THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND TWO -- 15 DECEMBER 2016

This all-holiday edition of our newsletter is composed as fog-like snow squalls howl about the towers of Casa Maywrite. Wordsworth declared winter loved a dirge-like sound, which could well be the reaction of our subscribers when this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener appears on their virtual door-step, shakes snowflakes off its shoulders, stamps its feet on the doormat, and comes barging in....

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ERIC'S BIT or MERRY MITHRAS

It's a rather well known little known fact that Jesus shares his birthday with the Roman God Mithra (or Mithras) and the later Roman emperors appropriated the celebration of the unconquered sun for Christmas to match their religious leanings.

The detective Mary and I write about, John, Lord Chamberlain to the sixth century emperor Justinian I, is a secret Mithran. He needs to keep his religious beliefs hidden because the Eastern Roman Empire was officially Christian. Justinian wasn't tolerant of Christians who didn't agree with orthodox views on such matters as the nature of Christ, let alone pagans.

A historian might quibble over whether a Lord Chamberlain -- we use the term Victorian translators employed to describe the position -- could have been a secret Mithran, but we're writing fiction and it's useful to have a protagonist who's somewhat of an outsider. Besides, our own high officials today get up to all sorts of antics in secret, to judge from the few we find out about.

There's also been doubt expressed as to whether the Mithraic religion survived until the sixth century, there being no record of it by then. To which we reply that it was a mystery cult which purposely left no record even during its heyday a few hundred years earlier.

Mostly it's the physical artifacts that survive -- the cave-like underground mithraeums where followers worshipped and the statuary and bas relief depictions of the god. There were no writings, no recorded liturgy. What little information we have is gleaned from church fathers who mentioned Mithraism in order to criticize it.

Mithras is usually shown slaying a bull and so bull sacrifices have been postulated to be part of Mithraic ritual, although few surviving mithraeums would have been large enough to accomodate such a ceremony. The mithraeum beneath the grounds of the Great Palace in Constantinople had room, however, as rather graphically depicted in One For Sorrow.

We were chided about that scene once, told that the Mithrans had got a bad rap. They weren't so horrid as to kill bulls. That was just a myth. They probably sacrifice nothing larger than a chicken. As if chickens don't bleed!

Sacrifices aside, Mithraic virtues such as loyalty, bravery, and self sacrifice could pass for Christian. One of our conceits is that John, as a practicing Mithran who takes his religion seriously, acts in a more Christian manner than many of the Christians he encounters --people who call themselves Christians simply because it is the state religion.

John's elderly and devout servant Peter worries about his employer's soul, but insists, if pressed, that John merely chooses to call the Lord by a different name. Peter believes, as Mary and I do, that a person defines themselves by the way they live rather than what they say or how loudly they say it.

Merry Mithras!

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Due to technical difficulties, the previous Orphan Scrivener may not have reached some of our subscribers. However, it's now online and may be consulted on our website at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/tos101.htm Meantime, here's the latest goings-on at Casa Maywrite....

RUINED STONES or GRACE BAXTER'S NEXT ADVENTURE

Since the last newsletter Ruined Stones, the sequel to The Guardian Stones, was trundled off to Poisoned Pen Press and is currently poised at the top of the slipway for publication in July next year.

It is December 1941 and Grace Baxter, now a member of the Women's Auxilliary Police Corps, is living in Newcastle-on-Tyne in north-eastern England. Living in the grimy industrial city is about as great a contrast to life in her home village as it is in its distance from it, and she has hardly set foot in Newcastle when she's involved in solving a death in the blackout...and that's just the beginning.

YET MORE GOLDEN AGE REVIEWS or FROM THE ALBERT GATE TO AN ANGEL OF TERROR

Since the October issue of Orphan Scrivener more reviews of Golden Age mysteries have been uploaded to our blog. This latest batch includes Edgar Wallace's The Angel of Terror, From Whose Bourne by Robert Barr, R. Austin Freeman's The Stoneware Monkey, and The Albert Gate Mystery by Louis Tracy. Last Sunday's review dealt with Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries. Edited by Martin Edwards, the collection offers a helping of the murder and mayhem so popular during the holiday season.

http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/2016/12/review-crimson-snow-winter-mysteries.html

AN ANSWER TO A QUESTION or HOW WE BECAME CURIOSITIES

The recently redesigned Poisoned Pen Press website features in-depth articles on writing and related topics as well as mysteries in general. There's also a section dubbed Curiosities, so it was inevitable a reprint of our poetic explanation of how we write together would appear there on October 28th. We've been asked about our method on more than one occasion and yes, this short piece really does describe the way we co-author fiction. With renewed apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan, then, here it is:

https://poisonedpenpress.com/how-we-write-mysteries/

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MARY'S BIT or AND A PENGUIN IN A FIR TREE

This is the time of year when those who celebrate Christmas will be setting up and decorating their festive tree.

Many of our ornaments are, well, not your usual manufactured baubles, although we do have some plain glass globes now elderly enough to be losing their colour. But as in many families there are particular favourites and these are a few of mine.

Two of these ornaments travelled with me to America. Made of plastic resin of some sort, they arrived in the family well before I did. One's a flat silhouette of a blue antlered deer and the other a three-dimensional decoration created by slotting two red star-shaped pieces at right angles to each other. It always reminds me of the star on the iconic label of Newcastle's famous brown ale. There's another and much larger star -- or more precisely an attempt at one which came out more resembling an amoeba -- crayoned on a piece of paper by a young relative thirty years or so ago.

Then there's a small v-shaped basket made from two pieces of paper. Decorated with depictions of sprigs of berried holly, this basket was made by folding the pieces, cutting parallel lines into them, and interweaving the results. This somewhat arcane skill was one I learned as a youngster, along with making little handbags or tanks from dad's empty cigarette packets. Happy days!

I must not overlook a couple of shells picked up from the Florida beach opposite the building where I lived my first year in this country. They hang up on thread passed through holes made by the sea, but the hook for a penguin ornament is a bent paper clip. Creating it was one of my more ambitious craft projects. Imagine a red and white striped ball with lengths of silver cord attached to it supporting a small gondola represented by a basket originally holding dishwasher detergent. The 'guin in the gondola is about an inch high and stands daringly loose in his aerial transport, so he has been known to occasionally fall out.

Then there's a couple of green felt ornaments stuffed with cotton wool and decorated with sequins. They date from the same period as the ballooning penguin, as do several painted balsa wood ornaments. Yes, I was a fiend with a glue gun in those days! Notable examples of the woode oornaments include flat children riding three dimensional sleds and a Santa whose hands emerge at right angles from his sleeves as if in surprise or horror at realising he was about to be run over by the aforementioned sleigh. After all, when we get down to it do we really know what happens on Christmas trees when everyone is abed and darkness shrouds the house? Our cats always got the blame if ornaments tumbled off the tree overnight but what if they were not the culprits?

Ralph Waldo Emerson once talked about night hovering all day in fir tree boughs, and this was certainly the case in the Reed household. We did not have tree lights as long as we lived at home. Instead when the big marmalade tin holding decorations came out of the sideboard small candle holders were clipped onto the tree's branches. Made of tin, they had scalloped edges and they held tiny twisted candles little bigger than the sort decorating birthday cakes, but much to our childish disappointment were never lit for safety reasons.

There's also a small fairy doll who may not have been among Shakespeare's moonshine revellers but is certainly one of his orphan heirs of fixed destiny, given she's topped Reed trees in one house or another for decades. Despite losing one tiny red shoe at some point over the years and being forced to wear a greying tattered net skirt decorated with gold paint being as it's glued to her, as is her small wand topped with a battered gold star losing its glitter, a few glorious days are still hers each year.

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AND FINALLY

Speaking of shoes, a week or two hence will see Time put its best foot forward and shoo the new year in. May it be a good one for all our subscribers! Meantime, the next Orphan Scrivener will arrive in subscribers' in-boxes on February 15th next year.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog is at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales Drop in some time!

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND ONE -- 15 OCTOBER 2016

Bonfire Night is traditionally the busiest night of the year for British fire brigades but the past month or so at Casa Maywrite has given November 5th a run for its money, given it was largely spent stamping out assorted conflagrations sparked by 'Orrible Technical Problems after a computer conked out.

As might be expected with anything connected with the Internet -- assuming you are able to connect to it -- there were times we found ourselves agreeing with Goethe, who declared that the solution to every problem is another problem. But as you see, we finally wrassled the situation to the ground and here we are again.

With our newsletter having passed its hundredth issue, we decided to celebrate with a bit of nostalgia. We therefore present a Golden Oldie edition featuring reprints of a couple of its earliest essays -- Mary's appeared in the first Orphan Scrivener back in 2000 and Eric's followed an issue or two later. Somehow Longfellow's description of memory's leaves making a mournful rustling in the dark seems somehow appropriate....

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MARY'S BIT or PLEASE DO NOT SEND ELEPHANTS

Imagine, if you will (shades of Rocky Horror) the Innocent Scrivener sitting in the basement, steaming mug of coffee in hand, mulling over the next bit of golden prose, when...without so much as a by-your-leave or a warning creak, the light fixture falls off the ceiling, swinging in a graceful Pit-and-Pendulum arc bringing it less than a foot away from Innocent Scrivener's arm in a budget recreation of the famous chandelier scene in Phantom of the Opera. With liberal amounts of coffee distributed around the domestic scenery, of course.

The light fixture in question is trough-shaped and sports two light sabre type bulbs. Fortunately neither exploded. But there it was, swinging gently in the draught from Scrivener’s surprised shrieks, as visions of the entire ceiling coming down began to dance through assorted heads. Swift remedial action was needed. So while one party held the thing up at arm's length out of harm's way, another raced off for the stepladder. Soon the rogue light was precariously propped up on a stack of reference books pile precariously on the stop step of the ladder, thus keeping its not inconsiderable weight off its wiring and terminating its graceful meanderings.

Upon closer examination, the reason the light had fallen was discovered. The thick wooden board to which it was attached had been fixed to the ceiling material, not an actual beam. Much sage nodding of heads and agreement that it was amazing that it stayed up there as long as it had. A handy relative spent an hour or two re-installing the light but unfortunately the necessary measuring and drilling and hammering upset the cat, whose conniption at the rapid descent of the light had caused it to take cover under the sideboard. After a noisy few moments, it took itself off upstairs in a huff, arriving at the upper floor just as the dinner guests arrived. With their young and rather excitable Pomeranian. So the cat fled back downstairs and hid somewhere in the false ceiling, to emerge some hours later looking very disgruntled and not a little dusty.

Not surprisingly after all the excitement, dinner was served a little late, but at least it was available to be eaten, since luckily it was not until the following day that the water supply was lost for several hours. But we could see quite well to look for it, as by then the light fixture was firmly back in place with several extra screws attaching it to the beam for additional security. In fact, said its re-installer, it was now so well attached that we could hang an elephant from it without it falling down again.

But please don't send us elephants to test his hypothesis. The shock might be too much for the cat.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A shortish ticker tape is unspooling this time round, so at least it won't take long to read!

GEORDIE NIGHT or ALL IS NOT WELL IN BENWELL

Geordie Night was trotted off to Poisoned Pen Press for editorial scrutiny on Tuesday. A sequel to The Guardian Stones, it's set in December 1941. Our protagonist Grace Baxter has now joined the Women's Auxilliary Police Corps and is now living in the Benwell area of Newcastle-on-Tyne. However, as our header declares, all is not well in Benwell....

HALLOWEEN SHORT STORY or WAITING FOR WAITING

Waiting, a short story by Eric appropriate for Halloween reading, will be published by Kings River Life on 22nd October, on which date it will be the first story appearing at

http://kingsriverlife.com/category/kings-river-reviewers/terrific-tales/

MIDCENTURY MODERN or IT'S NOTHING TO DO WITH FURNITURE

The spotlight continues to shine on Eric! His latest appearance on the literary stage deals with the difficulties of dial-up Internet access. Talk about irony, it ran in Midcentury Modern Magazine less than a week before his computer crashed and access problems ensued.

https://midcenturymodernmag.com/a-dial-up-lament-b00843a2bbf9#.hf9n14389

A NEW LOOK or WRITING ON WRITING

Poisoned Pen Press recently reorganised its website, at the same time unveiling its new logo. The site is now publishing in-depth articles about the process of writing, mysteries in general, and the business side of writing fiction. Point your clickers to

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com

PHLOX OF MEMORIES or NOT YOUR USUAL GHOST STORY

Meantime, Eric's nostalgic essay about his grandparents' garden and what was rustling among the phlox was reprinted last month in Texas Gardener's Seeds newsletter. Interested parties, point your clickers at

http://conta.cc/2eemlVY

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ERIC'S BIT or A QUEST ENDS

A few weeks ago I was walking at dusk listening to the sounds of the countryside, the hum of the mile-distant highway, the chirp of crickets, the mournful groaning of cows in an unseen pasture and perhaps the most typical background music of warm evenings in the eastern part of the United States, the trilling of peepers.

It's a sound I've heard since I was a child, coming sometimes from an obvious direction such as a marsh, at other times seemingly from everywhere as if the chorus were emanating from the surrounding air. The tree frogs that produce this magical and mysterious sound are, however, things I've always taken on faith, like Tibet. On a few occasions during the day, I've glimpsed tiny amphibians making their way silently across the forest floor and wondered if these could be those unglimpsed peepers. But at night, whenever I've sought to approach the source of their singing, whatever is making the sound has fallen silent, leaving me to search dark branches in vain.

On this evening the sun had already vanished behind the low rounded mountains. Houses on the hillside opposite my path glowed dimly. The dirt road I was walking still held some light from the sky but deep darkness had puddled along the edges of the fields and under the trees beside the road. As I passed a tree that was little more than a silhouette against the sky I thought I could make out that distinctive trilling, distinguishable from the night blended sounds coming from all around.

I left the road and went a few steps into the knee-high grass in front of the tree. Predictably, the frog ceased abruptly. I took a few more steps toward the tree anyway and stopped to scan the inky confusion of branches, barely discernible against the sky. Maybe I've become more patient than I used to be, because rather than resuming my walk I decided to wait for awhile. To my surprise, after a few minutes the frog resumed its serenade.

Where, I wondered, might a frog perch? I ran my gaze down the tree trunk, checking where each shadowy branch joined it, and finally, not much more than a yard from my face, I saw a movement -- a tiny frog's white neck pulsing in time with its singing. The peeper was no larger than the end of my thumb and I could make out little more than the pale neck but the sight amazed me more than anything I'd seen in a zoo, let alone on any television nature show. For years I had listened to this sound and now, finally and unexpectedly, I was looking at its source.

A lot of things had gone on in the world that day. I'd checked the news on the Internet. Politicians had emitted a lot of words that might have been important if any of them could have been believed. There had been heinous crimes, tragic disasters and horrific accidents that had been of paramount importance to those involved but which, sadly, had not taught me anything I did not already know about human nature and the fragility of life. Glimpsing the tree frog had, for me, been that day's most important event. Usually, it is the non-newsworthy events that are most important to us.

This is why I will always defend fiction against those who claim that it is inferior to nonfiction, because it does not deal with "reality." Fiction, I think, is best when it illuminates those things that are important to us personally in a way that nonfiction, or fact-based fiction, cannot. We don't live in the news headlines or in the lives of people in the news. The fiction writer, in describing the small things that he or she finds important, can shed more light on what readers find similarly important than any network news reader could.

Which is maybe just my excuse for writing about seeing a tree frog.

But maybe not.

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AND FINALLY

Speaking of frogs, we'll hop off into the aether after a brief reminder the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will leap into subscribers' in-boxes on December 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog is at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales Drop in some time!

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THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # One Hundred -- 15 August 2016

A disturbance in the Force on 1st February 2000 indicated transmission of the first Orphan Scrivener, issued while we were in the middle of writing Two For Joy. Now the newsletter has reached its centennial, we shall engage in that fine old tradition of marking such events by engaging in a wee bit retrospection. For, as Dante said, oft times that will delight the mind. We give no guarantees on whether it will do the same for subscribers.

Thus to accompany a favourite old essay from Eric's solo blog we're also going in for something new, to wit some very nice offers, including freebies, from fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors. Can't beat that with a big stick!

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ERIC'S BIT or ALWAYS ON SALE

"The paper towels were on sale," I told Mary when I got in from the grocery. We'd been getting low on paper towels and we don't like the usual grocery store price so this was some cause for celebration.

"It just like Caldor. Remember, whatever we wanted was always on sale."

She was right. The Caldor department store had been good to us. No matter what I showed up at the door to buy, be it a vacuum sweeper or a can opener, it turned out to be on special. Like magic.

I should've checked their ad in the Sunday paper to see what household item was going to break during the week.

"I wonder if Caldor's still around?" Mary asked, as she admired the bargain towels.

That particular store had closed, but that was a long time ago in another place. I didn't know the answer so I asked Google. It directed me to Retailers from Woolworth to Wal-Mart .

Caldor failed to answer the Christmas bells after 1999.

Checking the list of departed chains I noticed that its predecessor at the same location, Hills, was also gone. I never cared for Hills. It felt dingy. The lighting was dim. Up front they did feature give-away snacks, though. Fifteen cent hot dogs and ten cent sodas, or round about those prices. You could have a meal, of sorts, for less than a half dollar.

A lot of other places I'd shopped in are gone. Service Merchandise, Hechinger, Ames, Woolworths, Zayre, Lechmere, Gold Circle. I'd guessed they were gone but couldn't be sure. Considering how little I spent over the years, I suppose I contributed to their demise.

A name I hadn't thought about for years caught my attention. Arlens.

Few chain stores have inspired me as much as Arlens, and I only happened to stop there once. At least I think it was Arlens. It was in a shopping center I could never find again, already run-down in the late sixties. As I always did back then I went straight to the bargain record bin. Among the dollar closeout albums were half a dozen by a band I'd never listened to -- the Kinks.

I've listened to a lot of Kinks music over the years. It's beginning to look like my all-time favorite rock band is as dead as the store I discovered them in but the music remains. In fact, I still have the albums themselves stored someplace.

Vinyl. Needless to say.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A shorter length of ticker tape is unspooling this time around, but it's All Good Stuff!

A NEW REVIEW or SHADES OF THE CRUCIBLE

We recently stumbled over an Historical Novel Society review of The Guardian Stones, in which the writer made an observation well-received at Casa Maywrite -- a point also hinted darkly in our header -- because it touched on what we were attempting to convey within the context of the story.

https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-guardian-stones/

OPERATION PIED PIPER or HISTORY REVISITED

Operation Pied Piper was not the best name to pick for the 1939 mass evacuation of British city children to safer lodgings in the country, but it was the topic of a contribution on 21st June to Suzanne Adair's Relevant History. As she says, for many, high school history was boring and extraneous. In this feature on her blog, guests show just how non-boring, non-extraneous history is to people in the 21st century.

http://www.suzanneadair.net/2016/06/21/operation-pied-piper-the-evacuation-of-british-children/

LATEST GOLDEN AGE REVIEWS or A SCREAM AND A WHITE FACE

Continuing the wartime theme, novels reviewed on our joint blog since last we met include A Scream in Soho by John G. Brandon, set during the blackout in 1940s London. The protagonist and a bobby on the beat arrive on the scene within two minutes of the titular scream. There's no body, but a bloodstained stiletto and a woman's lace-edged hanky have been left behind...

http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/2016/08/review-scream-in-soho-by-john-g-brandon.html

Then there's J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery In White: A Christmas Crime Story, a surprise best-seller last Yuletide in the UK. Travellers take shelter a country house during a blizzard. The door is unlocked but nobody is in residence, yet the kettle is boiling, fires have been lit, and tea is laid out in the drawing room. There are also thoughts on White Face by Edgar Wallace, featuring a man with the nasty habit of concealing his face with a white cloth and going about robbing people, not to mention a real stumper: how can a man be fatally stabbed without his assailant being seen by people close by? These and other reviews may be read via links at

http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/

SPEAKING OF BLOGS or SHROUDED IN MYSTERY

Shrouded In Mystery would be a good title for a novel, but the fact is we have no idea of the topic of Mary's next contribution to the Poisoned Pen multi-author blog. There's a simple reason: it hasn't been written yet. Why not wander over there on the 18th and see? Meantime, subscribers may care to browse blogs by our fellow Poisoned Pen authors starting at this page

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/news-and-blog/news/

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MARY'S BIT or MERCI BOUQUET

Continuing with the theme of shopping and as a thankyou to readers for their interest in our novels, here's a bunch of attractive (mostly free) offers from fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors which subscribers may find of interest.

Jeff Siger's Murder in Mykonos is currently available free on Kindle

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Mykonos-Inspector-Andreas-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B003UV8XHS/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1470857029&sr=1-6&keywords=jeffrey+siger+kindle+books

His latest title, Santorini Caesars, will be published next month.

Charlotte Hinger is offering a free print copy of Deadly Descent to the first reader who contacts her at charlottehinger@comcast.net Charlotte's forthcoming novel is Fractured Families (March 2017)

Mitchell Lewis has several copies of Murder in the 11th House to give away to readers. Contact him at mitchastro@aol.com His current title is Evil in the 1st House.

Ken Kuhlken has a free copy of The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles for the first person to email him at ken@kenkuhlken.net Ken's latest novel is The Good Know Nothing.

Priscilla Royal's Wine of Violence is currently 99 cents on Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/Wine-Violence-Medieval-Mystery-Mysteries/dp/1590589653/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471191414&sr=1-1&keywords=Wine+of+Violence

Her forthcoming title is The Proud Sinner (February 2017)

Triss Stein has three pocket sized paperbacks of Brooklyn Bones to give away as well as a couple of hardcover copies of Brooklyn Graves and Brooklyn Secrets free to the first five readers who contact her at trissstein@nyc.rr.com and specify where they live. Her current title is Brooklyn Secrets.

S. K. Rizzolo will send a free hardback of her current title On a Desert Shore to the third reader to contact her at skrizzolo@gmail.com.

Jeanne Matthews has two hardcover copies of Bones of Contention and two hardcover copies of Her Boyfriend's Bones to offer the first two readers who contact her at swdljm@comcast.net before the end of this month. Her most recent title is Where the Bones Are Buried.

Donis Casey will donate a copy of her latest title, All Men Fear Me, to the fifth person who leaves a message on her website at www.doniscasey.com by September 1st.

Tim Maleeny will send a signed copy of his novel Jump to the first reader to contact him at tim@timmaleeny.com His most recent title is Stealing the Dragon.

Ann Parker offers two copies of the Bruce Alexander Historical Mystery Award winning Mercury's Rise to US-based readers picked at random from those who contact her (see her website www.annparker.net for contact information). Winners will be chosen August 30. Her forthcoming book, What Gold Buys, will be published next month.

Joining in the jamboree, we are offering an e-ARC of The Guardian Stones to the first two subscribers who get in touch with us at maywrite@earthlink.net Review or not as you wish!

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AND FINALLY

According to Shakespeare, time's footstep is inaudible, and it's now time to remind subscribers the next Orphan Scrivener will slip silently into their in-boxes on October 15th, by which time the weather should be more reasonable, given this was composed with the heat index standing at 104*, which is good for neither man, beast, nor computer.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog is at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales Drop in some time!