List of the Week
- Excerpt-a-ganza! The first chapter of The Second Duchess is now available here.
- The Second Duchess‘s giveaway at Goodreads continues! Sign up! And check back here for an international giveaway of a couple of advance reader copies. I think I’m going to wait until the Goodreads giveaway gets to 1,000 entries, so sign up now.
- Cressie News: all bandages, cones, and protective collars are off. She is once again romping free in the back yard and doing her Snoopy dance under the Squirrel Tree. I think we can declare her officially healed, and we are so grateful for all the good thoughts and prayers you sent her way.
- Congratulations to Karen Harper on Down River’s nomination for the 2011 Mary Higgins Clark Award, announced with the Edgar nominations this past week and presented each year by the Mystery Writers of America.
- Writing-related link of the week: Jan O’Hara’s Tartitude. Great reviews, thoughtful essays on the writing life, and really good comments. Get your vitamin C every day!
- Fun link of the week: All-Star Puzzles. Fun and free! I particularly like the mini-crostics and the picture puzzles. My way of starting my day.
Giveaways!
As some of you might have seen already, I now have beautiful cover flats for The Second Duchess—a sample of the cover, back and front, as it is printed and before it’s bound onto the book. Each step in the process is a shock of “Omigosh, this is really happening.” I also have a huge carton of gorgeous four-color postcards and if you’d like one with a personal note (plus a few to hand out to your friends, of course), just email me at eloupas (at) gmail (dot) com with your address. They’re like bookmarks on steroids!
The giveaway of The Second Duchess at Goodreads is now live. Click to sign up—there are twenty-five copies up for grabs. This particular giveaway is US only, but in a couple of weeks I’m going to host a giveaway here which will be international. So stay tuned.
And you can now read the first chapter of The Second Duchess by clicking the “The Second Duchess” tab above and then clicking the link at the beginning of the text.
Cressie is continuing to heal well—the vet has signed off on her for now and our main task is to keep her from licking at the delicate (and itchy) scar tissue.
Writers’ link of the week: the Shrinking Violets. I love this blog and this group of people. This past week we’ve been choosing a word for our year to come, and my choice was “perseverance.” What would your choice be?
Fun link of the week: the Daily Digital. It’s the adventures of two handsome beagle boys and their “hard-working domestic help.” Heh. Laurie Kramer is a long-time friend of mine and we’ve laughed and cried over our beloved hounds for a good many years now. Her pictures are wonderful, her sense of humor is wry, and her followers’ comments often hilarious. Stop by and say hello!
The Flower Reader
My Scotland book has its final title at last: The Flower Reader. This was one of my top choices and I’m delighted—I think it’s intriguing and unusual, and it puts the spotlight right where it belongs, on my heroine Rinette Leslie, the girl who can read the future in flowers. I’ll probably have more to say about The Flower Reader next week.
Cressie is doing beautifully. She had another follow-up vet visit on Wednesday and Dr. Clawson (such an appropriate name for a vet!) pronounced her a champion healer. She’s still wearing her plastic bag (an invention of my own, of which I’m justly proud) and probably will be for another week at least, just to let the healing progress past the itchy stage. Here she is, “in the bag” and oh-so-bored with it all:
Boudin has been feeling quite left out, and so here’s a wonderful new picture of him as well, snapped by the Broadcasting Legend™:
In Second Duchess news, there’s a giveaway slated to start on January 15th on Goodreads. Twenty-five copies up for grabs! So mark your calendars to enter. And anyone in the Houston, Texas area—put a big red “X” on March 5th, because at 1:00 on that Saturday afternoon I’ll be signing at Houston’s iconic Murder by the Book bookstore.
My Link o’ the Week for writers: StoryFix from Larry Brooks. As Larry says in his subtitle: “Get it written, get it right, get it published.” A great resource, packed with energizing information.
My Link o’ the Week for historical fun: The page on Lochleven Castle in the Douglas Archives. I particularly like the sketch of what Lochleven Island would have looked like in the mid-1560s at the time of my story—the island today is much larger because the level of the loch has lowered. Lochleven! Just the word is embroidered with history and romance…
Kalo Podariko!
Happy First-Foot, as the Greeks say, for 2011! The beautiful sixteenth-century chopines above are Venetian, made of leather, silk and wood, and are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For an intriguing short essay on chopines, visit the Met here.
I am not making resolutions as such this year. Instead, I’ve been inspired by this wonderful post on one of my favorite websites, She Writes, about simply deciding what to take with one on the journey into the new year, and what to leave behind:
You CAN Take It With You by Tayari Jones
Cressie is continuing to heal. The Silver Casket is continuing to flourish, day by day. Time is continuing to count itself down to the debut of The Second Duchess on March 1st. All I can do is be thankful for all the good things in my life.
Happy happy 2011 to everyone!
I-11
Not much to say for myself for the past week—most of it was spent taking care of Cressie, running her back and forth to the vet, doing water lavage twice a day, taking her out on a leash forty-leven times a day, and worrying terribly over her. She is actually doing very well, walking on the leg quite normally, and to all appearances worrying much less than I am. I love the picture above, of her Snoopy-dancing (look at how her hind feet are blurred just like Snoopy’s are in the cartoons) under the squirrel-tree. I hope she’ll be doing that again soon.
I-10
Well, one of those roller-coaster weeks this past week.
First, the winner of the free copy of Death of a Dancing Master is Penny Tuttle! Yay, Penny! I’ve sent your email address on to Marilyn and she’ll send you your book.
The bad news of the week: poor Cressie hurt herself badly yesterday in the course of an early morning chase through the back yard. What she and Boo were chasing, I’ll never know—it was still pitch dark and all I could hear was normal beagle barking. I had gone to the door to coax them in, because it was a little too early for that—and then a yelp of shock and pain. Cressie came hobbling out of the darkness on three legs, crying and trailing blood. The Broadcasting Legend™ and I bundled her instantly into the car and took off in the dark for the emergency vet’s. Upshot: her left front leg was torn open right where it joins her chest, and her cephalid vein severed. Many stitches and fluids. Very fortunate we got her in as quickly as we did. She came home last night, bandaged to a fare-thee-well and still pretty woozy. She’s up and about this morning (you can see the little baggie over the paw-end of her bandage to protect it when we go out) and more alert.
The vet didn’t think it looked like a bite wound, although we’ve had some pretty aggressive wild critters in the back yard from time to time. We have gone over the back yard with a fine-tooth comb, trying to figure out how she could have hurt herself so terribly. We may never know. She certainly scared both of us half to death, and it may be a while before I let them out into the yard in the dark, unsupervised. I thought they were safe in our own securely-fenced back yard!
The good news of the week: a book club deal! The Second Duchess has been selected as a featured alternate for the Literary Guild, the Mystery Guild, the Doubleday Book Club, and the Book of the Month Club Online. Hooray for Barbara and Alfonso!
What I am reading: Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride. It’s way outside my usual comfort zone and I’m not sure what I think of it yet…
FLAT RINETTE
The Flower Reader
Read the First Chapter of The Flower Reader
The Second Duchess
Read the First Chapter of The Second Duchess
The Second Duchess is available on iBookstore!
