Realer than Real
If I thought the book looked real when I got the page proofs (which are finished, yay!) (well, finished but for one last pass which I’ll do this weekend, but still yay!), imagine how I felt when this box arrived:
Advance Reader Copies!
As I was swooning with delight, Boo inspected the box thoroughly and declared “Aroo roo rooooo arooo roo roo.” I think that means, “Whoo-hoo, Mama, you did good, now what’s for dinner?”
Watch this space for information on how to win one for your very own! (The book, not the beagle.)
“Think The Other Boleyn Girl meets Rebecca…”
Huge thanks to C.S. Harris, author of the fantastic Sebastian St. Cyr regency mysteries, for a new pre-release comment on The Second Duchess:
“Rich in historical detail and all the dangerous grandeur of court life in Renaissance Italy. Think The Other Boleyn Girl meets Rebecca.” –C. S. Harris, author of the Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery series.
I love the phrase “dangerous grandeur.”
The paperback of Harris’s wonderful What Remains of Heaven came out yesterday, so run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore (or favorite book-buying website) and buy it today. I blogged about it back in December, as one of my Christmas gift picks for 2009, and I promise you, if you haven’t read this yet you have a rich and engrossing experience in store. And then of course there are the first four books in this terrific series. And coming up next March, the sixth installment, Where Shadows Dance. Mark your calendar. I know I have.
Meet Miss Lestrange…
I love Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey (and Lady Julia will be back soon, thank goodness, in Dark Road to Darjeeling), and so I approached The Dead Travel Fast with some trepidation—would I be as intrigued by a second Victorian heroine? Would the gothic Transylvanian setting work for me?
Well, the answers are yes and yes. Miss Theodora Lestrange, orphan, bluestocking (although she denies it) and spinster of Edinburgh, could not be more different from aristocratic Lady Julia Grey of the quirky-but-charming (usually) Bellmonts. Theo, in fact, reminded me of Jo March, and like Jo she’s pragmatic, pretty much penniless and determined to earn her living writing fantastical stories. When an old school friend invites her to a castle in the Carpathians, of course she jumps at the chance. She’s prepared for the ancient mountains, the eerie crumbling castle, the fragile dowager countess, the eccentric family retainers. She’s even prepared for her friend to be—well—different than she was when they were schoolgirls together. What she’s not prepared for is the mesmerizing Count Andrei, master of Castle Dragulescu.
The Dead Travel Fast is an atmospheric 21st-century take on the Victorian gothic romance, which began with The Castle of Otranto, wended its way through my own beloved Pre-Raphaelites, and reached its height with the Brontes, Byron and Bram Stoker. Cressie awards five aroos to The Dead Travel Fast!
The Unbreakable Child
Mark October 1, 2010, on your calendar. That’s the day Behler Publications is bringing out the expanded second edition of The Unbreakable Child, Kim Michele Richardson’s powerful and ultimately uplifting memoir. Kim is a friend of mine and we talked about her book:
Elizabeth: Kim, your book juxtaposes two narrative threads—your terrible experiences as a child and your experience as an adult with joining the lawsuit and opening up your memories to the world. What happened in between? How did you manage as a teenager? What were your ambitions, your vision of your adult life, in those years? Did you follow that vision, or end up in an entirely different place?
Kim: As expected, when I left the orphanage life did not get better. Frying pan to fire. I went from eating gruel to living off toothpaste. My mother was simply incapable/not suited to caring for children. This coupled with the culture shock of moving out of the orphan asylum and into the ‘real world’ was overwhelming. I had not been prepared. However, as a very young child, I’d always felt I possessed a strongly adult sense of survival and I knew I would be okay—if not someday ‘great’ in the sense of emotional healing and moving forward and reaching positive goals. No easy feat, with many setbacks—stumbles along the way, but I was determined to carve a decent life out of the rubble, mud and muck I’d been given. With The Unbreakable Child’s 2nd Edition I explain and dig deeper on the subjects.
Elizabeth: Tell us a little about your life today, post-lawsuit and post-publication of your book. Have you felt the catharsis you hoped for? How might the world have been the poorer if you had not been an unbreakable child?
Kim: I feel anytime you can express your emotions with pen and pad, it is a catharsis. The healing also deepens and multiplies when you can help others. I’ve been honored and rewarded by the countless readers who’ve read my work and reached out to me. The Unbreakable Child has also become a valuable resource tool for teens, medical professionals, advocate groups and students entering the field of social work and or law. The Unbreakable Child is still, yet, the first book of its kind to be released in the US traditional publishing world, and one many feel is needed so that history never repeats itself. And with the 2nd and better detailed edition of The Unbreakable Child due out this fall, it will gain a wider audience and continue to help others emotionally and because a percentage of all proceeds go to a child advocate group; financially as well.
Elizabeth: I know you love animals. Do you think your connection with animals and compassion for animals in trouble is related to your own experiences as a child? How?
Kim: I do love animals. But just as equally, I’m passionate about senior citizens, children and those who are in need of an advocate—a voice.
And Kim is a voice—an unforgettable voice. The expanded second edition of The Unbreakable Child is available for pre-order now. Make sure you choose the second edition, from Behler Publications!
I Do Love Books
“Lord! when you sell a [reader] a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell [the reader] a whole new life. Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night [and intrigue and death and wild adventure and passionate obsession in the Scotland of Mary Stuart]—there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”
—Christopher Morley (with interpolations)
The Bones of Copernicus
This past weekend, Nicolaus Copernicus’ remains were re-buried with great honor in a cathedral in Frombork, Poland, after spending over 460 years under the floor of the same cathedral in an unmarked grave.
This is all very well and it’s excellent to see Copernicus vindicated at last, but if his body was buried in 1543 in an unmarked grave—how did they know they had the right person?
It turns out scientists began looking for Copernicus back in 2004—they knew he’d been buried under the floor of the cathedral but didn’t know where. They found the skull and bones of a man of about the right age, and did a computer reconstruction of the face (hello, Bones) that resembled a portrait Copernicus drew of himself. Suggestive, but not conclusive.
Then the most amazing thing happened. They leafed through a book known to have belonged to Copernicus and found hairs. (I also pull my hair out over books from time to time, so I can relate.) They extracted DNA from the bones they’d found and from the hairs and eureka! A match.
So now Copernicus lies under a black granite tombstone identifying him as the founder of the heliocentric theory (well, not really, but the first to model it in full mathematical detail) and a canon of the Roman Catholic church. The stone is inlaid with a design representing the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six planets (the only ones they’d discovered at the time Copernicus lived).
One of the most poignant things about the whole story is that Copernicus published his masterwork De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in the last year of his life. Supposedly the first printed copy was placed in his hands the day he died. One can only imagine what he felt.
Rest well, Master Nicolaus.
The Second Duchess
Read the First Chapter
The Second Duchess is available on iBookstore!
