THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # FIFTEEN l5 JUNE 2002

James Russell Lowell can suggest all he wants that June is the month when, if there are such things, perfect days will arrive because if he was referring to the weather, alas, going by current conditions he was misinformed. More famously so too was Humphrey Bogart's Rick, vis a vis his alleged plan to take the (non existent) waters in Casablanca for the sake of his health. In fact, Rick should have come to the east coast since this past week we've been looking out at rain coming down like stair rods, underlining that while Oscar Hammerstein's chorus in Carousel sang so happily about the month busting out, here June seems set fair to burst out -- with cloud bursts, that is.

Yet few things are cosier than pulling your armchair up to the fire and sitting down with a book and a cup of tea on a rainy night, with the wind howling in the chimney and sleet lashing at the windows. Unfortunately, whether it is raining or not when this flies in from the aether, we can offer only virtual fires and cuppas but, ever obliging, we'll request the chorus to keep their singing down to a dull roar so that you can concentrate on this latest Orphan Scrivener.

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MARY'S BIT or THEODORA, CHAMPION OF THE WORKING SCHMOE

As far as mystery novels go, we do appear to be labouring alone (if that is not an oxymoron) in the stony fields of Byzantium. But we shouldn't cavil too loudly, seeing as it's little better vis a vis kinematic treatments of personalities and events in the reign of Justinian and Theodora. Such productions are not as numerous as stones in the aforementioned field and despite some research most of them as yet we know little about -- but we're listing them anyhow, just for the heck of it and in case you happen to have a VCR and a video rental shop nearby.

Not surprisingly, the Italians have produced a fistful of epics honouring the empress -- Theodora, Empress of Byzantine (l909) plus two succinctly titled Teodora (l9l3 and l92l). The French meantime got into the celluloid act in l9l2 with Theodora. If anyone has details about these films, we'd be happy to share them in Orphan Scrivener!

Our literary excavations have, however, unearthed a little information about the l9l9 Italian black and white silent Teodora (its English title is Theodora, The Slave Princess). According to the indispensable Internet Movie Database website, the story details how Theodora's affair with a Greek ends in tears for many, since it results in extensive swordplay in both Rome and Constantinople.

In a more sympathetic portrayal of the empress, the l954 Italian film Teodora, Imperatrice di Bisanzio (also issued as Theodora, Slave Empress and Theodora, Queen of Byzantium) presents Theodora not only as a former lady of the night but also as an ex-slave and consequently a champion of the common people. This seems not unlikely in that even though she was never a slave, Theodora certainly had very humble origins and her charitable works after her rise in society (including founding a nunnery for former prostitutes) are well known. Unfortunately, however, Theodora's attempts to better the lot of working schmoes result in, yes, more riots and swordplay in both cities.

Kampf Um Rome (screened under several aliases including Fight, Battle or Struggle for Rome as well as The Last Roman) is a Romanian-German-Italian l968 production whose original running time was four hours, although apparently it was cut to somewhat less than half that length for general release. This particular production caught our attention immediately because to our delight its plot deals with, among other things, a power struggle between King Theodoric's orphaned daughters. Thus characters include several either featured -- or referred to -- in Threefer, notably (in variant spellings) Mathaswintha, Witichis and Amalaswintha. The latter is played by Honor Blackman, the inimitable Orson Welles portrays Justinian and Sylva Koscina appears as Theodora.

The basic story of Struggle For Rome concerns Cethegus, a Roman noble (Laurence Harvey) who goes to Constantinople to visit Justinian vis a vis military action to be taken against the Goths. Needless to say, this is not the only reason for Cethegus' journey -- his hidden ambition is to seize control of Italy once the two armies have finished fighting each other. But what about Justinian himself comes the cry from the back row. Well, in the flickers he appears to lurk somewhat in Theodora's long shadow. So far the only title we've located specifically mentioning him is a l907 French black and white silent presentation, Torches Humaines. Evidently this is a lurid affair in more ways than one since its English title is Justinian's Human Torches and while this sobriquet could be applied to certain events occurring at the beginning of Twofer, thankfully we remain entirely in the dark about the film's pyrotechnic details.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

And speaking of being in the dark, for the first time since we began Orphan Scrivener, the BSP Ticker sits unlit and silent. Alas.

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ERIC'S BIT or THE WRITING THAT WILL BE ON THE WALL

You may have noticed that Three for a Letter was dedicated to Louis H. Silverstein, Chairman of Poisoned Pen Press's Editorial Review Committee, or CERC, as he loved to be known. The first anniversary of his death falls in about three weeks and this seems an appropriate time to share a small anecdote about him.

Louis was Poisoned Pen's first reader of the manuscript of our first published novel, One For Sorrow. Of course, first readers don't have last say but it was Louis who saw enough promise in the book to recommend it to the press, even before our editor Barbara Peters began working with us on it. Writing is a strange profession. It's a solitary activity, aimed towards a distant, perhaps unattainable, audience of readers that can be reached only by finding an individual reader, the guardian of a gate to publication, who will allow you to pass through it.

Over the years my writing path has been barred by gatekeepers too numerous to mention. As all writers, I've received everything from typical "not suitable for us at this time" form letters to lovingly handwritten insults. When I started collecting rejection slips I was writing fiction with an Underwood manual and carbon paper. The idea that my first novel acceptance would arrive electronically via a computer on my desk, as Onefer's did, was like something out of the sf stories on which I cut my writing teeth.

An encouraging letter from a publisher was a thing I had quite literally dreamed about but at times seemed as unlikely as a winning lottery ticket. In fact, the entire convergence of circumstances was extremely unlikely. I believe it was necessary for One for Sorrow to be read by a retired Yale librarian, as Louis was. While others might have found our style archaic or convoluted, Louis delighted in it. And just as importantly we needed someone willing to evaluate the book as a book, not a commodity or a product -- an approach it seems only Poisoned Pen Press and a few other publishers practice today.

Given all the strange circumstances underlying our convergence, it is fair to say that none of the three of us should have been doing what we were doing at the time. Mary and I finished One for Sorrow while we were losing our home and being turned out onto the street. Our manuscript was plucked from oblivion by a man who had battled dreadful health problems that could easily have crushed his enthusiasm and will to go on, yet his joie de vivre and delight in matters literary continued unabated to the end. In short, it was a meeting of three people who would have been expected to have long since given up. And thus it was that Onefer came to be published. Sadly, Louis died prematurely only a few years after retirement. You can read a biographical sketch about him here:

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/2001/07/msg0003 7.html

You may also be interested in an article written by Louis at:

http://www.imagists.org/hd/hdls111.html

Before Onefer had even been accepted, Louis sent us a very kind and encouraging letter. This kind gesture meant a great deal to us and we wrote him that if we ever again got a house of our own, the first thing we would do would be to frame his letter and hang it on the study wall. Apparently the very notion tickled him no end, as Mary would say. Although we haven't got a house yet that's still our hope and if we should accomplish it, you can bet that Louis' letter will be hung on the wall the first day we set feet over threshold!

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AND FINALLY

Speaking of gates, as this issue goes out we're still standing at the door of summer. As Will Shakespeare perceptively remarked in sonnet mode, the lease of the season is short -- but it's also true that August is generally when the thermometer soars and headlines in the popular UK press have a tendency to announce "It's A Scorcher" once the mercury passes 70 degrees or so. Whatever the weather turns out to be, however, we'll be adding a modicum of excitement to your summer cavalcade on August l5th when the next issue of Orphan Scrivener flies hot off the virtual press and flaps into your email in-box. See you then!

Best wishes
Mary and Eric

whose home page hangs out in the aether at

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

Therein you'll find the usual suspects, including more personal essays and an interactive game as well as an on-line jigsaw puzzle (at least if you have a java-enabled browser) featuring One For Sorrow's boldly scarlet cover. 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 # FOURTEEN -- l5 APRIL 2002

What seems to have been an extremely long winter has finally departed somewhat grumpily down the pike, shedding snow flurries right and left as it goes. With its departure time seems to have speeded up and now, suddenly, today's the deadline for getting income tax returns off to the IRS. It's a shame working shmoes don't have the option of paying taxes due in goods rather than with cash. True, such an arrangement would be pretty well unworkable, but the stray thought was inspired by memories of quit-rents, which are precisely that. They tend towards being useful although occasionally exotic items so that annual rents for land or a manor house might be a pair of gloves, a bill hook, several horseshoes or a single rose, the latter to be rendered to the landlord at mid-winter, an easier task to accomplish now than in centuries past.

And speaking of horse shoes, as if you haven't already suffered enough, April l5th also thunders in bearing the latest issue of Orphan Scrivener, so let's get right to it!

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ERIC'S BIT or MENTION OF MEMORIES

As if my stiffening joints aren't enough reminder of progressive fossilization, I've noticed recently that Amazon.com has taken to categorizing some books set in the nineteen sixties as "historicals."

My first reaction was that an era I'd so recently lived through couldn't be history yet, but then, as I recalled those days when the roads crawled with VW Beetles rather than SUVs, civil rights legislation was being passed rather than repealed, people could still advocate peace without ninety percent of the population labeling them traitors, not to mention the existence of things like bell bottoms and fizzies - well, it must all seem exotic and improbable to anyone who wasn't there.

It next occurred to me that maybe the present being tailgated by history wasn't such a bad thing for writers of historical mysteries. How much easier would it be to research the sixties than the Byzantine Roman Empire? Research? Heck, all I'd have to do was dust off my own memories.

Or so I thought, until I tried. I'd forgotten I have practically no memory.

It's true. The landscape of my past is mostly obscured by fog, interrupted here and there by dark gaps which I might label lacunae, remembering how I used to pore over the Word Power feature in Reader's Digest, not so much to improve my vocabulary (since adding words like lacunae is, arguably, not an improvement) but rather to add rare words to my menagerie.

Strange how I can remember coming upon "lacunae" but my entire year in third grade has vanished except, of course, for the momentous day our stout teacher broke her chair when she sat down.

Other people seem not to suffer this disability, to judge by the exquisitely rendered detail of their reminiscences. I've always felt that my lousy memory was actually a benefit to me as a writer. I'm not tempted to torture readers with my coming of age story. (There are six billion coming of age stories on planet earth -- this is one of them!) Whatever that involved is either too hideously painful to recall or too unutterably boring. Unless maybe I just haven't come of age yet.

I've always been forced to rely on my imagination rather than trying to dress up my own past in fictional clothing. There was a period when I emulated essayists like James Thurber, E.B. White and Robert Benchley (not to mention Lucius Beebe and Wolcott Gibbs). But even then my remembrances are mostly fanciful embroidery. Oddly, as my brother who was on the scene for most of what I wrote about once observed, readers who didn't know me well tended to doubt the few bits of truth while believing all the rest.

Memory is an unreliable witness anyway. Our pasts are undeniably linear, yet, for me at least, memory is not. Important events, my grandmother reading to me, for instance, remain near at hand and clear while more trivial and recent things, like my final law school exams, have receded so rapidly that I can deduce their existence but cannot conjure up even the foggiest of snapshots.

I always wonder about the authenticity of memories as well. Do I remember playing catch with my grandfather in the backyard when I was six or am I just recalling the photograph I was shown years afterwards? And how much of the original memory survives time? The fact that a changed person is recalling an event under different circumstances must color the memory, and to what extent is it colored further by all the other times and circumstances it has been recalled under. Don't we put more fingerprints on memories every time we take them out to look at them?

Still, I can't deny it might help my writing were I able to remember what happened in Chapter Two by the time I'm writing Chapter Seventeen. I guess Mary must've written Chapter Two.

And a sixties historical mystery might be a good idea, even if it would require some research. The detective would have to be young, naturally. We were all young then. Murder at the Fillmore East. The victim was killed during a drum solo. (Plenty of time for the perpetrator and who'd notice another comatose body in the audience?) Oh, yeah, the detective lives in a VW bus. You know, kind of the equivalent of Australopithecus to modern mini vans. And, let's se, he has a weakness for root beer flavored fizzies. Now there's something I remember. Except how they tasted, exactly. Maybe some things are best forgotten.

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ODE TO AN OBELISK or OBFUSCATION OVERCOME

Recently an Orphan Scrivener subscriber jotted us a line vis a vis last issue's revelation concerning the nature of an obelist. After noting that the similar word obelisk derives from the diminutive of obelus, a spit, our correspondent was inspired to pen the following:

Ode To An Obelisk

An oboist, an obelist,
A hobo and a belle-lettrist
Obambulate the Obelisk
Observe but missed the obvious:
One marked in time, one marked in rhyme,
One marked in margins of his crime.
The oboist would obsecrate
An obbligate for his mate;
His friend preferred the obscure wit:
Belle-lettrists best obliterate
And not obsess and obstenate.
The hobo was obliged to spit.
The obelist obelized, then quit.

Your far-flung correspondent, R.O.

Consulted concerning quoting the above in OS, his go-ahead arrived in an email signed "Your obsequious observations obviate any obversion. I oblige." Needless to say, if we ever hear of a literary award for the most graceful (not to mention multi syllabled) extending of reprint permission, we intend to nominate R.O. immediately.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

ANOTHER SORT OF AWARD or A GLORIOUS SURPRISE

Speaking of awards, we're proud to announce that the folk at Myshelf.com just honoured us with their April 2002 Author Appreciation Award For An Exceptional Web Site, the criteria for which being that sites be "informative, easy to surf, and bookaholic worthy". Since Eric runs ours all on his own, despite constant protestations of not knowing what he's doing, to him goes all the glory -- and to Myshelf thanks from both of us.

MORE ANCIENT WHODUNNITS or AMONG MANY OTHERS

Word reaches us of Mike Ashley's latest anthology, entitled The Mammoth Book of Ancient Egyptian Whodunnits and slated to appear from Robinson this September in the UK with an American edition from Carroll and Graf following shortly thereafter. A special introduction by Elizabeth Peters kicks off the collection, which (apart from one reprint) is made up of new works by Lauren Haney, Lynda S. Robinson, Anton Gill, Paul Doherty, Suzanne Frank, Gillian Bradshaw, Marilyn Todd, Gillian Linscott, Michael Pearce, Ian Morson and several more. Its time span stretches from the third millenium BC to just before the First World War and stories featuring Imhotep, Tutankhamun, Herodotus and Cleopatra, among many others, are included. Quite a line up, to say the least!

We can now confess (so put away the thumb screws) that we're two of the many others, our contribution being a locked temple mystery solved by that colourful traveller and writer Herodotus.

AND SPEAKING OF THE LONG AGO or WHAT ABOUT JOHN?

While we plan to continue writing stories featuring Herodotus as time permits, John will always take first seat at the literary banquet and so needless to say we're now concentrating on finishing Four For A Boy.

It is 525 AD, some ten years before One For Sorrow. Emperor Justin (Justinian's uncle) reigns and John is a palace slave working in the office of the Keeper of the Plate. This younger John is hot-tempered and still grappling with the changes wrought in his life by an ill-fated journey over the Persian border. Fourfer will explain the way in which he regained his freedom as well as how and where he first met some recurring characters, including Justinian and Theodora, the Egyptian madam Isis (who has not long since set up her own establishment), the palace guard Felix (still a rank and file excubitor) and the youthful Anatolius. Needless to say, there'll also be plenty of shenanigans, back stabbings and other byzantine goings-on at court and elsewhere.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT or OVER THERE THERE BE SPOILERS

Since the last issue winged out into the aether, our reading guide to the John the Eunuch series (which includes a brief biography of John) has been placed on our website. Warning: before you sail off to take a look, you can avoid certain perilous reefs by noting now that over there there be spoilers! Otherwise, you can consult the guide by pointing your clicker at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/reading.htm Since this is an ongoing project, we'll be tinkering with it from time to time, so if you've any thoughts on content, do please jot a line and let us know.

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MARY'S BIT or SOME IDEAS TAKE THE BISCUIT

Eric's mention of exotic words culled from the Readers Digest feature and the literary banquet just mentioned in Necessary Evil remind me of a news headline last October announcing publication of The Dictionary of Weird and Wonderful Words by the Oxford University Press. The headline suggested this dictionary would be particularly useful to deipnosophists, those folk who enjoy conversation with their meals, because as one would expect it contains so many unusual or under-used words. Words such as jumentous, snollygoster, glabrous and hoddy-noddy. It would certainly be an interesting literary challenge to construct a scenario in which this particular quartet could be used without straining credulity but bearing in mind common complaints concerning the decline of modern dinner conversation, as the English say, that the very notion would merit a headline certainly takes the biscuit.

Readers of Threefer may recall that the library belonging to Zeno's neighbour Castor boasted a copy of Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae (loosely, Banquet of the Learned). A fifteen volume set -- ten have survived intact and the remaining five in summarized form -- it quotes extracts from several hundred writers, including many whose works are otherwise lost in another example of how large a role chance plays in the survival of such scrivenings.

However, when writing about John and his world, it's not so much the content of dinner conversations that causes one to reach for the basil tea as ensuring that the menu doesn't include certain foodstuffs not then known. The versatile though humble potato springs to mind, for example. A somewhat related entanglement arose recently while we were researching one Theodotus Colocynthius, Prefect of Constantinople. His nickname is often rendered as The Pumpkin but it suddenly struck us that during his time pumpkins had not yet made their journey from the New World. As a suitable compromise therefore when he appears in Fourfer he will rejoice in the nickname of The Gourd. We subsequently discovered that in modern colloquial usage gourd refers to the head (as in "smashed out of his gourd", of someone who's over-imbibed) while in Europe gourd is also occasionally (and unkindly) used of one who is slow of wit.

Hopefully however Theodotus won't take it amiss when referred to as The Gourd for he must surely have been no gourd of the intellect to have risen to such high rank in a dangerous milieu where prominent mens' enemies were commonly to be found living a lot closer to home than the Persian border. On the other hand, it's been suggested that his nickname was bestowed because he had an oddly shaped head, the Byzantines being very fond of that type of wit. If so, it seems that certain forms of humour have not changed very much since The Gourd was around, even though what most of us consume for dinner certainly has.

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AND FINALLY

The way time is passing it won't be too long before the arrival of kindly June, a month that traditionally fills childrens' hands with posies. It's a welcome time of cakes and ale and long sunsets, bringing with it (for most of us in the temperate zones at least) not the draining heat of the dog days of summer but rather gentler sunny weather, ripe strawberries and the sugary scent of roses mixed with freshly cut lawns -- not to mention weekend traffic jams on roads to the beach and at long last the beginning of the school holidays.

On the other hand, l5th June will be a bit of a mixed blessing, being not only when your next issue of Orphan Scrivener is slated to arrive but also two days before the second estimated tax payment for the current work year is due. Which is pretty much where we came in, so we'll sign off now and see you then!

Best wishes

Mary and Eric

whose home page hangs out at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects, including more personal essays and an interactive game as well as an on- line jigsaw puzzle (at least if you have a java-enabled browser) featuring One For Sorrow's boldly scarlet cover. For those new to the subscription list there's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # THIRTEEN l5 FEBRUARY 2002

One of life's greatest mysteries is how quickly time rolls by, for it hardly seems five minutes since the last Orphan Scrivener was sent out into the aether. And here we are again already, turning up like the proverbial bad penny to darken your in-box.

Mind you, some mysteries eventually do get solved and one particularly vexed question has at last been clarified.

Some time ago we mentioned that we'd long been searching for the meaning of obelist as in Obelists Fly High, C. Daly King's l935 "locked room" mystery set aboard a lengthy flight. Since we wrote about the book, by the way, we've found references to a couple other obelist titles by Daly King -- Obelists at Sea (l932) and Obelists En Route (l934). Anyhow, our quest ended recently when a correspondent kindly provided the answer and we're happy to be able to pass along this fascinating piece of information. Obelists are people who mark passages they think significant in mystery novels (with an obelus, n.b) and Daly King's novel makes such people "fly high" both in a figurative and in a literal sense. As our correspondent points out, his readers should remember the appendix of clues at the end, which mark corresponding passages as an obelist would.

And now that one mystery's been cleared up, we'll proceed to jot a few lines explaining a couple of others.

MARY'S BIT or LIKE DAVE BARRY, I WAS NOT MAKING IT UP

As we've mentioned elsewhere, the title of John's new adventure is the third line from the fortune telling rhyme with which I grew up in north-east England. Three for a letter is its only deviation from the more traditional listing, where one is for sorrow, two foretells joy, three is a girl, four means a boy, five promises silver, six predicts gold and seven whispers of a secret never to be told -- the last line being rather sinister, I've always thought.

However, when folk started asking me whether three was really for a letter I began wondering if I had unconsciously made it up or possibly had somehow managed to misremember that particular line. Could it have been three for a setter or a debtor or possibly even a fetter? The last would certainly be appropriate for John, born a free man and then due to a whim of Fortuna's forced to spend several years in slavery -- a period that will be addressed in Fourfer, which will also reveal how (among other things) John won back his freedom and first met Felix and Isis.

But returning to Threefer, after a little research I was relieved to find that three for a letter is indeed known by others, including a writer for the Boston Globe. So apparently I'd recalled it correctly and hadn't made it up.

There were a few surprises along the way. For example. there's a ten-line version in which a hug (eight) and a kiss (nine) strongly suggest the romantic mystery sub genre as does its line for ten, which is for somebody you miss. Along similar lines, another rhyme disagrees about three meaning a letter, boldly asserting that in fact it represents a wedding.

Although the rhyme is traditionally counted out after spying crows, ravens or birds of similar dark plumage (commonly magpies) a rhyme exactly matching the one I know was mentioned in connection with counting sneezes -- perhaps a custom that originated with someone allergic to feathers?

Another variant states that a single bird foretells something bad while two promise luck -- although not what sort. It goes on to firmly declare a trio means health and four promises wealth. Seeing as it then concludes by revealing that five predicts sickness and six death, it's practically the plot for a mini mystery all by itself.

Finally, there's a version confirming three is for a letter but linking four with a beau. Perhaps they were love letters? While the source couldn't recall what five and six represented, seven was said to be for a stranger in the lane so I think we can probably agree that the suggestive juxtaposition of letters and a beau with an unknown person advancing down a lane hints at all sorts of interesting goings-on.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

And speaking of interesting goings-on -- or at least we hope so -- we were recently grilled by Suite l0l's Lorie Ham. If you're interested in a few thoughts on such diverse topics as why for us writing is never just business and which are our best scrivening hours, point your clickers at http://209.52.189.2/article.cfm/8017/86453 and All Will Be Revealed.

ERIC'S BIT or WHO WAS THAT CAT?

I don't think of myself as a "cat person" but cats have always contrived to be part of my life and even as I type, Sabrina, our current resident feline, is balanced on my knee, competing for the keyboard. There's nothing quite like the unexpected caress of a cold, wet cat nose against the back of the hand to inspire one to write -- about cats at any rate.

Sometimes I think Sabrina wants to paw out a message but when I've allowed her to tap on the keys she generally just writes: "hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Maybe that means something in feline speak.

At other times I've wondered if Sabrina's encouraging us to create a wily cat detective. If so, I regret to say she isn't much of a model. Late one evening, a couple of months ago, a visiting field mouse decided to venture out into the middle of our office. Calling up all of her street smarts, Sabrina pounced directly in front of the venturesome rodent. Separated by no more than a whisker -- or less, Sabrina having unusually long whiskers -- they proceeded to stare at each other until the mouse turned its back and strolled off insolently to escape down the hole by the radiator. This routine was repeated a few more times before the mouse decided to call it a day.

While I'm not in favor of violence, I can't say that a cat who doesn't know what to do with a mouse inspires much confidence in the ability of such animals to solve murders. But then, perhaps the mouse was innocent.

Even though we haven't yet written about detecting cats, we have given Sabrina, and her erstwhile friend Rachel, cameos in our mystery novels. The mangy black cemetery cat in One For Sorrow was "played" by Rachel, who also appeared in Two For Joy and Three For A Letter as Tripod, the beggar Pulcheria's three-legged companion. Sabrina, disguised with stripes, was the small and suitably timid cat at the Inn of the Centaurs in the first book, and subsequently frequented the Great Palace grounds as well as the estate of Anatolius' eccentric Uncle Zeno in books two and three. So if you were wondering "who were those masked cats?" now you know.

If you'd like to read more about the cats in our lives, try these essays at our web site:

Jean Paul Cat -- http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/groggy40.htm#jean
Rachel -- http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/groggy40.htm#rachel
It Wasn't the Cat -- http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/cat.htm

AND FINALLY

A Scrivener subscriber wrote last month to tell us she had seen a set of curse tablets at the unfortunately now closed Antioch Revealed exhibition put on by the Baltimore Museum of Art. This was particularly interesting to us because one such tablet brings John to investigate odd events at a country estate in his most recently published short story adventure (And All That He Calls Family in Mike Ashley's anthology The Mammoth Book of More Historical Whodunnits). If you're curious about what these malevolent creations look like, there's a photo of one linked from Harvard Magazine's fascinating article about the exhibition (which includes a description of how curse tablets were intended to work) at

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/archive/00nd/nd00_feat_antioch_1.html

And speaking of curse tablets, the next Orphan Scrivener will wing into your in-box on April l5th -- the very day on which many US residents will be hunched over their yellow tablets trying to finish doing the calculations for their tax returns. We'll take it as read that even the most genteel will feel compelled to utter a curse or two during that ghastly process.

See you then!

Best wishes
Mary and Eric
whose home page hangs out at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects plus an interactive game as well as an on-line jigsaw puzzle (at least for those who have java-enabled browsers) featuring One For Sorrow's boldly scarlet cover. 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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