ERIC'S BIT or TOO INDECOROUS FOR THE LIVING ROOM
Our new John the Lord Chamberlain mystery contains some surprising twists (we hope) and according to our publisher the trade paperback will also feature a "French fold." I had to look the term up. Very fancy. We've had twists before but never a French fold.
An Empire for Ravens will also be available as an ebook and to be honest, that's the edition I'd buy because I always read onscreen. It just seems natural. Starting back in the mid-eighties I became accustomed to working at a computer all day. I find I have less and less patience with objects that take up physical space.
I do have fond memories of books printed on paper. Among the first volumes I recall are the ones that filled the small, darkly varnished bookcase next to the rocking chair in my grandparents' Victorian furnished living room. Most impressive was Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, uncomfortably heavy in my preschool hands, a foreboding tome, looking ancient with its antique lettering, gilt fading from the embossed pictures of religious figures. Just as old and worn looking but more friendly were Heidi and The Wind in the Willows, both of which my grandmother read to me while we sat together in the rocker. The cover of The Wind in the Willows had been rendered soft and flexible from use, while Heidi boasted a brightly colored scene of the Alps pasted to its cloth front.
The books in the spare room were very different, newer. The awkwardly fat Reader's Digest Condensed books looked ugly to me because their covers were plain text. More interesting were the bright little Erle Stanley Gardner and A. A. Fair paperbacks. These were my grandmother's favorite reading but with their guns and garrotes and red-lipped, long-legged ladies, I suspect she considered them too indecorous for the living room.
I had my own books at home, Little Golden Books with thick board covers and gilded spines. A few years later came Tom Swift Junior. I loved the jackets, each one displaying the mind and eye boggling invention of the book's title. Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster! Tom Swift and His Spectromarine Selector! Other favorites were large illustrated science and history books with their satisfying weight and slick pages.
Then there was the library with its books in every shape, size, and binding. I particularly recall Thornton W. Burgess' Old Mother West Wind series. They were unusually small volumes -- child sized -- and hidden here and there amidst the text pages were picture plates, Harrison Cady's humorous depictions of Grandfather Frog, Billy Mink, Jerry Muskrat, and their friends.
The picture books I read before anything else were large and thin. Luckily. I could pile up a lot of Doctor Seuss books to haul home. It was close to a mile walk and the load got heavy by the time I staggered up the hill leading to my house. Sometimes I couldn't carry enough back to last all day and had to make a second trip after I'd gone through the first batch.
When I started buying my own books they were almost always paperbacks and one paperback is much the same as another. Except for the ones I found used in thrift stores, secondhand bookshops, and yard sales. They came in all degrees of decay, shedding bits of spine and corners of brown pages on my shelves. Sometimes the brittle sheets detached from the desiccated spine, leaving the pages to sit loose between the covers. A challenge to read. And more of a challenge to reassemble when, as occasionally happened, I dropped a book.
Different species of paperbacks existed in New York City where I went on day trips, largely to find reading matter. For example, I was heavily into science fiction for a while and not only did New York bookstores stock rare (in the US) British titles, but the covers were weirdly glossy and exotically colorful compared to their American counterparts. Did it enhance my sense of wonder to read from such obviously alien artifacts?
In New York I also bagged foreign books in translation that local stores never stocked. New Directions published many of these in trade paperback, a format that was relatively rare back in the early seventies, and usually reserved for literary material with limited appeal. Trade paperbacks signaled that the contents were out of the ordinary. I bought works by Raymond Queneau, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Arthur Rimbaud, and Baudelaire. All French authors. All in trade paperback. But none of them got a French fold.
NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER
There's Big News on the ticker tape this time round!
JOHN'S NEXT ADVENTURE or AN EMPIRE FOR RAVENS
An Empire For Ravens will be published in various formats by Poisoned Pen Press on October 2nd.
John's latest adventure is set in besieged Rome, by coincidence also the setting for our locked room short story The Finger of Aphrodite in The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunits (2003).
The official blurb for Ravens reads thusly:
Missing treasure, murder, possible treason....Emperor Justinian's former Lord Chamberlain John risks defying imperial edict by leaving his exile in Greece for Rome, where his longtime comrade Felix is in some kind of trouble. Felix has finally become a general and is fighting for Rome against the besieging Goths. John's covert entrance into Rome is ambushed, driving him deep into ancient catacombs before he exits into the heart of the city to find that Felix is missing, his household is in disarray, and a young woman servant is found dead.
The ticker tape operators wish to inform subscribers Ravens is already available for pre-order
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1464210659/ref=nosim/speculativefic05
and doubtless from other locations on and offline in due course.
MARY'S BIT or AVOID THAT ISOLATED RESIDENCE!
I have a regrettable liking for films of the Old Dark House persuasion (henceforth ODH), or at least those involving mysteries. And so, based on countless hours viewing their old-fashioned cinematic creepiness, a few observations on the sort of events to be expected in them.
Family gatherings are popular settings. Other arrivals at the front door: strangers stranded by a flash flood or experiencing car trouble or sometimes just wandering about lost because the driver would not stop and ask locals for directions.
Lights will fail, particularly during a thunderstorm. However, its strobe-like flashes of lightning will semi-reveal at intervals what is happening, while also creating inky shadows where anyone could be lurking -- and usually is.
Landline wires, assuming telephonic apparatus is installed given the isolation and age of the house, will be cut by a person up to no good or their outside accomplice. Alternatively the line may be brought down by high winds accompanying the afore-mentioned thunderstorm.
A cat will lurk behind the curtains, ready to leap out and scare someone. Unless the drapes conceal someone of evil intent, a corpse, or an unlatched French window previously known to have been locked as part of barring the house to intruders.
Servants tend to be few but usually include a butler given to making ominous predictions or details of the family curse, and a housekeeper with sinister looks, even when not party to the shenanigans. Lack of servants also means an inevitably overgrown garden, setting the scene for fleeing heroines to trip and injure their ankles.
Doors and windows fly open at the least puff of wind, unless the latter are found to be nailed shut as someone tries to escape from the house. Windows may also be equipped with bars, though not of the spirituous liquors type.
Secret passages are an architectural feature routinely found in the ODH. They are usually accessed via a swinging-out bookcase or fiddling with carvings on the wainscoting and often feature peep holes in their walls.
Sliding panels are also popular. Alert viewers may spot their locations early on, given their presence is strongly indicated by sofas, armchairs, or bed-heads placed closer to the wall than is usual.
Eyes in oil paintings move, their gaze following the protagonists or future victims around the room. The same effect may also involve the visor of a suit of armour.
Popular furnishings in these films include large, elaborate wardrobes (a favourite place of concealment for both the quick and the dead) and grandfather clocks whose sudden loud chimes at the wrong times inevitably startle those within earshot, including the cat behind the curtains.
Old dark houses are not as well insulated as modern homes, so draughts abound. Thus a candle will blow out almost before it's lit. On the other hand, as all players of Clue are well aware, a candlestick makes a good weapon....
AND FINALLY
We shall now return to our annual battle with ants, currently being fought in the bathroom. Meantime, the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will creep into subscribers' inboxes on 15th June. By then we may be able to declare victory in the woodpecker war mentioned last year since so far, though we've heard them hammering away in the woods, our particular red-headed devil has not yet returned to torment us further.
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!
