THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # TEN -- l5 AUGUST 200l

The dog days of August are worrying us like a mongrel with a juicy bone. Indeed, as this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener is being written, crispy yellowed leaves occasionally float by the window as distressed trees begin to shed their dusty summer foliage. This autumnal sight reminds us that in a fortnight or so it will be Labour Day, traditionally marking the end of summer, and soon autumn tints will begin to wash across the hills in glorious bands of colour -- assuming, of course, there are any leaves left on the trees at all by then.

But already the nights are drawing in and the sunshine is noticeably thinner. The quality of light has changed, becoming almost melancholy. Although autumn brings the fruitful harvest along with mists and cooler nights, still and all, it reminds us too that winter will soon be coming down the pike and another year is starting to draw to a close. Just like those seared leaves, time floats by, bringing with it the tenth issue of Orphan Scrivener -- but as to whether you'll find this newsletter fruitful or melancholy, the only way to find out is to read on!

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ERIC'S BIT or A MYSTERY IN THE TITLE

Although Mary and I have written nothing but mysteries together, my own roots are planted in Middle Earth. Well, actually in fantasy in general. They descend deep into the rusty sands of Mars and seek out cracks in the eroded pavements of lost cities. While growing up I read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, not to mention science fiction and fantasy classics, Tom Swift Jr. and the ghost stories of M.R. James. It was only later I turned to mysteries, so it is not surprising that the John the Eunuch novels I've co-written all contain distinct elements of the fantastic.

One For Sorrow involved the Holy Grail and an ancient soothsayer. Two For Joy featured spontaneously combusting stylites and a miracle-working holy man. Three For A Letter continues the tradition, surrounding John and his companions with such arcana as automatons, a magical whale and a herd of fortune-telling goats.

Not exactly the stuff of gritty police procedurals or legal thrillers, I agree. I doubt I'll ever write those. Perhaps this is an admission I shouldn't make but I've never had much interest in exactly what police do, and thanks to my time in law school, I know entirely too much about how the legal system works. What interests me more than the cold, grinding, machinery of our society are those ethereal possibilities that still float around the edges of matters about which we are all too certain.

Mysteries often deal with the seemingly fantastic, if only to debunk it and deliver the logical solution which, according to some, is the point of the genre. Yet consider The Hound of the Baskervilles with its glowing apparition. For me, the memory of the story has more to do with the aura of the supernatural that permeates it than with its solution.

My fantasy roots probably explain why locked room mysteries, like so many of Ed Hoch's short stories, have always been favorites and, I admit, not really for the clever explanations either. One of Mr. Hoch's Doctor Sam Hawthorne stories began with a missing wagon and wagon tracks in the snow leading onto a covered bridge but not out the other side. When I read it, I started wracking my brain for the explanation. But as interesting as it was to try and solve the puzzle, and as satisfying (or aggravating in a "why-didn't-I-think-of-that way) as the solution was, well, my strongest recollection is still that frisson I had thinking about the wagon's "impossible" disappearance.

Writing about locked room mysteries reminds me of a truly great one from the 1930s -- Obelists Fly High by C. Daly King. A murder occurs during a mid-thirties transcontinental flight and the book is worthwhile just for its description of that alone. But aside from the impossible crime there is another fantastic element to the novel -- the word "Obelist"! I have been unable to find this word in any dictionary or even on the Internet and yet there it sits, in a title no less.

So if anyone has the solution, I'd be happy to hear it and we will of course share it in our next newsletter.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

It's one of the shortest BSP Tickers on record this time around so we'll get right to it.

The lush green and gold cover of Two For Joy will reappear on book shelves in October when the paperback edition is issued, and speaking of covers, while the author of The British Grenadiers made the interesting claim that some folk talked of Alexander and others of Hercules, we'd like to talk about the cover of Three For A Letter. It's been unveiled since the last newsletter came out and the design department of Poisoned Pen Press has Done It Again, for it's another stunner. If you'd care to take a glance, feel free to point your clicker to

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/html/threeforaletter.html

but, please, no jokes about characters looking sheepish!

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MARY'S BIT or IT CERTAINLY DIDN'T STAND FOR GET WELL SOON

Eric's Bit mentions M. R. James, one of my favourite authors, and I was recently fortunate enough to discover a story of his that was new to me. A School Story relates a tale about G. W. Sampson, who teaches Latin at a boy's school. His watch chain has suspended from it a charm which is an ancient gold Byzantine coin that he'd picked up in Constantinople. Or so he says. For a Latin teacher, he doesn't seem too concerned about defacing this old coin by scratching it with his initials and a date. But then again there is definitely something mysterious, not quite right, about G. W. Sampson. But to return to our muttons, as the French say (it seems we cannot escape sheep this time around). As A School Story unfolded, I spied a small mystery in that the teacher's scratched initials of GWS most certainly were not being used in the usual short-hand fashion for a kind wish that Mr Sampson would quickly recover good health. However, bearing in mind that scholars tell us that the Byzantines loved puns, like Miss Anne Elk of Monty Python fame, I have a theory. Warning: egregious spoiler coming up in next line.

Sure you want to read on?

OK, then. My theory is that the initials are connected in a particularly Jamesian sort of way with the well featured in the story. But then what are we to make of the date also scratched on that old Byzantine coin? Was it of some significance to Mr James, who was only a toddler on 24 July l865? It's a knotty problem over which I'm still puzzling, but in the meantime, Lost Hearts, The Mezzotint, Canon Alberic's Scrapbook and Room l3 are among the stories to be found at

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~fadey/mrjframes.html

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AND FINALLY

It'll be somewhat cooler by the time that the next Orphan Scrivener trundles into your email in-box on October l5, a day or so after Fontinalia, the Roman festival honouring Fontus, god of springs and wells. In an outstanding example of the survival of old customs under different names, Fontinalia lives on in the well-dressing ceremonies still carried out in parts of England at various dates between May and September. For these, "dressing" involves very detailed pictures, often with a religious theme, that are made by villagers using natural materials such as petals, leaves and moss pressed into trays of clay. The trays are displayed next to the wells during the celebrations and more often than not that other good old British institution, the brass band, participates in the jamboree. And, in a link back to the old Roman festival, the highlight of the event is always the blessing of the well by the local vicar.

On which watery note, we'll close by wishing you all well, and see you again in October.

Mary and Eric

whose home page lurks about at

http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects plus more personal essays, an interactive game and an on-line jigsaw puzzle (at least for those who have java-enabled browsers) featuring One For Sorrow's eye-catching scarlet cover. We also now have a work-in-progress, to wit, a page listing mystery-related newsletters (print and email). For those new to the subscription list, there's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!

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THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # NINE -- l5 JUNE 200l

This issue of Orphan Scrivener arrives not so much trailing clouds of glory as dragging along a fog of dust, for summer is a-coming in, and if you had any doubts about it perhaps you might care to glance out of your window and observe the local youngsters celebrating their two months or so of freedom in assorted and sundry (or in some areas, sun-dried) ways.

School's out and so is this newsletter, so we'll leap right into the fray.

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MARY'S BIT or THEY COULD HAVE PLAYED EUPHONIUMS

Occasionally I find myself wondering if those eternal motion machines that are the young ever pause long enough to contemplate the enjoyable sight of the lengthy vista of days -- nay, weeks -- stretching out before them when the summer holidays finally begin.

Why, the time rolling out ahead seemed endless to us when school was at last out, with those menacing back-to-school sales so far away at the other end of the summer as to be easily ignored -- and just as well since once they arrived we would have to get the number 4 bus into town to buy school supplies and new tennis shoes, which in turn meant that the new term was not far off and thus soon it would be time to drag ourselves off to the grey Victorian building in which we laboured, to again wrestle with French verbs, toil over geometry exercises and try to recall the names of all the Hanoverian rulers in the correct order -- all these tasks being carried in that strange chalk-and-old- books atmosphere that seemed to permeate every school in which I ever set foot.

Thinking on it now reminds me that my last school holiday was largely spent sprawled on my bed devouring cookers (cooking apples) so tart my teeth almost shrank from them as I chewed away while reading as many books as I could borrow from the library. It was a particularly hot summer that year and our fashionable frou-frou sponge-skirted petticoats ensured that those of us who considered ourselves trendy suffered mightily for the privilege. But the unaccustomed heat -- for when it's above 72 degrees in England, it's inevitably described in the media as A Scorcher -- made my shady room, the pile of green, shiny-skinned cookers and the even larger stack of books with covers of all colours even more attractive to one who was already a bookworm and fruit-lover. The noise of the neighbours' children playing all over the roadway -- despite living in houses with hanky-sized gardens that were nonetheless large enough to allow games of Traffic Lights or Statues or Tag without any risk of getting run over by the mobile fish and chip shop or a passing coal lorry -- was easily ignored, even though our windows were wide open to whatever breeze might meander in, bringing with it the scent of the two small lilac trees growing by the corner of the house.

Because even if those kids had spent their entire summer practicing playing euphoniums outside our front door, I should have taken no notice at all -- I had flown off on the magic carpet of books and would not be back until teatime. And so those long, golden afternoons unwound to the gentle rustle of pages turning and the piling up of apple gowks (cores) until it was time for tea. And when the washing up was done, the tea-towel hung up to dry and the plates and cups and cutlery put away again, there would still be time for a chapter or two or more to be read as shadows started to advance, shrouding the raspberry canes in the back garden and fingering the windows. Soon there would come that strange hush that creeps in between the time when workers arrive home for their evening meals and when they go out for the evening. Every night that quiet calm fell around the house like a kindly mantle and while it was true that, to the despair of my parents, I would probably be found in the kitchen at midnight frying up bacon and eggs, still I knew that tomorrow would proceed at the same slow pace, and the next day, and the day after that as well.

But it was recalling that this would be my last long summer holiday before I joined the work world that really added to its strange enchantment and, I think, to the sense that time was flying, bearing us all along willy-nilly faster and faster towards adulthood. It all seems dreamlike and far away now.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Just a couple of short items this time around but hopefully they'll still of some interest.

CURSE YOU, LORD CHAMBERLAIN (PART II)

We've now received publication details for the sixth John story listed in the last Necessary Evil. As we mentioned last time, And All That He Calls Family is set to appear in Mike Ashley's THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF HISTORICAL WHODUNNITS: A NEW COLLECTION. The anthology will be published in August by Robinson in the UK and Carroll and Graf will issue the US edition as THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF MORE HISTORICAL WHODUNNITS in October.

As to our contribution, this time around John arrives at the estate of a recently deceased personage to investigate a curse tablet dredged up from the well-- and discovers that some rather odd goings-on are, well, going on. Admirers of the herbalist Hypatia may be interested to hear that she also appears in this short story, by the way.

TWOFER MARCHES ON IN MAY

Not long after the last Orphan Scrivener went out into the aether, we were delighted to hear that Twofer was a finalist for the 2001 Best Mystery/Thriller/Suspense IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award). The Ippy for this category went to Tracon (Paul McElroy) and the other finalist was Bleeding Out (Baxter Clare). As historical mysteries do seem to tend to be rather overlooked, we are happy indeed that Twofer was named in such interesting company. A complete listing of winners and finalists in all IPPY categories can be found by pointing your clicker at

http://www.independentpublisher.com/index.lasso?- database=18news.fp3&-layout=iparticle&-response=art.lasso&- recID=37873&-search

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ERIC'S BIT or RETURNING SOME OF THE MAGIC

Since the last newsletter Mary and I sent Three For A Letter to Poisoned Pen Press. We wished to make the third John the eunuch mystery a bit different from the first two and I suppose I'm still too close to the task to tell how well we succeeded.

One thing I am sure of is that the writing was arduous, more so for me, than the writing of One For Sorrow or Two For Joy. It seems every time I learn a bit about an aspect of writing I learn there's something else I should've been thinking about as well but never bothered with before. Transitions? Don't they just kind of...happen?

The increasing difficulty of the job surprises me because I always imagined writing would naturally get easier -- just another of many misconceptions I nurtured, along with my dream of being an author, practically since I could hold a crayon. That's plenty of time to grow a fine crop of misconceptions.

In particular I underestimated how much plain hard work is involved once you begin to write professionally. An aspiring author might take half a lifetime to produce a publishable novel but then, in most cases, he or she (or they) have to do it all over again -- in the space of a year. Then they repeat the process the next year, and the next...if they are fortunate enough to have the opportunity.

Writing is, I think, more like a job than matching the winning numbers on a lottery ticket. Sure, we read in the newspaper about Joe Shmoe who wrote that gripping page- turner "Flaming Pizza of Desire" while scrubbing pans at the Greasy Spoon Diner and then, practically before he had bundled his handwritten manuscript off to a Major New York Literary Agency, was drying his fingers on a contract for more then the gross national product of Paraguay. But we also read on the same page about John Shmoe of Cat's Elbow Corners who just won $25,000,000 on the Lotto.

First-time authors have been known to get mega-bucks deals and, hey, someone's got to win the lottery. But while few would argue that buying lottery tickets is a viable career path, one occasionally sees aspiring authors whose thought is that nothing will do but they will write an instant bestseller. Is a thriller about a lawyer embroiled with middle eastern terrorists while on an expedition to Mount Everest climbing the Bestseller Lists? Then it's time to bone up on crampons and falafel and get writing!

Fortunately, Mary and I never entertained the notion that writing is a lottery. We went about it like any other job, starting small -- or I should say short -- by writing stories for anthologies and magazines. After we had a better idea of what we were doing, we wrote a "practice" mystery novel, to prove we could write at that length, made an effort to sell it in line with our expectations of a sale (small), did not succeed and moved right on to writing One For Sorrow. When it was completed we queried here and there but quickly decided we'd have a better chance of being noticed by an independent publisher.

After Poisoned Pen Press bought the manuscript we reworked it as needed under the guidance of our editor Barbara Peters and in the process learned a lot that an editor at a Big Publisher could never have taken time to try to teach a pair of novice novelists. Then we applied the lessons to Two For Joy, which sold well, had even better reviews than One For Sorrow and has actually won an award!

And now we've just finished Three For A Letter.

Will we ever have a bestseller? With a Byzantine eunuch as a protagonist, only if the general population has the discerning taste of those of you reading this newsletter.

Will we continue to work at our craft and gain a larger audience? We certainly hope so.

Writing isn't really about hitting the jackpot. Rather it is about knowing that readers are enjoying your work. Mary occasionally visits library web pages so we know our books are on library shelves all over the country -- in Schenectady, NY; Stillwater, OK; LaGrange, IL; Osh Kosh, WI. There's a library in Alaska that has Two For Joy and it's currently checked out!

It amazes me, the idea of our book, sitting on the shelf of some distant library in a place I've never seen. When I was a kid, it was visiting the library that hooked me on books, on the magic of the bound pages that would transport me to other worlds and allow me to lead other lives.

It is still magical but now we give back, just a little, to the magic.

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AND FINALLY

As this newsletter grows longer and time gets shorter, may we then conclude by mentioning in passing that this link

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/html/threeforaletter.html

will take you to Poisoned Pen's Threefer page, and yes, John' s adventure really does feature a herd of fortune-telling goats as well as a whale. Well, we said it would be somewhat different from the first two books!

Speaking of two, we'll see you again in a couple of months as the next Orphan Scrivener will trundle in from the aether. and hang about in your email in-box on August l5th.

Best wishes
Mary and Eric

whose home page lurks about at

http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects plus more personal essays, an interactive game and an on-line jigsaw puzzle (at least for those who have java-enabled browsers) featuring One For Sorrow's striking cover. We've also just added a page listing mystery-related newsletters of various kinds, while for those new to the subscription list there's the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!

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THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # EIGHT -l5 APRIL 200l

A couple of weeks ago we heard an unearthly yelping, heralding the passage of a flock of geese hidden in the fog. It was one of those very misty mornings with dew still hanging in beads on the grass and the sun rather lazy about getting to work. We thought at the time that the invisible birds -- those annual harbingers of the arrival of spring -- were passing north on their migration from their winter quarters but given the cold and windy days we've had ever since we now tend to suspect that it's more likely they were the small flock that lives on the river having a little avian April Fool's Day joke at the expense of local residents.

Yet time flies by even faster than geese and on its wings our newsletter comes a-flapping once again. Still, if nothing else, we scriveners don't make much mess and won't eat crusts put out for deserving sparrows.

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ERIC'S BIT or IT'S NOT YOUR RUDYARD KIPLING'S IF

Two For Joy was published less than six months ago and although it's been great reading all the kind notices it's gathered, Mary and I have already turned our attention to telling a rather different sort of story in Three For A Letter.

Making up stories is something I got hooked on even before I could read -- as soon as I could wield a crayon, in fact -- and there's never been a time in my life when I haven't been in the midst of imagining some tale, often when I probably should've been doing something more sensible. In grade school I progressed from picture books to cartoons and illustrated magazines. Later on my friends and I experimented with Super-8 movies and claymation. It's amazing the effects you can get as plasticene figures gradually melt and mutate under hot floodlights. Even after I'd ostensibly grown-up I just couldn't resist making up stories, from inept science fiction to photocopied mini-comics. And I have to admit even co-authoring novels isn't enough.

Lately, in addition to writing about John the Eunuch, I've dabbled at computer games. Not modern games with beautiful graphics -- I'm not a programmer. My efforts are nothing but text, the sort of thing that was briefly popular in the eighties before home computers developed sufficient memories to handle pictures. Some might recall, for example, Adventure where you explored a cave and battled trolls by typing commands like:

>North,
>Attack troll with sword
>Take gold

Today the stories tend to be more sophisticated and aficionados refer to modern text games as Interactive Fiction or IF. The main virtue claimed for IF by its supporters is that the reader/player doesn't just read passively but interacts with the story by deciding where to go, what to look at, what to do and so on. Thinking about this, I realized one thing that makes mysteries so interesting and sets them apart from other literature is the high level of interaction the reader can engage in. All writing is interactive compared to, say movies, in that readers supply their own audio and visuals, choose their own pace, and can take as much or little time as they desire to reflect on what's happening. But mysteries go a step further by including a puzzle to be solved. In this aspect a mystery novel is a game.

In our mystery stories Mary and I have always been careful to include a puzzle. There's certainly nothing wrong with stories where you can't play along with the sleuth but they aren't, strictly speaking, what I would call mysteries. Mary is much better than I am at concocting these puzzles and she's the one who keeps a running list of clues and where they appear and makes sure each is finally explained and accounted for. I'm afraid we're coming to the clue-checking stage now with Three For A Letter and a few days ago I remarked to Mary that her clue list looked about as long as the novel itself! But then games aren't much fun unless they're fair.

If you're like me and enjoy the interactive aspect of mysteries, you might also like Interactive Fiction.About.com mystery guide Cathy Gallagher has a page devoted to mystery IF at http://mysterybooks.about.com/arts/mysterybooks/cs/interacti ve/index_2.htm and you can find out more about IF in general from Stephen Granade's About.com site http://interactfiction.miningco.com/games/interactfiction/ Mark Silcox' IF pages at Suite 101 http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/interactive_fiction or Reviews From Trotting Krips http://members.dencity.com/petro/reviews.html Not to mention at our own site http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/game.htm Once you've learnt your way around, I suggest you try out Irene Callaci's Dangerous Curves, in which you pretend you're a Sam Spade type character tracking down a killer in seedy and corrupt LA, at http://www.wurb.com/if/game/507 or another LA based private eye yarn, Kent Tessman's Guilty Bastard at http://www.generalcoffee.com/

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NECESSARY EVIL OR THE BSP TICKER

The BSP Ticker has of late been chattering nigh as much as the proverbial trunk full of monkeys. Here's a quick rundown.

PLEASE ACCEPT ENCLOSED APOLOGY

Due to the horrible machinations of Internet gremlins, we could not get through to our Talk City chat in March. Ever optimistic, we'll be arranging another attempt in a month or two but meanwhile extend our apologies for our unavoidable absence.

A RIFF ON THE GLYPH

Speaking of absences, the Arizona Book Publishers Association held its awards dinner the night before the Oscars. We were not in attendance and so it wasn't until early on Oscar Day that we heard we'd been highly honoured ourselves since Two For Joy had run off with the ABPA's Glyph Award for Best Mystery. We are, of course, thrilled to bits -- the more so as Twofer also received an honourable mention in the Best Book overall category.

There's more! Poisoned Pen Press also took home Glyph Awards for Best Historical/Biographical work (Ross Macdonald: A Biography by Tom Nolan) and a Best Mystery honorable mention for Nora Kelly's Old Wounds -- not to mention a special award for Rob Rosenwald and Poisoned Pen Press for Publishing Excellence.

Congratulations to the press and our stablemates there-at!

THEY WON'T TWIST YOUR ARM TO READ IT

But on the other hand One For Sorrow has been chosen as May voluntary read for the Crime Thru Time online discussion list. Its membership (made up of both writers and readers) is lively, well-mannered and enjoys talking about history, culture and favourite historical mysteries. For details about the group, point your clicker to their web page at http://pages.about.com/crimethrutime/info.html or visit their community page at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CrimeThruTime

GOODNESS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, JUSTINIAN

Speaking of Onefer, we recently heard that it's part of an exhibit at the library of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It: Wicked Women Through the Ages or The Bad and the Beautiful features books about such notables as Livia, Cleopatra and Olympias. Theodora is in the category of women to whom history has given a bad -- and not necessarily deserved -- reputation, to which view (alas) our fiction has added, but you must admit that Onefer's bold scarlet cover certainly suits the theme of wicked women through the ages.

CURSE YOU, LORD CHAMBERLAIN

April l5th being Pay Your Taxes Day in America (and thus the date on which more bad language is heard throughout the land than any other) strangely leads us to "And All That He Calls Family". It's the sixth John the Eunuch short story with nothing to do with deductions for dependents but rather takes place on an estate where curse tablets are at work and seemingly extremely effective at doing their nasty job. Family will appear in a new Mike Ashley anthology to be issued in late summer. Like its illustrious predecessor, this Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits (Volume Two) will be published by Robinson in the UK and Carroll and Graf in the US. Fans of historical mysteries will be happy to hear that (alphabetically!) Margaret Frazer, Susanna Gregory, Ed Hoch, Michael Kurland, Steven Saylor, Peter Tremayne and Marilyn Todd plus many others have contributed to this collection.

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MARY'S BIT or LET ME TAX YOUR PATIENCE A LITTLE LONGER

Speaking of today being Pay Your Taxes Day, since misery loves company it occurred to me to take a break from struggling with those byzantine tax forms for a quick glance at Roman arrangements on this method of raising funds. This foray turned up some fascinating trivia -- for example, at the time of Augustus sales tax was l per cent on everything except slaves, whose new owners paid 4 per cent tax on their purchase price.

Another form of taxation that fortunately the current government does not seem to have considered yet was collective taxation. Under this system, a set amount was levied upon a community as a whole, its residents deciding who paid what portion of the total sum due. Needless to say, it was not at all popular for a number of reasons and became even more reviled once assessments came to be (as now) widely considered to be excessive.

Augustus eventually replaced this communal tax with a poll tax plus direct taxation based upon individual wealth. This in turn meant censuses were held at more regular intervals -- a practice that continues to this day -- in order to find out who owned what and how many folks there were around to tax. Doubtless this led to much dark muttering around rural dinner tables about jumping out of the cooking pot into the brazier, but it was too late by then. Isn't that always the way?

In Byzantine times, that venomous-tongued gossip Procopius recorded in his Secret History that in addition to huge amounts of public taxes, Justinian also received an immense annual sum known as "sky tax". According to Procopius, the sky tax was so-named not because (as we might suppose) the sky was the limit -- although by all he says, to all intents and purposes it was -- but because the money was said to have come unexpectedly to the emperor by falling from the sky, or in other words was publicly at least described as what we'd call a windfall. Of course, its regular appearance might give most of us pause but then again doubtless the wiser residents of Constantinople soon became adept at expressing convincing surprise that, good heavens, the emperor had been extremely fortunate yet again!

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AND FINALLY

Speaking of convincing surprises, we've just finishing up the draft of Three For A Letter and as is traditional the last couple of chapters are devoted to neatly tying up all the clues, red herrings and loose ends. While it's true that at the moment the closing few thousand words rather resemble a skein of wool after a catnip-crazed feline has finished fighting with it, by the time the next Orphan Scrivener slinks into your email box on June l5th the manuscript will have been burnished up and trundled off to the excellent hands of Poisoned Pen Press. We'll talk a little more about Threefer in the next Orphan Scrivener, but for now we'll admit that it's very different from Twofer and that a couple of hitherto lesser-seen characters come into the spotlight after John is called upon to solve a murder discovered during a banquet given by Anatolius' elderly and eccentric uncle Zeno -- a banquet at which, unfortunately for Zeno, the guest of honour is Empress Theodora.

See you in a couple of months!

Best wishes
Mary and Eric