Laurie R. King

Week eight of the Twenty Weeks of Buzz: Monday we say hello (Hi there!) while the Virtual Book Club gets into the meat of Folly.  Tuesday I post a blog about writing A Darker Place and then jump on a plane for Scottsdale, where Dana Stabenow is having a Poisoned Pen Party to launch A Night Too Dark and she’s invited Diana Gabaldon and me to come and lift our glasses and talk about—what else?—writing.  Wednesday on Myspace we learn of a Mysterious High-Ranking Member of Her Majesty’s Government, and get whiff of the animosity between him and Miss Mary Russell.  Thursday I’ll post here about the Tuesday night book launch, having had 36 hours to recover.  And Friday you’ll see here Miss Russell’s actual letter to M, which rather explains why said Government Official is so keen to deny any knowledge of Miss Russell’s existence.

And our winner for the week is Maggie H of Los Angeles, who figured out that the odd quasi-poem given as last week’s puzzle was in fact a list of names:

Yolanda Adler

Robert Goodman

Mary Russell

Mycroft Holmes

Damian Adler

Not sure who the Goodreads winner is this week, maybe Weds.

But okay, I said I’d let you know about the Mary Russell Colouring Book.  A couple of weeks ago, Kim sent us a submission for the Beekeeper’s Gallery art project, a line drawing of Russell in conversation at the American Colony Hotel from O Jerusalem.  Here it is:

My reaction was, wouldn’t it be fun to have a coloring book?  And Kim, generous spirit that she is, stepped up and said she’d love to organize one.  So we just decided to add that project to the other three—it’s there on the Beekeeper’ Gallery page along with the Illustrated MyStory and Russellscape.

Think about scenes from the books that made a strong visual impression on you, and see if you can make a drawing out of that.  (And the advantage of a coloring book format, for those of us with nil artistic ability, is that you can cheat and trace your image off photographs!)  Extra points for grabbing one of the early images from the excerpts we’ve posted of The God of the Hive.

Scan your drawing and send it in according to the directions for the rest of the Gallery images, and when we get enough to make a book, we’ll do so.

Having fun yet?  My goal is to keep everyone so busy, you won’t notice the wait until The God of the Hive comes out.