old southern family of revolutionary fame.” Unfortunately, Morgan—who from his copper mines and other holdings annually earned, in modern value, an income of around half a million dollars a year, making him a tempting matrimonial mark for a sharp-eyed adventuress—found life with this most womanly of women utterly unbearable. Within a year of the wedding he left Josephine and returned to New York, providing her with monthly support of $125 ($3500 today), the equivalent of what she had earned as a stenographer before her marriage. Over the next year Josephine racked up $6000 ($170,000 today) in personal expenditures and sent a flurry of importunate and recriminatory letters to Morgan’s friends and family, including his sister Clara, in which she lengthily accused her estranged husband of myriad acts of insanity and immorality. She also claimed that Morgan had sent her to Alabama to visit Bluff Hall in order to have Clara procure her an abortion. “When a bug seeks shelter under a rotten log,” Josephine warned Morgan after he refused to return to her, “someone is going to kick that log and expose it.” In 1910 Josephine brought a separation suit against Morgan in New York, where he then resided, requesting monthly alimony of $400 ($11,000 today)—an action which prompted her exasperated husband to counter through his lawyers that the extravagant “termagant” whom he had so foolishly married deserved not a dime more from him. While not rising to the notoriety of the recent Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation suit, the case of Clements v. Clements made newspaper headlines across the country over the next couple of years and was heard by famed judge John W. Goff, once characterized as “the cruelest, most sadistic judge we have had in New York this century.” Morgan’s lawyers introduced evidence of Josephine’s lies about her social background, instability and “vain, conceited, coarse, vulgar” behavior in general and they even plausibly urged that at a Phoenix, Arizona ranch, where male guests familiarly nicknamed her “The Rose of the Rancho,” Josephine had covertly carried on an affair with her attorney at the time, Julius McLain Jamison. This latter point was advanced through what newspapers mirthfully dubbed the “honeybun love notes” exchanged between Josephine and Julius (who occupied adjoining rooms at the ranch), which were intercepted by a “negro maid,” Zoe Burney, who forwarded them to Morgan. “Can’t I love my baby,” Julius, then fifty-five years old, cooed pleadingly in one of the notes, much to the amusement of the press. “I just can’t keep away from my pet baby.” Julius urged Josephine to rap on the wall, according to their prearranged signal, to let him know when he could pay her a call. Despite this evidence, however, Judge Goff, a native Irish Catholic who took a stern view of a husband’s legal responsibilities to his wife, awarded Josephine alimony, albeit a reduced monthly amount of $72 ($2000 today). Morgan may not have met his Waterloo with this particular Josephine, but the affair had certainly constituted a costly lesson for him, both financially and emotionally, about wedding wisely or not at all. Unfortunately, his nephew Clements Smith did not learn from his uncle’s mishap, a failure with fatal consequences for four people. At trial Josephine Clements had claimed that her enraged husband at one point had called her a “goddamn bitch” and threatened to throw her out of a seven-story hotel window. Morgan denied the charge and countered with his own claims of intemperate behavior on his wife’s part, but, whatever the exact truth of the matter, the disputes between the two never came to actual physical violence, let alone multiple murder and suicide. During the 1940s Clara, whom Clements had made the beneficiary of his will back in 1923, continued to reside at Bluff Hall with her sole surviving son, Clements’ younger brother Singleton Smith, a bookkeeper at the Commercial National Bank, and Charles’s wife Eleanor and their son, Andrew Reid Smith II, although to make ends meet she converted the upper floor of the spacious twenty-room mansion into rental apartments. Occasionally she hosted meetings of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in her elegant double parlors and dining room, but things were never the same again. After Andrew Reid II in 1946 married Jule Barnes of Prattville, Alabama at Demopolis’ First United Methodist Church, the remaining Smiths resided at Bluff Hall for only another couple of years, when they sold the home and moved to the town of Long Beach, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where at the age of eighty-two Clara passed away in 1955. (This was five years after her brother Morgan, who lost a great deal of his copper mining fortune in border raids conducted during the 1910s Mexican Border War, expired on his coconut plantation on the island of Mo’orea in French Polynesia, where he had moved in 1925—finally putting, one presumes, literally thousands of miles of separation between himself and Josephine.) A dozen years after Clara’s demise, Bluff Hall became a house museum maintained by the city of Demopolis, and so it remains today: a beautiful white-pillared southern mansion and popular tourist attraction with an appalling family tragedy buried discretely in its past. Contrarily, the newer house that was raised on South Cedar Avenue, where the Clements Smith family so violently perished, no longer stands. In its place, I believe, stands Demopolis Hardwood Floors. I toured Bluff Hall some three decades ago, around 1990, without once hearing from anyone the barest whisper of the terrible Smith family murders. By this time perspicacious Police Officer Porter had been deceased for a decade, having retired from the Selma force back in 1963 with an accumulation of more than 35,000 cards in his fingerprint file. His career highlight had come in 1957, when he received a reward of $3800 ($35,000 today) and a personal letter of commendation from FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover for identifying “Reco Glover” as Mississippi native Lemuel Taylor, accused slayer a couple of years earlier of Walter Hart, an off-duty police detective shot in Cincinnati, Ohio while heroically attempting to prevent a holdup at the Grey Eagle Café (Where Good People Meet). Taylor was convicted of Hart’s murder and executed the next year. Likewise in 1990 the first of Elsie Hildreth Smith’s transitory husbands, George Battles Finch, who had been but a few years older than Elsie, had been dead for several years. Yet some of the key witnesses in that long-ago dreadful affair of November 24-25, 1934, lingered a little longer, including Mems Creagh Webb and his wife, whose daughter Frances “Sister” Webb, just three years old at the time of the murders, in 1983 became one of the first women elected to the Alabama State Senate. Then there was Gertrude Robertson, who, having married later in life, finally passed away in Mobile, Alabama in 1993. Just what had the cook seen and what had she judiciously refrained from telling? At this late date it is unlikely we shall ever know. Even Bert Rosenbush, Jr., who was just a young child at the time of the murders, is no longer with us, having expired three years ago at the age of eighty-nine. Clements’ nephew, Andrew Reid Smith II, who was eight years old at the time of the murders, predeceased Bert Rosenbush by a decade. While a graduate student during the 1990s (to add a personal note), I wrote my history PhD dissertation on the remarkable northern-born antebellum and Reconstruction-era industrialist Daniel Pratt, founder of the manufacturing town of Prattville, Alabama, located ninety miles to the east. In the course of researching this Crimereads article I discovered, oddly enough, that the woman who introduced me when I last spoke in Prattville two decades ago, was—in addition to being a great-great-granddaughter of Daniel Pratt’s nephew Merrill Pratt—a great-niece, through her Demopolis grandfather Singleton Smith, of none other than Frank Clements Smith, the man who undoubtedly perpetrated, the deferential prevarications of Coroner Hickman and his jury notwithstanding, what likely remains today “the most shocking tragedy that has happened in the city of Demopolis.” 2. Sara Elizabeth Mason’s The House That Hate Built (1944) Aunt Elizabeth went with her to the back door, and as Linda started toward the garage she heard the key turn in the lock. It was strange, the care and precision with which they all locked their doors now. It was as though they hoped to shut out the evil which came seeping into their house, evil that was tenacious and real, but which, like the fog, could not be shut out. They were only locking themselves inside with their nameless fears.—The House that Hate Built (1944), Sara Elizabeth Mason Comment: I just read this book from the library. It’s called “The house that hate built.” I heard it was something that happened in Demopolis but she used another town name. It’s a murder mystery and was supposed to have really happened in the 1940s or so. Does anyone know about it? Reply: Isn’t that a book by Sara Elizabeth Mason? She wrote “Murder Rents a Room,, I think in the 40’s too. If it’s her, I doubt that the story was based on a real event, but the town would almost certainly be based on Demopolis. I haven’t thought about that book in years!—Message board discussion at http://www.demopolislive.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5112&start=30, 10 February 2007 Bluff Hall having been an ancestral home of Alabama author Sara Elizabeth Mason’s Glover ancestors (original mansion owner Sara Serena Glover Lyon was a great aunt), it seems likely that Sara, who had been born in Demopolis, though she grew to adulthood in the New South factory town of Gadsden, Alabama, heard an earful about the shocking murders committed in 1934, when she was twenty-three years old and a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, by Frank Clements Smith, the middle son of the couple who had bought Bluff Hall back in 1907 and owned it ever since. Sara drew on her own life experience and family history in her other mysteries (Murder Rents a Room, set in Greene County, ancestral Alabama home of the Glovers; The Crimson Feather, set in Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama; and The Whip, set in Chicago, where Sara attended graduate school); and she evidently did so as well in The House That Hate Built (1944), which is believed to have been set by the author in Demopolis (under another name) and in my view draws loosely on elements of the Smith slayings, particularly in its depiction of bad blood stirred by what are deemed unsuitable matrimonial alliances with previously wedded women. Nine years ago, when a performance of The House That Hate Built was staged at Demopolis’s annual Tombigbee Haints and Haunts Halloween celebration, the Demopolis Times asserted that “Mason’s book has a kernel of truth to it and is based on a local family feud.” To be sure, any crime novel based to the letter on the Frank Clements Smith murders would have much more resemblance to Alabama-affiliated author Truman Capote’s chilling true crime study In Cold Blood than to any of bestselling Thirties author Mary Roberts Rinehart’s lighter mystery-romances, which Sara Mason’s books, with the exception of her last (The Whip), decidedly favor. One wonders what crime writer Dashiell Hammett’s paramour Lillian Hellman, the author of the biting plays The Children’s Hour (1934) and The Little Foxes (1939) who had maternal Jewish family relations in Demopolis and spent some of her youthful days in the town, might have made of it. Sarah Mason’s The House That Hate Built takes place during a hot and sultry June in the fictional community of Monroe, Alabama, like Demopolis “an in-between place: too large to be a small town and not large enough to be a city.” Despite occasional bursts of boosterism by the local Chamber of Commerce, Monroe’s sole industry is a single cotton mill, most people in Monroe remaining “content for the town to stay as it was” and being “apt to resent any changes.” In real-life Demopolis a cement factory, taking advantage of the limestone deposits in the area, began operation about two miles east of town shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, and it remains in business today, over a century later. There was even a small textiles factory, Demopolis Cotton Mills, though it proved less durable than the cement factory. Notwithstanding the presence of these industries, however, Demopolis remained “distinctly rural,” notes a 2006 article in the Tuscaloosa News. “Cotton was king,” a townsman recalled. “The whole town would be full of wagons with people bringing cotton to the gin.” The town’s biggest employer was John C. Webb & Sons, a family firm of cotton merchants that owned the cotton gin. Mems Creagh Webb, a key witness in the Smith murder case, was one of John C. Webb’s grandsons. In Demopolis the sprawling, double-porched, Victorian-style John C. Webb house, which comes complete with an ornamental fishpond (and which Clements and Elsie Smith would have driven past several times on the fatal night of November 24, 1934), seems reminiscent of the old Clark mansion in Monroe, as described by Sara Mason. “It had been built in the 1890s by [Linda’s] grandfather in the rococo style of that period,” observes the author with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the ornate domestic architecture of her parents’ generation. “It was big and inconvenient, with only one bath and no closets. Its bleak lines were angular, and the wide front porch was draped with wooden lace. At odd places were small and completely useless balconies, and a cupola appeared unexpectedly at a second-story corner.” In The House That Hate Built the old Clark mansion—at present occupied by the spinster Clark sisters, “precise and decisive” Elizabeth and vague and woolly-minded Mary, and their young and attractive niece Linda Clark—is one of three houses on its side of the block on Charles Street, a neighborhood that might most politely be described as genteelly decayed. “Charles Street was old-fashioned and a little shabby, but it was dignified and highly respectable,” explains the author, adding with a faintly ominous note: “Monroe had a saying that the only people who left it were the dead.” Very soon more dead—unnaturally dead this time—will be departing from highly respectable Charles Street. In between the old Clark mansion and the home of a couple of childless married Clark relations, Will and Suzy Hunter (husband Will, who once had worked for the bank but allowed “good prospects and a fair inheritance” to slip through his fingers, now fecklessly sells real estate and the couple is in straitened circumstances), stands the titular “house that hate built”: the domicile of James Clark, retired bank president and father of Linda by his first marriage, and his second wife, Margaret, formerly Margaret Branch from a prior marriage. Fifteen years ago James’s prim and proper sisters were appalled when their beloved brother wed Margaret Branch after his first wife’s death, a fact of which the new Mrs. Clark was only too well aware. Simmering with resentment against these blue blooded women who dared to look down their noses at her, Margaret persuaded her husband, then “in the first bloom of love,” to build a house for them right next to the Clark mansion, so that the fact of their marriage would be thrown back in the faces of the Clark sisters every single day for the rest of their lives. The tall privet hedge which Elizabeth and Mary planted between the two houses in retaliation has become another source of contention between Mrs. Clark and her sisters-in-law. “So far as I can find out,” reflects one character to Linda, “nobody loved Mrs. Clark, unless it was your father.” It is not long after the return of another person who seemingly does not love Mrs. Clark, Margo Branch, her recently divorced and drop-dead gorgeous daughter from her prior marriage, that Mrs. Clark is discovered in the music room of the house that hate built, lifelessly seated by the piano. Handsome local doctor Dan Kennedy, called to the scene of the crime, pronounces that Margaret has been fatally and viciously stabbed. In her cold hands the dead woman holds sheet music to “Ase’s Tod” (Ase’s Death), from composer Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite. Symbolic, to be sure, yet never in her life, to local knowledge anyway, did Mrs. Clark actually play the piano. What does the presence of this sheet music signify? Further, just what does the dashing Todd Innis, who four years ago sold an insurance police to the late Mrs. Clark, know about the murder? Or the old yardman Tom, whom Mrs. Clark cruelly evicted from a rental home she owned, leading to the death of Tom’s wife from double pneumonia? And—another moat pressing question in servant-avid Monroe—will Mattie, cook to the Misses Clark, give notice, exasperated beyond endurance with investigators annoyingly buzzing like flies around her kitchen? Sara Mason’s specificity in describing Mattie suggests a character modeled after real-life “help” like Gertrude Robertson: Mattie was an individual. When she first came to them Mary had provided uniforms, white aprons, and caps for company, but there had always been some reason why Mattie wasn’t wearing them. Now Mary apologized for her appearance and let it go at that. Mattie didn’t seem to mind the many steps necessary in the old house, and she was always agreeable whether or not she did what she was told to do. She wore a pair of men’s shoes, cut to allow her spreading feet more room, and on her head was an old and greasy felt hat. Otherwise she wore whatever the family gave her. Before Sheriff Frank Garner finally catches Mrs. Clark’s killer in a startling dénouement, the thread of life of yet another resident of Charles Street is most unpleasantly snipped and Linda Clark’s own continued existence on this erring earth is decidedly put in question. Of the fact that marriage indeed can be murder readers most assuredly will be convinced after a reading of The House That Hate Built. While the novel may not make as grim a read as the real life tragedy of Clements and Elsie Smith, it certainly provides a memorable glimpse of long faded life in a small southern town unpleasantly obliged to confront the murderous paradox of genteel carnage. Note: All four of Sara Elizabeth Mason’s crime novels have been reprinted by Coachwip as The Sara Elizabeth Mason Mysteries, Volumes I and II. View the full article

Emily Nagoski has a new podcast, Come As You Are! If you’ve read her books, you know what this is about. We dive right into questions of consent and enthusiasm, the way the ace/aro community has developed conversations about sexuality within the field of sex education, and how the pandemic has affected sexuality. So much of her show and this conversation center on how to address sexual satisfaction in your own life. We also talk about her next book, which is about how couples sustain sexual attraction over the long term. Music: purple-planet.com Listen to the podcast → Read the transcript → Here are the books we discuss in this podcast: You can find the Come As You Are podcast wherever you download your favorite shows. You can find Emily Nagoski on her website, EmilyNagoski.com, and on Instagram @ENagoski. If you like the podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, or find us at iTunes. You can also find us on Stitcher, and Spotify, too. We also have a cool page for the podcast on iTunes. More ways to sponsor: Sponsor us through Patreon! (What is Patreon?) http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/podcast/patreon.png What did you think of today's episode? Got ideas? Suggestions? You can talk to us on the blog entries for the podcast or talk to us on Facebook if that's where you hang out online. You can email us at sbjpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave us a message at our Google voice number: 201-371-3272. Please don't forget to give us a name and where you're calling from so we can work your message into an upcoming podcast. Thanks for listening! Remember to subscribe to our podcast feed, find us on iTunes or on Stitcher. View the full article

When I go to crime scenes, I’m ready to focus on terrible things. I end up at crime scenes because my best friend, a homicide lieutenant, thinks I have something to offer on the cases he calls “different.” He rarely gives me details, wanting me to form my own impressions. As I pulled up to the yellow tape on a Monday morning just after ten, I knew nothing. No evidence markers outside. Whatever had happened was limited to the interior of a navy-blue, two-story stucco building. I gave my name to a uniform guarding the tape and was allowed to park in a red zone. The blue building sat on the north side of Venice Boulevard, perched on a grubby corner, the entrance on a side street. At the back was a parking area, also taped, with the rear end of a black Prius just visible. Beyond the alley was a residential block; seventy-year-old apartments and a few straggling bungalows. A little pocket of L.A. that had managed to elude Culver City when borders were drawn. The automotive mix out front was the usual. Black-and-whites plus vehicles dispatched from the crypt on North Mission Road. Two vans for transporting techs and their gear, meaning lots of scraping and sampling; one for transporting bodies; a Chevy Volt sedan used by coroners’ assistants as they traveled around the county ministering to dead people. No signage on the blue building. Rust-crusted security bars grilled two narrow windows on each floor. So narrow they evoked castle bow-slits. I slipped under the tape and headed for the front door, a gray metal slab left slightly ajar. No one had told me to glove up but I covered my hand with a corner of my blazer and prepared to nudge. Before I made contact, the door swung open and Milo Sturgis came out. He wore a pessimistic black suit, a beige shirt stretched tight over his gut, and a skinny brown tie whose origins could be traced to a chemistry lab. Paper booties covered his desert boots. He had gloved up and latex glistened as it strained over hands the size of strip steaks. His black hair alternated between gelled obedience and random flight. His face was chalky in the sunlight, UV rays advertising pits and lumps that harked back to teenage acne. Nothing to interpret; his default pallor. Startling green eyes remained calm but his mouth was set in a sour frown. Annoyed. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Ready to put on your therapist hat?” “For who? “C’mon, I’ll show you.” The door opened to a blank white wall. To the right was an alarm keypad. Less wall than knock-up partition; pebbled, whitewashed fiberboard, no ability to mute sound. Lots of sound from behind the wall. Moans and gasps and sobs then a moment of breath-catching quiet during which a woman said, “Try to relax,” with no great sincerity. More sobbing. I said, “Someone’s having a bad day.” Milo said, “Not compared with the decedent. Hopefully you can calm things down so I can concentrate on the decedent.” CHAPTER 2 By the time I reached the crying woman, I knew the decedent’s name and hers after Milo showed me her California driver’s license. Melissa Lee-Ann Gornick. “But,” said Milo, “she goes by Melissande.” The license pegged her as twenty years old, five-four, ninety-eight pounds, BRN eyes and hair. Why DMV bothers to record hair color has always mystified me and Melissande Gornick proved my point with a hot-pink, teased-up do. Since being photographed three years ago, she’d also added steel piercings to her left eyebrow, her left cheek, her right nostril, and the soft spot between lower lip and chin. For all that, both ears remained untouched by metal. Maybe that was now a thing. My patients are generally well below the piercing age so I sometimes miss out on current events. Melissande Gornick rocked back and forth in a chair and gripped the sides of her face with black-nailed hands. Her spare frame barely impacted the seating, an oversized love seat of brick-colored tweed. One of half a dozen pieces of furniture strewn randomly in cold, white space. Two techs worked in corners, scraping, bottling, bagging, labeling. As we approached, she let out three gulping sobs then switched to high-pitched keening whistles. Then back to crying. Like a teapot undecided if brewing was complete. Milo’s look said, See what I mean. The female officer stationed behind Gornick said, “Try to relax,” with even less enthusiasm than a moment ago. When you’re all strung up, there’s nothing less helpful than being told to calm down. But cops aren’t therapists and confronting anxiety kicks in their own fears of madness and impulse. So they keep saying it and getting nowhere and the beat goes on. Melissande Gornick wailed louder. The uniform rolled her eyes. Milo said, “We’re okay, Officer Bourget.” Bourget’s look said he was Santa and she’d been a good girl. “Yessir.” She trotted away. Melissande Gornick seemed unaware of her surroundings. Rosy, welt-like marks striped her cheeks where her nails had taken hold. I wondered if she was prone to self-injury. A long-sleeved black jersey and gray skinny jeans blocked diagnosis. Milo bent close to her. “So sorry you had to go through this.” Using the ideal tone, soft and nonthreatening, but nothing indicated she’d heard. He shook his head, stepped away, and waved me forward. I’d been checking out the white space. The entire ground floor of the building was a single open area with an iron spiral staircase tucked in the rear right corner. Walls were blank, cement floors painted glossy black. The mismatched furniture—chairs, table, an old desk—ranged from gently used to stuff that looked as if it had been rescued from the curb. The only clue to the building’s function was a section, rear and central, lit by overhead tracks and containing a single, straight-backed chair, three high wooden Victorian armoires, a trio of silver light baffles, and two cameras on tripods, one of which looked antique. Robin has a camera like that, a Hasselblad she inherited from her father and has never used. Neither of us photographs much. Robin because she prefers to draw and paint, I because there are enough images in my head. Black drapes hung from a ring of metal pipe running high near the ceiling of the posing area. A curtain capable of blocking the front was furled, leaving the space open to view. I approached Melissande Gornick. Her soundtrack changed and she began hyperventilating. In movies, heroes use paper bags to treat hyperventilation, but it’s an iffy technique at best and can sometimes be dangerous. Gearing up my hypnosis voice—soft, rhythmic, and, most important, monotonous—I said, “You’re doing fine . . . ​if you feel like it, slow your breathing . . . ​not a lot, just a bit.” She continued to gulp. Caught her breath. Arched her back. Trying. No success but I said, “Excellent . . . ​keep doing that . . . ​just breathe . . . ​you’re in charge . . . ​that’s it . . . ​great . . . ​perfect . . . ​breathe nice and easy . . . ​great . . . ​think you can slow down a tiny bit more?” She tensed. I said, “Or not. Up to you.” She loosened. “Excellent. Now see if you can breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.” I timed her respiration with my watch. Good old analog Omega with a second hand. Another couple dozen respirations before her rate had slowed to just above normal. I said, “Fantastic, so whatever you need to do.” She exhaled. Sat still. Stared straight ahead. “Good job, Melissande.” “I felt like I was . . . ​gonna . . .” Her chest rose and fell. “Sure,” I said. “You’ve been through something tough.” BRN eyes widened. “What . . . ​now?” Someone else might’ve said, Try to stay relaxed. I said, “Do whatever you need to.” That confused her, which was the point. The power of constructive distraction. She stared at me. Her hands dropped from her face, wrists and forearms vibrating. If she’d had a fleshier face, it would’ve jiggled. This face was narrow, delicately boned, the sweaty skin stretched drum-tight, and it remained still. Milo fidgeted. Melissande Gornick said, “I don’t . . . ​f**k, I don’t . . . ​know.” I said, “Know . . . ?” “What to do.” “You don’t have to do anything, Melissande.” Unsatisfactory answer. She grimaced and tightened up. I said, “Do whatever it takes.” “I’ll never get through this!” “It’s a terrible thing.” “It’s—f**ked up.” “Totally.” __________________________________ Excerpted from Unnatural History by Jonathan Kellerman. Copyright © 2023 by Jonathan Kellerman. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. View the full article

Reputation Reputation by Lex Croucher is $2.99! I feel like the publisher put a lot of marketing dollars behind this one, but I don’t know many people that read it. It’s been compared to Mean Girls in a historical setting, though I don’t know how much romance is in the plot. The hilarious debut novel from Lex Croucher. A classic romcom with a Regency-era twist, for fans of Mean Girls and/or Jane Austen. Abandoned by her parents, middle-class Georgiana Ellers has moved to a new town to live with her dreary aunt and uncle. At a particularly dull party, she meets the enigmatic Frances Campbell, a wealthy member of the in-crowd who lives a life Georgiana couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams. Lonely and vulnerable, Georgiana falls in with Frances and her unfathomably rich, deeply improper friends. Georgiana is introduced to a new world: drunken debauchery, mysterious young men with strangely arresting hands, and the upper echelons of Regency society. But the price of entry to high society might just be higher than Georgiana is willing to pay … Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Hidden RECOMMENDED: Hidden by Laura Griffin is $1.99! Lara reviewed this one and gave it a B+: There are some VERY satisfying twists and turns in this book. If you are in the mood for competent heroines and you’d like to immerse yourself in a different life for a bit, then this is the book for you. A riveting new thriller featuring an ambitious female investigative reporter in Austin, Texas by New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin. When a woman is found brutally murdered on Austin’s lakeside hike-and-bike trail, investigative reporter Bailey Rhoads turns up on the scene demanding access and answers. She tries to pry information out of the lead detective, Jacob Merritt. But this case is unlike any he’s ever seen, and nothing adds up. Bailey has a hunch the victim wasn’t who she claimed to be and believes this mugging-turned-murder could have been a targeted hit. When she digs deeper, the trail leads her to a high-tech fortress on the outskirts of Austin where researchers are pushing the boundaries of a cutting-edge technology that could be deadly in the wrong hands. As a ruthless hit man’s mission becomes clear, Bailey and Jacob must embark on a desperate search to locate the next target before the clock ticks down on this lethal game of hide and seek. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Worst Woman in London The Worst Woman in London by Julia Bennet is $1.99 at Amazon! I’m not super knowledgeable about historical accuracy, but I do know I prefer a Victorian over a Regency setting. I have a feeling this one might be divisive as the heroine is already married. A defiant Victorian wife fights to escape a bad marriage but her love for a forbidden man jeopodizes her chance at freedom. James Standish knows how to play society’s game. He’ll follow the rules, marry a virginal debutante, and inherit a massive fortune. At least, that’s the plan until he meets Francesca Thorne. She’s not the sort of woman a respectable gentleman like James could ever marry—not least because, strictly speaking, she’s married already. Francesca is determined to flout convention and divorce her philandering husband. When James sweet talks his way into her life tasked with convincing her to abandon her dream of freedom, she’s unprepared for the passion that flares between them. Torn apart by conflicting desires, James and Francesca must choose whether to keep chasing the lives they’ve always wanted or take a chance on a new and forbidden love. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Mission: Improper Mission: Improper by Bec McMaster is FREE! This is book one in the The Blue Blood Conspiracy series, which is a spin off of McMaster’s London Steampunk series. While not completely necessary, reviewers say that readers might understand the nuances of the romance and setting more if they’ve read the London Steampunk series. Other books in this spin-off series are on sale. Three years ago, London society changed forever, with a revolution placing the widowed Queen firmly on the throne her blue blood husband tried to take from her. Humans, verwulfen and mechs are no longer considered the lesser classes, but not everybody is happy with the new order… Entire families have gone missing in the East End. When Caleb Byrnes receives an invitation to join the Company of Rogues as an undercover agent pledged to protect the crown, he jumps at the chance to find out who, or what, is behind the disappearances. Hunting criminals is what the darkly driven blue blood does best, and though he prefers to work alone, the opportunity is too good to resist. The problem? He’s partnered with Ingrid Miller, the fiery and passionate verwulfen woman who won a private bet against him a year ago. Byrnes has a score to settle, but one stolen kiss and suddenly the killer is not the only thing Byrnes is interested in hunting. Soon they’re chasing whispered rumours of a secret project gone wrong, and a monster that just might be more dangerous than either of them combined. The only way to find out more is to go undercover among the blue blood elite… But when their hunt uncovers a mysterious conspiracy, Byrnes and Ingrid must set aside their age-old rivalry if they have any chance at surviving a treacherous plot. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

Photograph of A. M. Homes by Marion Ettlinger. Photograph of Yiyun Li by Basso Cannarsa/Agence Opale. A few times a year, the writers Yiyun Li and A. M. Homes sit down to lunch. As friends, they often find themselves talking about almost anything but writing. Often, though, as they ask each other questions, something interesting and unexpected happens: “The thin thread of a story might be unearthed,” Homes recently told us, “or the detail of a recent experience, or a gnawing question one finds unanswerable. Somewhere between the menu, the meal and the coffee, maybe the story begins to form.” Last year, Li and Homes both published new novels. In Li’s The Book Of Goose, she tells the story of a complex friendship between Agnes and Fabienne, farm girls, who each have been in some way neglected by their families. Homes’s latest book, The Unfolding, is a political satire that explores the fault lines of American politics within a family. At the end of the year, the two friends sat down for one of their lunches—and what follows is a bit of what they talked about. HOMES Funnily enough, as colleagues and friends, one of the things that we never talk about is writing. LI Once in a while I will tell you a story or say something has happened, and you’ll say, “Write that into a story.” That has happened three times. Particularly with the story “All Will Be Well,” as I explained in an interview with The New Yorker: “Sometimes it needs a nudge from another person. I was talking with my friend A. M. Homes one day, and I told her about this practice in California, where we were asked to send care packages to our children’s preschool with a letter, in case of a catastrophic earthquake. She said, ‘You have to write a story about that.’ It had not occurred to me until then, and it turned out that there was a place for the care package in a story.” I think you have a specific talent for saying, “Well, that’s an idea.” There’s an expansiveness to the way you look at the world. Do you look through a telescope or a microscope? Where does it come from? HOMES I would say my way of looking comes from growing up as an outsider in my own family—a person adopted into a family. I felt other and different and experienced the world as an observer. There’s a space between me and other people that would otherwise perhaps not exist. LI Do you still feel that way? HOMES I do. It’s a strange position that has also given me enormous freedom to inhabit others and create characters. I don’t feel wedded to any particular identity because I don’t feel I have an identity. LI I come from a different kind of family, where I often wished that I were adopted. When someone’s scrutinizing you all the time, your instinct can be not to look at them, not to think about them. Because I’m sheltering myself from all these things in my own life, I can create an alternative universe where my perspective is. HOMES It’s like you’re on the outside, and a shade has gone down that says “Closed for the afternoon” and no one can see that you’re inside, looking off in a different direction. LI Yes, and for you, it’s like you’re outside the house and the shade comes down, and you’re thinking, “What’s going on inside the house?” HOMES Exactly. And wondering: do I even have a key to the house? LI So, where are you looking at this moment? HOMES For better or worse, I’m a very American writer, so I’m looking at the way we consume things. I’m increasingly interested in economics and how a person’s economic life affects their narrative and trajectory. Where and how a person lives, whether they have money or have access to health care, all these things change the course of their life profoundly. I always feel that, in fiction, and certainly when we discuss fiction, we don’t talk about those things enough, but I’m fascinated by their implications. LI I always say that every character has to have a job. Many students create characters who don’t have jobs. They don’t work. Certainly the reason I’m so curious about the concept of the quintessential American writer is because I am not one, although my coming of age as a writer happened in America. So I’m curious about how you define an American writer. HOMES That’s a good question—how does one define an American writer? To be honest, I think that raises another question that until recently I’ve been loath to discuss. That questions is, How does one define an American female writer versus an American male writer? The gender gap with regard to material and expectation and even who reads the books feels larger to me in America than in other countries. In the U.S., men write the Great American Novels—the books about the scale and scope of the American social, political, economic experience—and women are supposed to write the smaller-scale, intimate, domestic stories. In other countries things are not so divided. There is not Women’s Literature, or Chick Lit, and then Men’s Literature. This bothers me a lot, and I would say that my most recent book, The Unfolding, is an attempt to do both—to write both the large-scale, state-of-the-nation novel and also unpack the small-scale, intimate life of a family. But almost as soon as the book came out, a bookseller asked me, “Who is this book for?” and I was caught off guard. I didn’t know what she meant. Was she asking is it for men or women? Was she asking is it for people who agree with my point of view? I don’t know—when I am writing I never think about who this book is for—beyond the hope that my fiction is both entertaining, funny, and provokes thought, robust conversation, and debate about the issues of our time. Does that make any sense or say anything about the American novel? LI One thing I can relate to as an American writer is clarity. I was in a cab in Beijing recently, and the cab driver asked me what I did for a living. I said, “I’m a writer.” This cab driver, who had apparently read many books translated from English, and especially American writers, said, “American writers are very straightforward. In China, we consider writing as making circles. You do all these hide-and-seek games. You never say what you want to say.” He said, “American writers, they say what they want to say.” HOMES That’s a super-interesting idea—depending on what country someone is from, one has more or less freedom to say directly what they want to say or to code their writing in some way so that someone can extrapolate another meaning from it. I think there is accuracy to the idea that there is a bluntness to American writing. It aims for an immediate connection with the reader. And it’s almost as though sometimes there’s not a lot of room to build the relationship, because the attention span is so short that either you connect immediately or it’s over. It’s almost like, Swipe right. You escaped that in The Book of Goose, which I think of as originating from a more European model. LI The world of my novel is entirely rural. It’s set in the French countryside. My characters are French girls. But they will never place their own lives in a historical setting. They will never say, We are two French girls living in the countryside in poverty post–World War II under American occupation. All these historical terms describing their existence do not matter to them. I felt liberated writing about them because I did not have to worry about all these things that critics would say about rural France, post–World War II, the American occupation. No, this is a world made up by two girls, entirely made up by two girls. I feel that I got a little, like, a shortcut because my characters live in their own world in a way. Would you say that you are the opposite? HOMES Yes and no. It’s beautiful the way you described the characters in The Book of Goose as living in the world of their imagination and their physical existence and their environment. It’s a world from inside out—and actually I always start from that point, too, the interior of the character—although in The Unfolding in particular there is a lot of social, cultural, and political framing and large amounts of history and fact. So it is absolutely both in the mind’s eye of the characters, but as they are participating in the known world in a very obvious sense. Another thing we share: We both live in our imaginations and we pull in threads from our worlds and our experiences, but they are not the dominant theme. We are not writing about ourselves. LI I don’t find myself that interesting. HOMES I don’t find myself that interesting either. Like you, I have written about myself at times and about experiences that I’ve had, but fundamentally, it’s not the thing I enjoy most. LI Do you think readers like to go beyond themselves? HOMES I’m not sure anymore. When I was growing up, all I was looking for was a way out—a way into another world. So I read biographies. I thought, “Just show me how to be a person. Show me how to live a life.” I think that, as things have become more fractured, people seem to read to confirm their ideas about themselves and their identities. They’re looking for a mirror. We also are in a moment when misunderstanding is not tolerated. But misunderstanding is fundamental to growth because you cannot assume everyone will understand everything, nor can you assume that they will agree. So you have to have a zone where you can navigate that. I’ve always found that reading and writing books helped me to do that. LI Where is the zone now? Where is that space? How do we make that space? I did an event with Garth Greenwell, and he mentioned—and it’s true—that people always say my work is too bleak. I said, “The bleakest thing is when life is bleak and you pretend it’s very rosy.” I’m in the William Trevor camp of writers. John Banville described Trevor and said, “William Trevor arrives in a beautiful town, and he looks around and says, ‘How beautiful is this town? Let me write and find out what’s wrong with it.’” My belief is that there’s something innately unsettling and troubling underneath. I want to write to find that layer rather than cover that layer up. HOMES I’m curious about your relationship to secrets. Are secrets helpful? Do you think of yourself as secretive? LI I want to make a distinction between secretive and private. John McGahern famously said that Irish people don’t have privacy, only secrets. It’s a lie that you live your entire life inside the church, inside society. Even with no secrets, you can always hold something in your heart. So I feel that at this moment I’m not secretive but I have my privacy. How about you? I think you are more outgoing, more out there. HOMES I don’t have secrets anymore. I think it comes from the fact that I’m actually painfully shy. When I was younger, people sometimes misread that as my being formal or off-putting, and so I worked to show that I’m not scary. But now it’s like I’m naked, I have no covering, no shell, which is another problem. I definitely don’t have any secrets. I also don’t feel like I have a lot of privacy. LI What about your characters? All characters have secrets, but they don’t seem to have privacy because of the way we look at them. How do you think about that? HOMES I would say my characters in my most recent book have so many secrets that I don’t even begin to know how deep they go, and they are also pretty private. In the book before this one, I was writing this character, Harold Silver, who’s a Nixon scholar, and I found him very difficult. I kept asking myself, “Why is it so hard to write this?” Slowly, I came to understand that I didn’t know Harold Silver because Harold does not know himself. And only as Harold came to know himself did the book become easier to write. I have a craft question for you. When I read your work, it feels to me so well-crafted and so fine-tuned, and each line is really perfect and beautiful. I wonder, do they come out that way? Or what is your revision process like? LI No, of course nothing comes out perfect, right? With this new book, The Book of Goose, the first draft was one hundred fifty pages longer than the final. Secondly, there was an unnecessary frame, a bit like the one in Lolita. I was very attached to that frame, but everybody, all my early readers, indicated that it was not going to work. HOMES But you needed it to write it. LI I think that frame was for my psychological comfort. I argued, I defended the frame, and eventually my editor said, “I think you want the book to be a different one than the book is meant to be.” And when she said that, I thought, “Oh, that makes sense.” So I cut away the frame. I rewrote the second half. How many drafts did you do of your recent book? HOMES What’s interesting is that each book defines its own terms. With The Unfolding, the complexity was in figuring out the weave of the stories. I didn’t want each person’s story to repeat itself or each character to have to expound upon the same experience. So it was a question of how to keep it moving forward without accounting for each character in every moment. Grace Paley used to say to me that the bummer about being a writer is that you’re never promoted to senior vice president of writing. Every time you are thrown back to the beginning. You might acquire some skills for the management of problems, but each book is so different, and you have a different agenda because you’re not trying to just repeat yourself. So you have to discover what the terms are of that book and how it will operate and the ways in which it has weaknesses. LI Totally. That’s an argument I constantly have with how books are read—they’re read as products. Books are not products. A book cannot be perfect. Nothing is proportional. Nothing is perfect. Some of Mavis Gallant’s books, for instance, are just so good and terrible at the same time, and all I can say is that she gave birth to a baby that looks different from all the babies in the world. A. M. Homes is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Unfolding; May We Be Forgiven, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction; and the bestselling memoir The Mistress’s Daughter. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Guggenheim Foundation, and is active on the boards of numerous arts organizations. She teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University. Yiyun Li is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Book of Goose and Where Reasons End. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Windham-Campbell Prize, a PEN/Jean Stein Award, and a PEN/Malamud Award, among other honors. She teaches at Princeton University. 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While the Fantasy-Hive is not participating in this year’s Self-Publishing Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO) – the eighth such event – we do have some overlap with people who are, which is how I got a recommendation to take a look at Small Miracles, a SPFBO8 finalist chosen by the Queen’s Book Asylum blog. This is a charming little book, impossible to categorise or to predict which way its twisting plot will go. Suffice to say the story often left me bewildered, but never unengaged. It’s a good sign when I find I have highlighted the very first line in the book, in this case It was eight O’clock on a Wednesday morning when the Fallen Angel of Petty Temptations walked into a quaint café on the north end of Church Street. This opening immediately sets up the mix of uncanny and prosaic, a juxtaposition that characterises the entire book. The opening pages describe the protagonist – fallen angel Gadriel – in some detail, though most of that description is stressing how utterly ordinary and unremarkable she is. However, Atwater’s prose makes for very comfortable reading about a character whose sartorial choices are mostly about the unobtrusive comfort of knitwear. We meet Gadriel using her small powers of persuasion to shorten a queue of customers before meeting her unfallen counterpart, Barachiel the Angel of Good Fortune. As they catch up over coffee Atwater sneaks in references to the story’s central plot device – the accounting of sin. As with the charming TV show The Good Place Gadriel and Barachiel are involved in the maintenance of celestial balance sheets, you might think of it as the accountancy of sin (not to be confused with the sin of accountancy), with chocolate counting as ½ a point of sin, while heartfelt compliments and other modest good deeds earn points of virtue. After a lost bet with Barachiel, Gadriel owes the (still) angelic one favours. In this case Barachiel sets Gadriel to tempt a mortal named Holly Harker into a little bit of sin because “She has one of the lowest cumulative sin metrics I’ve ever seen. Truly she must be even more miserable than a Greek Cynic…. I want you to tempt her… just enough to make sure she’s enjoying her life?” Associating virtue with misery and sin with enjoyment might take old fashioned weight loss messaging a little too far or too simplistically into the moral domain. However, it makes for an interesting set-up as Gadriel finds the simple challenge has some surprising complications. It also means that each chapter opens, like a Bridget Jones diary entry, with a helpful running score of Holly Harker’s cumulative sin metric. (She starts on “-932” sin points – positively brimming with virtue). In her acknowledgements, the author says Small Miracles drew on Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens for inspiration and in some ways was a homage to it. Having never read Gaiman’s source work, and only knowing that story from brief trailers of the TV show starring David Tenant and Michael Sheen, the parallels passed me by. However, Small Miracles did make me think of a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore 1967 film Bedazzled with its tale of unintended and unpredictable consequences when fallen angels dip their hands in the lives of mortals. The miracles (and temptations) that Atwater’s protagonist Gadriel peddles in are more modest than those wielded by Peter Cook’s character George Spiggot (aka The Devil) and seem to invoke a lot of chocolate. However, as Atwater’s acknowledgement points out Small Miracles is “a story about tiny, personal disasters, rather than about giant, world-ending ones.” The text is peppered with Pratchett-esque footnotes. These fall into two categories, the first being authorial asides that raise a smile, or an eyebrow or both, for example the one about how ”Just as God created the platypus out of spare parts, Lucifer created the original chihuahua out of spare spite…one would be hard-pressed to find a more concentrated form of evil that the average chihuahua.” The second category of footnotes provide a running score update to quantify Gadriel’s successes and failures in de-miserifying Holly’s excessively virtuous existence. For example “+10 Points of Virtue (Holly Harker): Rescuing a Lost Kitten.” One can’t help feeling that Atwater must have had an excel spreadsheet open alongside the manuscript document as the precise accounting of these numbers is both the substance of Gadriel’s challenge and an important plot-point as the story approaches its denouement. Gadriel makes an engaging protagonist, mischievous rather than malicious, while also endearingly out of her/his depth, more an angel fallen through a disagreement over policy than from any actual vice. You will have noticed my slight ambiguity about Gadriel’s pronouns and indeed a quick google search for references generates this information, from Christianity.com “Angels are not male or female in the way that humans understand and experience gender.” Atwater has Gadriel and Barachiel charge into that ambiguity with a refreshingly fluid approach to gender explained in the very first footnote. “Angels… chose a gender for the day, in rather the same way that you or I might choose a shirt or trousers…But as with any fashion choice there is always the danger that one might turn up at a luncheon meeting wearing exactly the same gender as the friend with whom one is meeting. This is considered both gauche and embarrassing.” The angelic beings’ gender fluidity is an interesting touch with a consistent explanation within the story. The human characters accept this pretty much at face value with Holly simply noting “I don’t mean to be insulting… it’s just that… weren’t you a woman before.” Holly’s open-mindedness is refreshing, particularly in the contemporary context. As Gadriel digs deeper into the secret of Holly’s virtue, Holly’s teenage niece Ella puts in an appearance and this draws Gadriel into some school based shenanigans. I do enjoy seeing how different authors present the realities of school life, the stresses and squabbles and the staff room politics, and Atwater delivers a credible depiction of a somewhat dysfunctional school, not least in the image of the school disco “The disco was in full swing…The swirling lights highlighted an empty, yawning gap between tables where no one dared to dance.” Of course even a gentle chocolate infused story such as Small Miracles requires a villain and a threat, and there is more at stake for Gadriel than losing face with Barachiel. Those who have dabbled in C.S.Lewis’s The Screwtape letters may be familiar with the name Wormwood (or indeed if they have perused the Book of Revelations). Suffice to say the character is not a positive one and their arrival in the midst of Gadriel’s mission significantly ups the stakes, without losing the gently whimsical nature of the narrative. Overall, this is a very different but enjoyable take on the fantasy genre, with its entertaining examination of the everyday struggles of ordinary folk, all heroes within their own complicated and unexpectedly spicy lives. As one of the many footnotes points out God may show mercy, but capsaicin does not. Find out more about Small Miracles and order your copy HERE The post SMALL MIRACLES by Olivia Atwater (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article