An e-card, for you, from the Dreaming Spies paperback, out October 6.
Dreaming Spies: the paperback
Two weeks from tomorrow, the US paperback of Dreaming Spies comes out. Because I loved the set of e-cards Random House did for the hardback, I begged their permission to make a few of my own, with other pictures and quotes. Here’s the first one—please feel free to turn it loose among your friends, along with those that follow over the next two weeks.
This kind of fun thing makes me just ridiculously happy.
The clock in the image, by the way, is in the Nara Hotel in Japan. Their web site has a picture of Albert Einstein at the piano (also still their in their reading room) with the clock in the background, over his shoulder: 
The Dreaming Spies book page has excerpts, links to the YouTube channel, and order information, here.
Cherry is to Japan as hawthorn is to…
In England recently, it was hawthorn season.
In Dreaming Spies, Russell reflects on the resemblance to cherry blossoms:
The …thick white hawthorn blossom overhead made me imagine for an instant that I was kneeling for a hanami, setting out a picnic beneath flowering trees.
Talking Dreaming Spies
For those of you who didn’t get a chance to see one of my Dreaming Spies tour stops, the good folks at Anderson’s Books in Naperville, IL have posted a nice interview about writing the book, the Bodleian library, being inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars, Russell’s Twittering, and writing Sherlockian erotica, all over on your YouTubes:
Book tours & Cons
A funny thing happened on my way to Dreaming Spies…
Months and months ago, I said to Random House that I didn’t think a tour was really necessary for this novel, since it would be the first Russell & Holmes in 2 ½ years and people might be interested in it even without the author standing in front of them talking. And they agreed, since after all a tour costs them money that could be spent elsewhere. So there we were, all nicely agreed, until Pub Day came on Feb 17th and I looked down at the printout of my duties for the month and said to myself, I said, Holy Granola, Batlady, looks like I’m doing a tour after all.
So off I set for Chicago and Houston and Scottsdale and California South and North (lots of North) and then Portland at the end since, well, I was going to be there anyway for Left Coast Crime, and…
All of which means that a month has disappeared on the road, leaving me now holding my skull and wondering what on earth I intended to do with this book I’m supposed to be writing.
Let me be clear: I enjoy touring. Not only is it a huge inflation to the ego to have rooms of people eager to hear what passes for my wisdom
while staying in hotels with interesting décor
but I also get to see the sorts of friends I only catch glimpses of when I go on the road.
Me and Meg Gardiner
Also there are a lot of amazingly talented people who come out, some of whom write poems or make sketches about the talk
At Kepler’s with Catriona MacPherson
while others give me presents.
I have a typewriter!
But, maybe next year I’ll keep the travel part down under a month, so I can do less of this
and more of this
If so, will you forgive me?
(Though in the meantime, keep in mind that my events page always has a list of appearances. At the moment, those include Crimefest in May and BoucherCon in the fall, but we’ll be adding events in England this May: more when I know them.)
The List
Thanks to you good people who rushed out in Week One and plunked down your hard-earned dollars for Dreaming Spies, the book will appear in the number eight slot on the New York Times bestseller list, and #10 on the Indie Bookstore bestseller list. This makes me very happy, not in the least because it convinces my publisher that people might be interested in my stories.
Thank you.
Lost grey matter
Since the airlines (one of three) seem to have misplaced Laurie’s brain somewhere between Houston and Los Angeles (or perhaps in Phoenix), Mary Russell’s War will return as soon as the lost brain has been located and delivered to her door. In the meantime, here’s a picture of yesterday’s fab event put together by the Mission Viejo library, with decorations, two kinds of tea on the tables (English and Japanese) in the appropriate tea pots, and platters of Girl Scout cookies, with tables laid with white cloths by some young volunteers and books schlepped in and sold by San Diego’s great Mysterious Galaxy bookstore. Thank you, everyone!
Tour, and toilets!
I hope you’ve managed to get your hands (and your eyes) on a copy of Dreaming Spies? If not, I’ll be all over in the next couple of weeks, and I’m happy to sign one for you. All my events are listed here. Oh, and I should mention that there are still places left at the Chicago University Club luncheon on the 27th, you need to give them a ring (yes, they’re old school) at (847) 446-8880.
Also, there’s a new book(let), something I co-wrote with the Poisoned Pen’s Barbara Peters: 
Not in Kansas any more, TOTO
by Laurie R King & Barbara Peters
*
A cultural exploration of the Japanese bath-room, (toilet and bath)
with side-excursions into shoes, maps, irrigation pipes,
the effects of earthquakes on architecture,
the problems of finding a bed during cherry-blossom time,
and the uncooperative nature of diesel fuel.
A travelogue with a limited point of view, a heavily illustrated anthropological monograph, and really just a fun project that came about when Barbara and I fell in love with Japanese toilets. We’ll be signing it when I’m in Scottsdale on Saturday, you can order a copy here.
We’re all winners today, however…
Dreaming Spies!
—is out in the world today—huzzah!
But before you all hunker down with your shiny new hardbacks (sooo pretty….) or your crisp new downloads, let’s celebrate today’s book launch that makes winners out of all of Mary Russell’s admirers by noting the winners of our two contests, Russellscape and haiku.
First of all, contests are hard, and certainly for the person tasked with judging the winners. Which was me. But it was such fun, and filled me with such admiration for the creativity of all you Friends of Russell out there, that it was worth the pain, because every one of them made me smile.
Haiku contest
Let’s start with the haiku. Congratulations to Elizabeth Randall, Lisa Alexander, Sandy Kozinn, Barbara Khan, Geri Hutchins, and Cornelia Rémi, who wrote (in order)—
Steam drifts slowly up
Fragrance of jasmine and mint
Cup shatters on stone.
Lisa:
Old man art crazy,
Paints the road between islands,
Beautiful dreamer.
Sandy:
Two minds, in thought one,
Float on the sea together
Thoughts fly to answers.
Barbara:
Land of Rising Sun
Kimono-clad lady bows
Secrets will be told.
Geri:
The journey unfolds
Leaf by leaf ’til all is known
Cherry blossoms weep.
Cornelia:
Detective twin souls
crossing the oceans of thought:
brush strokes of the mind.
As I said, just because I had to pick winners doesn’t mean the others weren’t great. As with the haiku I wrote for the Dreaming Haiku poster, some minds played with the book’s title:
Haruki Sato
dreaming, spies Holmes and Russell.
Help comes when in need.
*
Ink on my fingers.
Rest among dreaming spires:
I write and I am.
More than one poet was moved by the possibilities in cups of tea:
Brown turns into green.
Metamorphosing tea leaves
in our twin minds’ bowl.
*
Try black, green or white.
This brew gets the day started.
Drink, relax, refresh.
For other poetic imaginations, it was the stone of the opening chapter:
Our journey ended.
Thoughts asleep in the garden:
stone chrysanthemum.
*
Enjoy the peace of stone,
Soon we flee in rushing steel
To find key dead tree.
*
Perfect innocence
Hidden in stone, cracked inside
Deceptive flower.
*
A flower and stone
Sitting together in peace
Discovered by chance.
*
Rock set in winter
displaces spring peonies
with Chrysanthemum.
Others called on the evocative possibilities of a shipboard voyage:
Memory’s potsherds:
Passage, o soul, to Japan!
Juggle your fragments.
*
Mystery voyage
An ancient empire may fall
The game is afoot!
*
Three proud peacocks stroll
Gently swaying ship welcomes
Small mouse hurries by.
Some of our poems reflect, as haiku are apt to, on the current state of the poet—
Three babies, late nights
Dog-eared Kindle read re-read
Russell memorized.
—and of those, a number seem to be in the parts of the country under snow:
Long night of winter
No Holmes, no Russell, no hope
Wait for Dreaming Spies.
*
Iced coat, hat, gloves thaw
near the hearth. Ah: hot stew, beer,
a book: poetry.
*
Missouri winter
Snow glistens on frozen pond
Blossoms in King’s book.
*
Infinite winter
Embed in bed with good book
Need Mary Russell.
Russellscape contest
This year’s Russellscapes were really, completely great, fun, and played the game just as I hoped. We had ten entries (plus two great new additions to The Beekeeper’s Gallery) and choosing was hard, really hard.
Seven of them chose Dreaming Spies as their inspiration, working off specific excerpts or general ideas. I loved these entries, some of which were brilliant at capturing the essence of Japan while cleverly linking up the side panels to the rest of Russell’s world. But in the end, I chose a piece that was based, not on Dreaming Spies, but on the first adventure, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Here is Melissa Coutiño’s digital painting of the Sussex Downs meeting:
And since I also promised to choose five runners-up, the winners of the Dreaming Haiku poster are Linda Hay, Sabrina Flynn, Sara McCleland, Jane S. and Cheryl Wolder.
Beautiful, aren’t they? And there were others too:
See how they all fit together by watching the Russellscape march across your screen, here.
And now, back to your latest Russell memoir.
* *
Other posts about writing and researching Dreaming Spies can be seen here, or you can read a long excerpt here.
You can order a signed copy from Poisoned Pen Books or Bookshop Santa Cruz, where I’m launching the book tonight, or you can get unsigned or e-books from Indiebooks, Amazon/Kindle, or Barnes & Noble/Nook. My other events are here.
A Japanese inn
(Mary Russell’s War will show up on Wednesday this week.)
From Dreaming Spies:
As the shops thinned and gardens peeped between the houses, we neared what could only be a ryokan. Ancient wood, well-maintained thatch, raked gravel, and a small and perfectly spontaneous garden on either side of the entrance. Everything—thatch, gate, stones, tree bark— might have been manicured at dawn. If I’d been told that the gardener had chosen the precise arrangement of cherry blossoms drifting across the moss, I’d not have doubted it for a moment.
Minaguchi-ya
Many years ago I read a little paperback by a man named Oliver Statler. It was a novel, more or less, based on Statler’s experiences in Japan, where he first went as a member of an occupying army. There he met a traditional inn, a ryokan, with a long history. The little book he wrote about that inn is a small gem, decorated with traditional drawings, tracing the history of the Minaguchi-ya’s twenty generations of family.
The inn would have looked something like this:
Although now it looks more like this:
* *
Only one more day until Dreaming Spies! Other posts about writing and researching the book can be seen here, or you can read a long excerpt here.
You can order a signed copy from Poisoned Pen Books or Bookshop Santa Cruz, and unsigned or e-books from Indiebooks, Amazon/Kindle, or Barnes & Noble/Nook.
My upcoming events are here.