Thanks for hanging around for newsletter #5! I don’t have major announcements this month, so I’ll stand around and blather instead.
I did two public appearances in a week, finished a line edit on a client’s novel, and pressed forward on the next book in the 223B Casebook Series, while at the same time starting on a book of advice for self-publishers (“The Career Indy Author” or CIA) and rewriting a comic novel called “Ride of My Life” that I had put down back in 2007 and started in 2001, which gives you an idea of the chaos that bubbles beneath my placid surface.
When these books are done, I’d like to recruit beta readers to weigh in on these manuscripts. That’ll be a couple months down the road, so if you think you might be interest, stay tuned.
LOOKING IN BOOKSTORES
Books from Peschel Press have been popping up like mushrooms in bookstores. They can be found at the Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg (in the “local authors” consignment section near the front); Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop; and Mysterious Bookshop in New York City (the 223B Casebook Series, that is).
I’m especially thrilled to see my books in Otto Penzler’s bookshop. Back in the ’90s, I reviewed many books from his imprint at Warner Books, including Parnell Hall, Peter Lovesey, and Donald E. Westlake. Penzler is also a noted Sherlockian who reprinted a number of old parodies in limited editions (some of which I acquired for my series). In other words, he knows his stuff. Getting an order for books from his store is like being touched by the pope.
PROJECTS IN OCTOBER
The writing of “Sherlock Holmes Parodies and Pastiches II: 1905-1909” is still in progress. I need to edit the five essays about each year in Conan Doyle’s life covered by the book, draft the introductions for the book’s last quarter, and do the usual proof-job on it. October is probably out, but it should come out in November.
APPEARANCES
Peschel Press will have a table Oct. 17, at the York Book Expo, held at the fairgrounds (https://www.facebook.com/YorkBookExpo).
COOL BOOKS
It’s been a month of memoirs, two of which stand out:
Felicia Day opens up about her life, work, and precarious mental state in a recent memoir, “You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost).” Day is famous on the Internet for her web TV show “The Guild,” the comedy series which she wrote, co-produced and shot on a shoestring. She parlayed that success into a premium channel on YouTube and supports herself by being herself on other shows and webisodes. In her memoir, she comes across as self-absorbed, self-dramatizing, and at times driven frantically by her neurosis that compelled her to earn a 4.0 average in math and music, and develop an addiction to “World of Warcraft,” the experiences from which she used to create “The Guild.” Even if you aren’t interested in the video-gaming subculture, she is a compelling character, and the book is a fast read.
Lately, I’ve started Simon Raven’s memoir “Is There Anybody There? Said the Traveller.” Raven was an English gentleman who kind of drifted through life until circumstances forced him to settle down and write books for a living. Better still, let me quip from Wikipedia (their links came along for the ride): Simon Raven (1927–2001) was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in The Guardian noted that, “he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh’s Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester”, and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess.
I got this book through the interlibrary loan from the University of Tulsa after I learned it had been suppressed after publication by his longtime friend and book publisher. (This is one of the great joys of ILLs, that you can sometimes acquire rare books that you can’t afford to buy).
This is not a straight birth-to-near-death memoir, but a series of incidents, amusingly told, of Raven and his friends doing stuff, complete with dialog and description. It feels like you’re listening over their shoulders as these refugees from Monty Python’s “Upper-class twit of the year” contest discuss the dullness of Venice, invest in an automated hotel reservation system (which in 1984 would have been cutting-edge), observe Ugly Britons abroad (Americans don’t have a monopoly on rudeness, it seems), and gossip about everyone’s sex life.
FINALLY
Why not eat some asparagus endorsed by James Whitcomb Riley? They’re poeterrific!
Keep reading!