Laurie R. King

Award-winning, bestselling, thought-provoking mysteries

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Proof Positive

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Because to the reader, a book goes from vague idea to hardback-in-hand, I’m doing a series of blog posts (no spoilers!) about the actual process for The Lantern’s Dance. (Though rest assured—it’s still pretty magical.)

I’ve just finished the proof pages—those pages where the much-marked-up manuscript is formatted to look like the actual final hardback. Previously, they asked me to approve the interior design, such as the title page—

And now here it is on the actual page, with the book’s nice stylish font.

They sent it to me as a pdf, with daunting instructions for editing pdfs. Yes, I know a pdf is absolutely firmly how a thing looks on the page, immutable and permanent…except not really. We’ll get to that in a minute.

My publisher has been remarkably patient with my fixation on paper edits, but in this case, here it is. So, naturally, I printed it off so I could make notes and feel in some kind of control.

Until I got to the first page, and found that, three lines apart, Russell snaps, then refers to herself as snappy.

I mean, really, Laurie? Are you blind? Well, yes, I am with words on the page, which is why I need to sit and read it aloud. One. Word. At. A. Time. Full-voiced, not muttering. Roughly 25 pages per session, with luck two sessions a day.

By doing a readaloud, I’m more apt to catch places where I, yes, repeat words, but also where I use two words that look completely different on the page but are going to echo against each other in the audio book. Or words that aren’t quite what I meant. Or phrases that clunk or mislead. Or paragraphs that meander, rather than march along, clean and crisp.

I also catch places where my last rewrite failed to correct some plot point that had been changed earlier, and waits to confuse any reader trying to pay attention, such as having someone stand up when they were in fact already standing at the window, or deliver a climactic comeback that got said two pages before.

It took me about a week, and then to tackle the dread Adobe Acrobat pdf editor.

Ah, no. Freebie version? Not really. Sign up for a trial week—okay, but my screen looks nothing like my publisher’s instruction sheet. And it lets me draw a line through words, but not delete them—no, now it lets me delete them, but I can’t actually add words.

In the end, I decided it was safer to put everything in as a comment:

Delete had (duplication)

Change he TO: Holmes

Change HOLMES TO: he

Question: should it be were, or was?

Etcetera, etcetera.

And I created a short e-doc for three or four places where the changes were a little complicated, and the poor editor charged with in-putting the changes might get a headache if I didn’t simply type out what the finished paragraph should look like.

Additions to the Thanks page, a last brief question—

            Should Twitter be changed to:  Twitter/X  ??

—and I’m finished.

Oh sure.

It asks me if I want to close out the tab, and since it won’t let me close the thing until I have, I do. (You can hear this coming, right?)

And the thing disappears. Gone, all the changes, four days of work.

I quietly close my laptop and walk away. And the next morning, I go hunting, and find a version that looks right, and although the request for download never does download anything, a button offers to invite someone to share. So I do. And mirabile dictu, the invitation arrives in her in-box. And apparently, all 295 comments come with it.

I hate e-edits, even on a Doc file.

But this does mean that I never have to read the book again.

That, my friend, is your job.

**

You can pre-order The Lantern’s Dance from: Bookshop Santa Cruz (signed); Poisoned Pen Books (signed); Bookshop.org (supporting Indie booksellers); Barnes & Noble; or Amazon.

Not Just a Pretty Face: Cover Art

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(Because what I do for a living often seems like magic—I come up with an idea and *POOF* the book’s in your hand—I thought I might do a series of blog posts (no spoilers!) about the actual process. (Though rest assured—it’s still pretty magical.)

In the publishing world, cover art comes before the book is even finished. My first draft was turned in April 1 (ridiculously short and incomplete—I talked about that here) and I had an in-depth editorial conversation on May 5 (the rewrite process, here.) But even while the book was in those malleable early stages, the art department was hard at work.

Now, a lot of publishing is in the how-the-sausages-are-made realm: you really don’t want to know. And what follows is probably firmly within that realm for most of you, since it’s all about the tiny shifts made in a cover from “Well, this is okay” to “Whoa, I love this!” But since this is a series of blogs about the minutiae of taking a book from idea to hardcover, today’s too-long post is all about what the cover looks like.

And trust me, as it is, I’m leaving a lot out. Including how many times I said thank-you to the art department.

May 19: I get a pdf attachment from my editor with an email, saying in part—

Excited to share two concepts for the cover of THE LANTERN’S DANCE. As discussed, we’re excited to try to find a bit of a new series look for Russell/Holmes, and here are two possible directions we could go. I think the second of these designs may prove more “repeatable” for a series look, but I do very much love the interpretation of the lantern in the first layout. Eager to hear your thoughts.

Zoetrope cover

Silhouette cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 24: After printing off the seven images, studying them, and having a chat with my agent, I write back—

I personally like the zoetrope concept, however, I don’t think 9 people out of 10 will know what it is. And I agree that it’s a good idea to start up a new series look that can be adapted for the next few books. So let’s go with some version of the silhouette.

What I would like to see here is something that both looks rich and evokes the exoticism of the story. At the moment, the silhouette cover only says “France” and “historical novel”.

(I do like the font of the name and title.)

  1. The silhouette itself: can we make it more clearly that of a woman in a hat? At first glance, it looks merely like someone with a lumpy hairdo. Also, for some reason this outline looks very young and girly. Maybe it’s the perky nose? The super-slim shoulders? Russell is a tall, strong woman of 25, and this figure looks ten years younger.
  2. I would drop both the Eiffel Tower and the street scene. If we decide that one part or the other needs the texture of an image, we can think about what goes but isn’t quite such a cliche. And, would it weaken it to remove the two art deco lines? Or if it needs lines, maybe four, as a frame?
  3. I like the silhouette as the basic series look—or various similar-but-different versions of the silhouette—that could then open it up to an image from each novel for the identifier. In this case, the lantern would be great (although when it comes to images, you should search for praxinoscope rather than zoetrope.)
  4. Colors: as I said, I strongly feel that the colors for this will be really important, and need to evoke the exotic. Maybe it would be appropriate to play with indigo shades?
  5. I understand that we want the Russell & Holmes logo on the cover, but perhaps it could be smaller, and its placement depend on what shape the hat brim ultimately has? I’d rather see the logo reduced, the author name shifted up, and in the middle some interesting/evocative image specific to this book, such as the lantern itself (or the journal, or a sapphire necklace, or…)

July 12: PRH sends a set of six revised covers based on the silhouette, with a reminder that we do want to indicate Paris on the cover. (Apparently, readers like Paris.)

#1

#3

#2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 13: I send back my response—

Ooh, great colors. I asked for feedback from the focus group (Team LRK plus family)—their comments on the six different versions:

#1. (Favorite of 5 out of the 9) Tilted journal is great, blue necklace works; cheery colors of the sky

#2. Purple sky is great if we want to make it an “evening” flavor of book; one person noted that it makes it like Back to the Garden; glowing street lamps great; street lights on the right better?; people didn’t like the squared block of the journal

#3. (Favorite of 1 person) I’m not sure about the green—first I like it, then I don’t…

This version of the journal is better than #1 or #2—tilted, but shifted to allow the title to be read more easily

Going by the comments and my own preferences, I’d say:

Background color: I’m torn between the blue clouds and the sunset-purple. The one with the fresh sky says beach-read, the twilight one evokes mystery. Do any of you—or the others on the team—have any preference between the two?

But in general, consensus is:

Bridge/streetlamps rather than Eiffel Tower

The tilted & darker journal (as in #1)

Also the darker snap of #1—#3’s light snap draws attention to its anachronism (the ms has ties)

Shift the journal to the right, more like #3. Though maybe leave it the slightly larger size??

All of the words are clearer when they don’t actually touch the edge of the silhouette

I like the hair showing rather than the smooth silhouette

The jewel should definitely be blue

Maybe a shaded border like #5 and #3??

July 14: my long-suffering editor notes that the micromanaging author has requested—

One version with sky color of 1 (blue) and one with sky color of 2 (purple), both with Paris background lantern/buildings from 2.

Journal/jewel from 1 but with tilt of 3.

Lettering size and layout from 4

Silhouette from 1 and 2

Border from 3

July 18: four versions arrive, two with the light-colored sky, two with the purple.

#1

#3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I write that I’m liking the glow of the streetlamps on the purple one, and ask if they have any preference.

July 19: my editor responds—

I like 1 and 3, but I like the tilt of the diary more on 1 and I think 3 is very close color wise to Island of the Mad? But I’m happy with either!

What about if they push #3 as blue as possible, so it doesn’t look like the magenta cover of Island, and make the diary a tad smaller? The diary in #1 forms a line with the edge of the silhouette, which looks odd—but I agree, I like the tilt there.

July 19: this one arrives—

July 19: I write back in return with—

That color is great, and the placement of the journal—thanks!

I do think we need a bluer hat band, a little closer to that of #3—the darker version fades into the black too much.

And, one last suggestion that entirely depends on how tweakable the background is:  IF they can keep the right hand side as it is, but return a suggestion of those clouds on the left side of the figure, it would be nice. However—IF that makes the clouds on the right side wash out and lose their texture, then leave the sky / background as it is.

July 20: editor writes—

What do you think of the attached?! Do we have it?!

The Lantern's Dance by Laurie R. King

We have it.

And yes, I know, for some of those you’d need a magnifying glass to see the difference. However, I should add that I do love this cover, and furthermore, I don’t believe anyone in the art department either quit or was forced to take a leave of absence due to nerves.

**

You can pre-order The Lantern’s Dance from: Bookshop Santa Cruz (signed); Poisoned Pen Books (signed); Bookshop.org (supporting Indie booksellers); Barnes & Noble; or Amazon.

Feeling the Draft(s), First to Final

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Because what I do for a living often seems like magic—I come up with an idea and *POOF* you have the book in your hand—I thought I might do a series of spoiler-free blog posts about the actual process. (Though rest assured—it’s still pretty magical.)

The Lantern's Dance

April 1: first draft sent. (I talk about the earlier stages in a previous post, here.)  I come to the end of the initial draft of Lantern’s Dance on the last day of March. At this point, it is 59,000 words—meandering, uncertain, occasionally repetitive words. This is the version I send only to the people who know how to read between the lines of a first draft and see what the book—with work—is going to be: my editor and my two agents, literary and film. With it I send a list of points that I already know I need to address, including the acknowledgment (lest my editor panic at the word count, which is that of a long novella) that it needs another 20,000+ words.

May 5: conversation with my editor.  We go over the points that I’d sent her, add in those she picked up, and decide the directions for the rewrite.

June 23: I send a progress report, saying:

I’ve finished the second draft (which has added 13K words) and have a jillion Postits for the third and probably final (is there ever actually a final?)  It’s looking pretty solid for sending to you in July, with luck the middle of the month.

July 5: I finish the 3rd draft, now 77,000 words, and wrote to ask if she wanted to see it then, or if she wanted to wait until I had gone through it myself to check my changes—and also, if I could send it to those of my team of Beta readers who didn’t mind looking at it even while it was still rough. (I always check my editor’s schedule, especially during in the summer, because people have lives and other commitments, and there’s no point in sending her something she won’t have a chance to look at for a month.) She agreed to delay while I went through it again, so I shot it out to Team LRK—again with a list of specific points I wanted them to look at. This is especially helpful for readers who aren’t professional editors: if no one asks you whether Damian’s motivations make sense or if the parallels drawn between the zoetrope images and the journal images are clear (that’s stuff in the book) would most people stand back and think about whether or not they do?

Their feedback is SO helpful, in all kinds of areas. Some of them caught things about one or another of the series characters I’d got wrong. Others gave me areas they found a tad confusing. Their questions and suggestions about the emotional balance of the story were incredibly helpful—and if you think that works, when you eventually read it, thank them. (They’re in the book’s acknowledgments, naturally!)

July 27: the almost-final draft goes off to the editor. I know that this isn’t going to be the final final draft, but I decided to get my editor’s feedback on the last 2 chapters before I tackled them. At the time, I was being told in no uncertain terms that the absolute, end-of-it-all, cutoff deadline to turn the final thing over to the copyeditor and Production was August 15. So we were pushing matters now. She and her assistant editor both did an amazingly fast turnaround (my apologies to any of their other authors who got no work out of them for those days) and—

August 2: she returns her notes and an e-marked manuscript, with notes to my list of points (the third such list) that I still had questions on. I am vastly relieved that she and I agree: there are three areas that require work, mostly in those ending chapters.

August 8: I send the FINAL draft off. It’s now just under 86,000 words. I get cramps from crossing my fingers….

August 11: I hear back from her.

Laurie!

I am so so happy with this final draft. See my notes attached, but I don’t have any further changes. I’m going to get this into production! I think yes, that pub date is confirmed.

And now? Now I’m waiting for the copyeditor to have her wicked way with the manuscript, changing all my periods to commas and removing all the ungrammatical but Russellian commas. With luck, she’ll catch any lingering artifacts of earlier drafts.  I may write a last Process blog about those last fine-tuning efforts. In the meantime, it’s back to crossed fingers…

**

Yes, you can pre-order those 86K words of The Lantern’s Dance from: Bookshop Santa Cruz (signed); Poisoned Pen Books(signed); Bookshop.org (supporting Indie booksellers); Barnes & Noble; or Amazon.

The Business of Writing: The Editor (2)

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Last day of February, the last of February’s posts celebrating

30 years of A Grave Talent.

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About a year after Grave Talent came out in 1993, St. Martins Press published The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Two months later, in April, 1994, Grave Talent won the Edgar award for Best First Novel. Nonetheless, the sub-editor in charge of the SMP paperback division decided they didn’t want to keep the paperback rights for this new, mid-list author, so they put them up for sale. There was not so much of an auction as a “best-by” date, for any houses that might want to take a chance on them. Any interested houses had a tough time even finding the books.

Kate Miciak, at Bantam books, was interested. She was so interested that she got into her car and drove all over New Jersey and Connecticut in search of copies (this was 1994, long before Jeff Bezos took over the world.) She found them, she read them, she bid, and voilà, I was a Bantam AND St Martins author.

The original hardcover rights for A Grave Talent had sold for an advance of $3,000,

$3,000 meant our old farmhouse now had central heating!

and Beekeeper’s Apprentice for not much more. But because of the potential Kate saw in the two books—the potential she saw in me, one very new author—Bantam handed over $18,000 for the right to publish Grave Talent for ten years, and $29,500 for Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

This was actual money. This made it Not-Laurie’s-Hobby, but an income.

Bantam put Grave Talent front and center in an enormous Summer Reading promotion, built around an Edward Gorey illustration (and if you haven’t entered my drawing for the t-shirt, which closes midnight tonight, Feb 28, you can find the signup here).

A year later, they did the same for Beekeeper. (Yes, I have a t-shirt of that campaign, too, ready for next year’s 30th anniversary.) And both did so well in building my numbers that one Friday afternoon a few months later, I had a call from my agent to say that St Martins had decided to retain the paperback rights going forward, wasn’t that good?

And it was, really. It always creates difficulties for an author when their backlist and their new hardbacks are from different publishers. I knew this. And yet…

Bantam really made an effort with the promo…

On Monday, I had my agent call my editor and tell her that I really, really would prefer to keep things as they were. To be clear here, my contract stated that the decision was ultimately theirs, not mine. And to be equally clear, turning down this offer would have repercussions. But my editor, as I’ve said, was a gem among women, and she did not want me to be unhappy. So she passed the word on to Kate—who, I later learned, had spent a very depressed weekend at the thought of explaining to her bosses why she’d dedicated so many of Bantam’s marketing dollars on promoting me—and after Kate had picked herself up off the floor, I stayed with my two divided houses.

St Martins Press hardback, Bantam Books paperback: first of many covers.

A few years after that, I moved over to Bantam for both hard and soft, and have been with them ever since. Kate retired a few years ago, and she’s always been notoriously shy about having her photograph taken or published, so I won’t show you what she looks like.

But I’ve been blessed in my editors, from Ruth to Kate to Hilary now. Three women with heart, and tenacity, and the sharp eye to what makes a writer better. When I was named Grand Master last year, only one of my editors was at the dinner, but the other  two were definitely there at the table with us, hoisting their champagne.

**

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

The Case of the Upside-Down Hebrew

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A Grave Talent, as my first book was dedicated to my husband, Noel–in Hebrew, which is only right between two scholars. Amos 3:4 means, more or less, Can two people walk together unless they be in agreement?

I know, scholars are really romantic, right?

 

 

Now, there are two mysteries here (beyond the mystery of married relationships, that is.) One, why was the Hebrew dedication to A Grave Talent flipped over in the first edition? Because if you don’t know Hebrew, the line linking the letters is supposed to be along the top.

And the second puzzle was, why was the Hebrew sometimes not topsy-turvy?

As to the first, I suppose it proves that St Martin’s Press at the time had no Jewish typesetters. The page I’d sent them with the Hebrew went in the wrong way. I noticed, let them know, and they fixed it for subsequent editions.

But as for the second question…

There are some copies of Grave Talent out there that have the numbers of a true first edition, and yet the Hebrew is the correct way around. And it’s possible that someone noticed halfway through the printing, fixed it, and finished the run. It’s possible.

The first edition, first printing is indicated by the countdown to 1. A number is dropped with each subsequent printing. (Different publishers do it different ways.)

On the other hand, there was a while in the Nineties and Aughties when modern first editions were a Big Thing. Recently published books—as in, within ten years or so of publication—could leap to ridiculous sums, if collectors thought the author was going to be a Big Thing. First editions of A Grave Talent went for as much as $1400.

And what happens when there’s quick money to be made? Right: forgery.

Of those, I am certain. The first one I saw was when someone handed me a copy to sign, and—as I generally did—I checked to see if it was a first draft, because personalizing a true first could reduce the value. This one said it was a first edition…except that the dedication was the right way around. And when I looked more closely, the dachshund logo on the title page looked somehow, well, photocopied.

Tom Dunne’s dog. Printed, not photocopied.

That’s right. Someone had taken apart some second editions, cut out the title page, photocopied the publishing history of a first edition on both sides of a replacement, and glued that one in. I actually had one that someone bought from a sidewalk display for $1, in which the glue was more obvious—clearly an early failed attempt.

The thing took on a life of its own. Mystery Scene wrote it up. That’s when the theory came along that the printers had themselves found the mistake and changed it. But honestly? A small printing, of an unimportant first-time author? Not only would no one have bothered, but they didn’t know before I told them.

Anyway, the bottom dropped out of the Modern First market after a while, and the books aren’t worth enough now to forge them.  I just hope you’re not one of those who shelled out a thousand dollars for the book. And if you find yourself with a “first edition” that has the correct Hebrew, well, do enjoy the story. All the words are the same.

**

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

The Business of Writing: Your Friend, The Agent

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Part of the 30-year anniversary celebration of A Grave Talent.

Like most first novelists, I had no clue about how to run my life as a business.

My vanity projects, e-book version.

In 1993, the only people who did self-publishing were the desperate souls who just HAD to have a volume to put in the hands of family and friends. The publishers who would do this for them were called “vanity” presses, which shows the scorn with which “real” published writers held them.

At the time, there were (as memory provides) only two actual, New York publishing houses that accepted manuscripts from the writer herself, rather than through an agent. These unsolicited manuscripts were called “over the transom” submissions, meaning that you had to (figuratively, at least) climb up and thrust your manuscript into the little window over their firmly shut door, listening to it thump down on the floor with a whole load of similar thick envelopes.

A transom.

A junior editor described to me the way publishers dealt with them (those houses that didn’t automatically stamp them with RETURN TO SENDER.) Every few months, on a Friday night, the editorial assistants (all of whom wanted to grow up and become real editors with the budget to buy actual books) would send out for pizza and beer and sit around the storage closet with piles of thick manila envelopes, and start to read. Some manuscripts got a fair try, and got passed on to The Editor. Others would either have a typo that irritated the baby editor, or was not to their taste, or would have the bad luck to show up towards the end of the evening. Those rejects would be thrust back for RETURN TO SENDER with a printed “Thanks-but-no-thanks” slip. (Or just be tossed, to save the cost of postage, and “Oops sorry I guess we lost it.”)

Very occasionally, like the girl in the soda fountain who became a star, the stars would align, and the envelope would make its was to an Editor, who nine times out of ten would write a personalized “Good job, not for us” rejection note.

Those that I sent in myself got rejected. Or “lost”…

 

…and THEN rejected. An agent was clearly the way to go. Agents held the key to that locked door. But how did I get one of them?

As I said in an interview a few years ago (2015)—

How did you get your first literary agent?

I looked in the back of Writer’s Market, back in 1987, and found five agencies in San Francisco. (I didn’t believe in New York. Still not too sure about it…) I wrote to each of them, sending a couple of chapters of the two books I’d finished. Agency one said their client list was full up. The second said they liked the one but not the other. Number three said they liked the other, but not the one. Number four said they’d be happy to read the books if I’d send them $385 for each. And the fifth was Linda Allen, who liked the books, thought they needed work, and ended up representing me until her retirement last year.

 

Or, as I put it in my Really Long Autobiography, Linda was—

The first professional to look at my work and see it as—well, my work.

She’s also been a friend all these years, although we didn’t really bond until she came to England for the 1995 Bouchercon in Nottingham, and stayed with us, visiting nearby Blenheim Palace

And venturing into cold, wet, windy Dartmoor, helping my two kids and me research The Moor.

Agent and author, hard at work.

(I nearly lost her in the fog, but fortunately, she heard me calling….)

She was a fairly new agency then herself, and the partnership went through some really great years, with this simple, small beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She’s retired now, but I talked with her the other day, and she remembers how thrilled she was at the sale to St Martins Press.

A contract. An actual contract!

And how much did I get from that first book? Well, more than the £25 Arthur Conan Doyle got for his first story, but in modern terms, maybe about the same. But hey, I was in business!

**

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

 

 

A Writer to Watch!

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Part of the month-long celebration of A Grave Talent, the Edgar-winning first novel about SFPD Inspector Kate Martinelli that started my writing career.

One of the surprises I found as a new author was that people not only read the book, but talked about it as if it mattered. Take reviews: who knew they were actually a thing that happened to…well, me? (You can click on these images to read them.)

Library Journal

A necessary purchase? A writer to watch–me?

Or from Booklist–comparing me to Ruth Rendell and P. D. James?

Booklist

Dame Phyllis also appears in a review from one of the reviewing gods in the ’90s crime field, Robin Winks–I kept him reading deep into the night! He found my story cause for rejoicing!–

Boston Globe

Of course, some were puzzling. Me, hard boiled?

San Francisco Chronicle

But I find this list truly fascinating, the other writers of my generation. Who knew I would first meet friends through a list in American Bookseller?

American Bookseller

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Read about A Grave Talent (with excerpt, reading guide, and order links),

see the other Martinellis, or

order a signed copy.

Writing Kate

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(Celebrating the 30th anniversary of A Grave Talent, here’s part of a 2017 post on Kate Martinelli.)

Grave Talent began with two ideas: What would Rembrandt look like if he were a woman? And, Can I write a novel in which the protagonist does nothing?

The question of women in what are generally assumed to be men’s roles was one I had been poking around for years, although for the most part in the world of theology rather than crime fiction—I wrote my Masters thesis on the feminine aspects of the God of the Old Testament, and as a graduate student had co-led a seminar in Women in the New Testament.  First-century women rabbis, the influence Moses’ wife had on the future of Judaism, God as Mother: all topics I had explored.  (To say nothing of the practical applications of The Feminine, since I also had small children at the time.)

So, the seed: Artists are possessed by their vision of the world and their need to give it expression.  And the greater the artist, the more complete the possession—and, the more impossible they are as human beings: egomaniacal, manipulative, and willing to devour every scrap of energy in their vicinity…and mostly male.

Whether by nature or by upbringing, fewer women are so thoroughly possessed by this near-pathological self-importance. But if we did have a woman like this, and if she did possess the inborn talent that goes far to justifying the artist’s egomania, what would she look like, and how would it shape the world around her? Yes, the question is usually, Why have there been no great woman artists? In A Grave Talent we ask rather, If confronted by a truly great woman artist, how would the world react?

Vaun Adams is less a character in the book than she is a force of nature.  Her raw and uncontrollable talent, her utter fixation on the canvas at hand and the resultant blindness to those around her, changes everything she comes near: Like a black hole, the intensity of her presence tugs everyone else out of their given orbits.

As such, Vaun is both the book’s central character and a character totally apart from the action.  She—her talent—forms the central axis of the story, and all the other characters—neighbors, lovers, the police, the murderer—spin madly around the solidity of her presence.  Yet she does act, at the very end: She abandons her aloofness, comes out of her extreme retreat, and plays a role.

And when she does, the shock of her motion throws those spinning around her to the four winds.

* * *

Excerpt, discussion guide, and order information are here.

Mom’s Christmas Cookies

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If Dad produced odd German spicy treats every year (as my recent post talked about), my mother could be depended on for the kinds of cookies you could give to the postman without imagining his puzzled look. Mostly sweet, best eaten fresh, and decorative.

Some were super-sweet, like her “Matrimonials.” She produced decorated butter cookies, of course (usually with margarine—butter was a rare visitor to my childhood table) that were rolled out, iced with background white buttercream frosting (margarine-cream?) and decorated with a frosting gun to emphasize the outlines of the boot, the Santa, or the star cookie cutters. And Spritz cookies, a recipe that probably came from Betty Crocker, that were pushed through a cookie press to make trees or wreaths, then sprinkled with colored sugar.

She liked to make “candy  cane” cookies, using a basic sugar cookie dough, half of it dyed red (or rather, pink, since she’d never seen the proper, intense dye used by professional bakers) and shaped on the board into rolls the thickness of crayons, then twisted round a roll of the white dough and finished with the top curled over.

Later she discovered a lovely Finnish almond-cookie recipe whose name she relished pronouncing (or more likely, mispronouncing)—Suomalaiset Puikot—that became a great hit with postman and family alike.

And later yet, a bar cookie that combined the best qualities of pumpkin and pecan pies. One of the few Christmas cookies my grown kids still like, and even ask for. In fact, I’m making a batch of those tomorrow. Assuming I can still decipher her handwriting….

So, what do you give your postman this time of year?

Bees Abroad

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I had a perfectly charming Zoom meet on Friday with members of Bees Abroad, an organization in the UK that trains & supports African women & those with disabilities to become Beekeepers for Life.

But these lovely people not only teach beekeeping skills, they also help people figure out how to sell honey and beeswax products, and along the way support local woodworkers (who build the hives) and tailors (who make the beekeepers’ outfits) and boost the entire community of artisans and entrepreneurs and families.

Improving livelihoods across Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Ghana, and Rwanda, through the medium of the humble honeybee.

Our chat, which brings together books and bees, is half me and half poet/novelist Siya Turabi, and available on their YouTube channel.

The event was a part of their December fundraising efforts—and since

your donation WILL BE DOUBLED until midday, Tuesday,

I’d greatly appreciate anything you can send their way: HERE. (And maybe also help spread the word…)

Thank you, from the world’s bee friends!

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