Here we are again and what a lot has happened in the last thirty days or so. I’m so pleased you’re along for the ride.
You just don’t know what the future will bring. My last newsletter talked about our animals and their loss. We’re still animal-less, by the way. I just can’t. Not yet. At the same time, we were anticipating a busy March, filled with events and then more in April and then May! May with the Hershey Artfest, possibly the Gaithersburg Book Festival, and then back to Hershey with the third annual Culturefest. Scintillation of Scions in June. Busy, busy, busy.
All our events were canceled because of Covid-19, just like all of your events were as well.
It’s like living in a disaster novel, only without bodies littering the streets. I would have never expected to see much of the world’s economy shut down in my lifetime over a contagious disease and yet, here we are. So strange. People will be writing books analyzing our current events for the next one hundred years.
Thus, I can’t give you any updates on when we’ll be out in public next. I don’t know. Nobody knows. As of this writing, Hershey’s Culturefest (Saturday, 30 May 2020) is still scheduled but I won’t be a bit surprised if the Downtown Hershey Association cancels it. All I can say is check our website regularly for up-to-date news on appearances.
The other thing I can say is support your local bookseller and your local businesses. Covid-19 is keeping us from performing (and it is a performance) at local shows and events but even with a full calendar, we don’t do events nine-to-five, five days a week. A bookstore or a restaurant or a hardware store has to stay open six or seven days a week, all the time, to pay utilities, make salaries, and hopefully earn a profit. Many bookstores have shifted to taking orders online or over the phone or via text messages. If you’re local, you pay and pick up your order in the parking lot; if you’re not, the bookstore will ship.
We have two favorite local bookstores. First is the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop, run by Deb Beamer in Mechanicsburg, Pa. Whatever you want in the mystery and thriller line, Deb has it or she can order it. Deb’s got plenty of books ranging from sweet, charming cozies to blood-soaked thrillers to choose from.
Our other favorite bookstore is Cupboard Maker Books in Enola, Pa. Like Deb, Michelle Haring is bravely soldiering on, getting books to everyone who needs something fresh to read while trapped inside their home. If you want anything that is not a mystery (although Michelle does sell them), order from Michelle. She’s got thousands of books to choose from in every possible genre as well as an extensive selection of nonfiction. If you want to read novels about living through plague, Michelle’s got them. If you want something delightfully fanciful to distract you, Michelle’s got them too.
These are indeed interesting times.
The Complete, Annotated Murder On The Links
In the meantime, we’ve been writing. Bill published The Complete, Annotated Murder on the Links and it’s available for sale online or it can be ordered via your local bookseller or from Deb Beamer.
With Links finished, he’s plunged into James Thurber’s life as a cub reporter for the Columbus Dispatch and, in his spare time, writing a series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches never before reprinted in their entirety. The Blue Ploermell is getting the full Peschel Press treatment, complete with extensive footnotes, essays on Thurber’s life at the time of writing, the world of Blue Ploermell, and as much applicable period art as Bill can scrape up. We hoped to debut the book in June at the Scintillation of Scions convention but, well, you know. They had to cancel their event because Covid-19 swooped down on them. Worldwide pandemics are a problem Sherlock Holmes cannot solve.
The Vanished Pearls of Orlov
As for me, I’m actually, amazingly, astonishingly headed for the finish line with The Vanished Pearls of Orlov. How is this possible, you ask? I dunno. The story veered off wildly into uncharted territory so it’s not the story I outlined all those years ago; about Lannie and Fen and their adventures on the trek north on the Pole-to-Pole corridor to HighTower.
As things are shaping up, Lannie’s story will become a two-book arc. It’s either that or 500,000 words and after The White Elephant of Panschin (235,000 words), Bill doesn’t want me to write an even bigger doorstop. The Vanished Pearls of Orlov will have an ending that isn’t a cliffhanger! I swear it! It will have a real ending, albeit one that sets up the action in The Race To HighTower.
If you’ve been following along on Wattpad you’ve met Lannie and you’ve met Fen but they haven’t met each other yet. Charlton, Dimitri, and Walter just met Fen and it wasn’t a happy encounter.
If you’re following along on Wattpad, you’ve also noticed that I’ve got a new way of titling my chapters. I extract a line of dialog that is both compelling and encapsulates an important part of the story. It’s infinitely more interesting than listing chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, etc., etc. In some ways it’s also considerably easier than trying to think up a headline-type chapter title for each chapter. I select the dialog fragment when I finish the chapter and so far, I haven’t needed to go back and change one.
What is the value of chapter titles? This is another of those publishing decisions.
It’s more work to write a compelling chapter title. Any newspaper copy editor can tell you how difficult it can be to write a great headline that makes people snatch that paper from the newsstand. That’s why a classic headline like Headless Body Found in Topless Bar is such a winner. It’s compelling, it paints a picture, it’s short, and you just have to know more so you buy the newspaper to read the story. That particular headline is from the New York Post. They have a genius staff writing great headlines on a regular basis. Great headline writing, like being able to kick the football 99 yards to make a field goal, is a real, scarce, and highly valued talent.
Printed novels don’t require chapter divisions. Examine a Terry Pratchett novel. Most of them segue from one scene to the next. He doesn’t divide up most of his books into chapters at all. Ebooks do require chapter divisions, so the reader can navigate between sections of the book. This is where the publishing decision of using chapter titles comes into play, despite the added effort. A book’s online landing page allows the reader to ‘look inside’. One of the earliest pages to appear is the chapter listing. Which do you think is more compelling?
Chapter One or Pauline Discovers the Body
Chapter Two or Pauline is Accused of Murder
Chapter Three or Pauline escapes into the Underworld
No one is that interested in chapter one, chapter two, chapter three and so on. Learning that Pauline is in peril might sell the book to a potential reader who is looking for something interesting and new. Something interesting is already happening. Will using lines of dialog help sell books? We’ll find out.
Bookmarks and Face Masks
In the meantime, when I’m not writing, I have been sewing cloth bookmarks and cloth bags to hand out at as swag at book events. Virtually all of our events have been canceled due to Covid-19 so tonight, I’ll be teaching myself a new sewing skill.
I’m going to sew facemasks. It shouldn’t be hard. The internet is crammed with instructions and YouTube videos giving patterns and sewing directions. This is the one I’m going to use.
For all you sewists out there, this is a fitted, lined mask with an adjustable nose-wire for a closer, more comfortable fit. The mask can be made with a pocket holding a section of a HEPA vacuum cleaner bag to make it filter out more virus particles. Each mask is small enough that you can easily use up some of your stash (the fabric you wouldn’t use for cloth grocery bags). I’m going to sew a few prototypes and if they work, I’ll make more. You may want to do the same for your loved ones.
Clips and Recommendations
Bill here. At the risk of straining your patience, I wanted to add a few links related to our authors here at the Press.
Agatha Christie
I’m curious about how writers and their works enter the culture. We have published Conan Doyle, Christie, Sayers, Twain, and Wodehouse, and we have a Google Alert for each of them. Through that, I’ve seen differences in how we use authors and their works.
Conan Doyle lives entirely through Sherlock Holmes, the stories and the products made from them.
Mark Twain lives frequently through quotes attributed to him (some of them he actually said, even). “Lies, damned lies and statistics” is one of the most popular recently, thanks to the Wuhan Flu.
Agatha Christie lives through her stories, but especially her plays, which are frequently revived. But her post-life life has undergone a new wrinkle.
She has become a fictional character, starring in a couple of novels, and recently in a movie, “Agatha and The Curse of Ishtar” which was absolutely dreadful.
Worth noting is that she also stars in a series of mysteries by Andrew Wilson, of which the fourth is coming out in the U.S. in July.
I’ve read the first three books and recommend them. The first one, “A Talent for Murder,” takes place during her 11-day disappearance and offers an alternative reason behind it. He does an excellent job with Christie, portraying her not as a proto-Poirot, but more like what we may think she was like: a woman in a troubled marriage who sees the world as a writer would.
The fourth book in the series, “I Saw Him Die,” will come out in the U.S. on July 21, and in the U.K. on Aug. 20.
So that’s our newsletter for April of 2020. I asked in January’s newsletter for calmness and the universe did not deliver. At least there are no zombies in the streets.
Thanks for joining us again here at Peschel Press. If you’ve got questions or comments or if you want me to address a specific topic in an upcoming newsletter, email me at [email protected]. I love mail.
Stay safe and stay healthy!