The month of Halloween is here!

 

I don't know about you, but I was never very good at carving jack o' lanterns. Every year I would get those little "carving kits" and every year I would just end up puttimg a pumpkin out on my front stoop to indicate that I had the Halloween spirit if not the skill to manifest my carving dreams. I'm constantly amazed when I see those articles with pictures of really elaborate jack o' lanterns. 

I remember the first year "ghost pumpkins" came on the market. I was in Los Angeles, working for Los Angeles magazine, and a rep from one of the local supermarkets came in with the white pumpkins. We were all amazed. (Now, apparently, they have blue pumpkins. I'd like to see a black pumpkin. I bet people would snap those up.)

I have a bunch of October/Halloween-themed book reviews coming up. Stay tuned.

A new fantasy book fair

 I love book fairs. Always a chance to grab books from writers new to me, often free or at a discount. Sure, I have to sign up for their newsletters, but I ask people to sign up for my newsletters too.  Check out the fair here.

Talk Deadly to Me

 

Mystery books are my first love. My parents were big readers. My father favoried non-fiction--biographies, books about the Civil War, popular history. My mother was an insomniac and read a mystery book a night. My parents' bed had a built-in space for books (something I always tought was very handy) and while my father slept like a baby (I inherited his super-power of sleep), she would read. If she didn't have a book, she would read the small, digest-sized mystery magazines. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. As soon as I was old enough to read, I started with Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy books but I soon graduated to grown-up books.

I started out writing in the mystery genre as well. Short stories that were dark and mean and full of the tropes I grew up reading. My brother was a lawyer by then and he would sometimes tell me stories about his clients. I remember one was about a guy who killed his aunt and a fellow resident at a boarding house. The cops found him sitting on the steps, waiting for them, a bloodied hammer in his hand. I didn't want to seem blood-thirsty, but I told him to keep the stories coming.

Weirdly, I have no interest in lawyer shows or true crime. Except for Homicide Hunter. I love Joe Kenda. I love that he always caught the bad guys. I LOVE his wry delivery. I love the way he tosses off observations about how dumb crminal behavior is, or just observations in general. "Nothing good ever happens at two a.m."  

I have written a couple of cozy mysteries in the past couple of years, but it's been awhile since I went full-on mystery writer. So hen I got the chance to sign up for a list-aiming boxed set called Talk Deadly to Me, I was all in. My story has been percolating for a couple of years and I've had the cover for it a long time. Inspired by a news story I heard on NPR, my story A WOMAN PRESUMED, is about a woman who hears the report of her own death.

I'm writing it under my real name, and I hope people will like it. It's a return to my roots. And you know what they say about roots being noursished by blood.  You can pre-order it here.

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

 

A man whose brain has been altered creates his own reality for an afterlife. This work by Japanese author Haruki Murakami is a wonderful introduction to his work.

In a future world where people are known by their occupations or descriptions, a human data processor called a Calcutec is summoned to a meeting.  What happens next is a story that mixes a stylized reality with a dream world populated by people from the “reality.” 

It’s hard to categorize the genre of this book, which slipstreams between science fiction, hardboiled noir, cyberpunk, horror, and literary fiction.  (There’s definitely a little Franz Kafka here.)  The book will remind readers of China Mieville’s The City and the City, with its two different worlds existing simultaneously. 

It’s hard to nail down the theme of the book as well.  Murakami is working with a palette that includes ambiguity, consciousness, and self.  In both sections the hero is adrift a bit—an outsider who’s being kept off-balance.  

The book is also a dazzling romp through the tropes of pop culture, and cross-culturally (and self-consciously) hip, so it has that going for it as well. Find the book here.

Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

 This is Emi Yagi's first novel--translated from the Japanese by David Boyd and Lucy North. It's a fast read with an intriguing presence. An office worker named Shibata is stuck at a dead-end job at a factory that makes cardboard cores for toilet tissue and paper towels. She actually doesn't mind it that much, but as the only woman in her section, she's ignored, dismissed, and exploited. If there's a mess to be cleaned, she cleans it. If there's coffee to be made, she makes it and serves it. She's everyone's general dogsbody and because she's a woman, no one thinks anythimg of it. 

Until the day she's finally had enough and tells her section head that she can't clear away the detritus of a meeting she wasn't in--coffee cups stuffed with cigarette butts. She tells him she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. Her life changes immediately--for the better. For one thing, she's no longer expected to work hours and hours of overtime. The first night she goes home at a reasonable hour, she's shocked at how packed the metro is, and how bright and inviting the supermarkets are. (Usually by the time she gets there, all that's left are limp vegetables.) She has time for leisurely baths. She has time to cook. She begins taking aerobics class and incorporates stretching exercises into her daily routine. 

She starts taking care of herself and as the lie lingers, she comes up with all sorts of strategems to maintain the ruse, including using an app that tracks pregnancy. Along the way she interacts with a large cast of characters, from co-workers to other mothers, and the book becomes a reverie on loneliness that's bittersweet and incredibly affecting. 

Yagi knows human nature. Shibata is a wonderful character and working women will completely sympathize with her frustration at being the only woman in an all-male environment. There are bits and

pieces of Japanese culture that readers may not be familiar with. For example, pregnant women can get little badges to hang on their purses to show the world their state--thus entitling them to courteous treatment on trains and other benefits. It's a heart-shaped medallion with the caption, "There's a baby inside me." 

Diary of a Void is a lovely book. You can find our more here.

Twelve Rooms with a View by Theresa Rebeck

 If you're a fan of Only Murders in the Building, as I am, you know there's a dark side to living in those beautiful old buildings that have names. Rebeck's book shares some DNA with that project, mostly because it's told through the snarky point of view of Tina, the youngest of three sisters who may or may not have inherited an apartment in an historic building called The Edgewood. But the chain of events leading up to that inheritance is a little murky (there's another family involved) and then there's the matter of the building's Board. They never liked Tina's mother, or the man she was married to either, who inherited the apartment from his late wife. 

The story of what happens when Tina's bossy older sister Lucy (scarily efficient and not empathetic at all) installs Tina in the apartment to establish residency while she and the other heirs fight things out in court is more about Tina finding her self-esteem (and love) than anything else. 

There's a lot of fun to be had with the quirky characters, the plot full of twists and betrayals and the little side trips into such topics as moss. Tina is a wonderful character and we cheer for her as she finds allies and learns how to deal with her enemies. There's a particularly delightful little girl named Katherine who figures into the mix, and also a gorgeous socialite the doorman is in love with. Rebeck winds everything up in a very satisfying way, in a way that will send you searching for her other books. She really knows sibling dynamics, and it's a pleasure to watch her move her characters around. The apartment sounds fabulous, and so do the contents of that hidden room!!

Fairytale Retellings...

 

I love fairy tales, way beyond the ten or so that are in heavy rotation. (You know the ones I mean--Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, the Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpletstiltskin, the Snow Queen.) I have rewritten a number of fairy tales, including East of the Sun, West of the Moon (The Road Past Winter) and Beauty and the Beast (The Summer Garden) and Cinderella (Fashionista and The Bride of the Midnight King), and Sleeping Beauty (Spite and A Dream of Sun and Roses). I also wrote a version of Snow White called Hunter's Kiss. It's currently only available as part of a book promotion but I'll be putting it out on Amazon shortly.

For this new collection of rewritten fairy tales I've gone back to Beauty and the Beast. My story is called The Dragon's Pearl, and it's a retelling set in a setting that's modeled after the Han Dynasty in China. The "beast" is a dragon and I've made a number of changes to the story, including the heroine's relationship to her father. (Spoiler alert:  He's a scholar and a jerk who does not value her.) 

I'm also rewriting Beauty and the Beast for my story in a billionaire collection that's a charity anthology. That one's called Hero's Kiss, and it's about a military veteran who returns from war scarred by an IED. I bought a cover to use for it years ago, but it now seems rather old fasioned. My story is going to be a bit tamer than a lot of the stories--it does have a "billionaire" cover after all. My heroine is an activist lawyer named Ruth (after RBG) and she loves her father but it turns out that he's an unlucky

gambler who has been embezzling from his boss to cover his losses. Billionaire Fling is a boxed set with proceeds going to breast cancer research. You can preorder it here.

I've also written a really dark YA version of The Little Mermaid, called Blue. That was one that I bought the cover for and then had to write a story around it. I knew from the beginning it wasn't going to be a fluffy version of the story, but then, the original story is so tragic before it was Disneyfied. I did change the ending but it deals with some pretty tragic story elements.

I've ssigned up to write a contemporary version of Rapunzel that will take place in a luxury high-rise apartment and feature a thief with our modern-day princess. I haven't worked out all the little ways in which the new story will have the old story embedded in it.  

I'm also writing a version on The Snow Queen called The Ice-Bound Heart. I'm trying to decide where I'm going to set it. Frozen set it in a mythical kingdom based on Norway. I'm thinking of something more along the lines of Russia. I'm still working that one out. 

In the meantime, if you've never seen the gorgeous fairytale retellings and illustrations by artist Kinuko Y. Craft, check her out here. She has an absolutely stunning 2023 calendar on sale.

Just look at her Sleeping Beauty.

Or her Cinderella.

Or her Beauty and the Beast

Or her Cupid and Psyche