I’m giving a talk this Thursday, based on the Santa Cruz library’s summer theme of Reading by Design. Join me, and bring all your friends!
Pub Day the Second!
That’s right, I have TWO books out today, books that are about as far apart as a reader can get. In addition to Anatomy of Innocence (below) today’s the publication of the trade paperback of The Murder of Mary Russell!
Enjoy!
From Bookshop Santa Cruz, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
The XX-rated Russell?
So a funny thing happened on the way to a Russellscape…
Since changing over the web site a few months ago (if you haven’t seen it, take a look!) we’re been working on ways to bring over the impressive amount of fan art that’s accumulated in the old site. We’re also working on a renovation of the old Russellscape, a set of images that join to scroll across the screen, like the view from a train window.
I’m setting up a contest for October, trying to get some new images for the Russellscape illustrating The Murder of Mary Russell (A young Sherlock? Or Mrs Hudson!) and the stories in Mary Russell’s War (14 year-old Mary! The Wedding!! Holmes at Christmas!!!). And because people entering the contest need to see how it looks, we converted the old site’s ‘Scape and uploaded it onto YouTube. Only to find a rather…interesting series of “Recommended” videos attaching to its, er, tail end.
Oops.
No, the original of that does NOT have a black CENSORED bar across its key places. The original, and its many (many!) partners, left very little to the imagination. And although it cracked me up, I had to admit that most people happily viewing the Russellscape would be somewhat taken aback when a man’s…full frontal popped onto their screen.
So we’re trying again.
And maybe those of you with Safe For Work viewing histories on YouTube (cat videos and book trailers, anyone?) could take a look there, and encourage the YouTube algorithm to set itself into a less XX-rated set of Recommendeds. Or to be safe, you can just view it on the Russellscape web page, here.
Fingers crossed.
A deal on Murder!
The Murder of Mary Russell is going for a rapid paddle down the Great Brazilian River today. Yes, a special offer. You get the whole book, all the words, for just $2.99
[STOP THE PRESSES IT SEEMS TO BE $1.99 WHEE!]
(yeah, it’s the e-book and probably just the US, sorry) so you can tuck it away in your cell phone to entertain yourself standing in line at the DMV or next time your flight is cancelled or…
Hey, I write entertainments, and I’m happy to offer you and all your friends a three buck distraction. So tell everyone, and today, that it’s right here. Yay!
Race, gender, and responsibility: the face of Billy Mudd
There’s been a lot of talk recently about race and diversity in fiction and movies—a controversy over casting a black Hermione, the question of Shadow’s race in American Gods,
the troubling lack of actors of color in the nominations its for this year’s Oscars (#OscarSoWhite). And this month, the VBC have been talking (among other things) about the race of Billy Mudd in The Murder of Mary Russell.
In the Conan Doyle stories, most of the characters have no specific ethnic identity. Since Conan Doyle was British, and wrote for a British (and American) audience in Victorian times, it’s fair to say that he, his publishers, and his audience generally assumed that the characters were white/British, except when the story required a wicked Lascar, a mixed-race child (“The Yellow Face”), or the occasional stereotyped villain from America.
The problem is, Britain hasn’t been a completely white nation for a very long time.
I admit that as a writer, I tend not to think about what racial component goes into many of the people on my pages. In fact, although Mary Russell, Kate Martinelli, and some of the others have a certain amount of physical description, when it comes to the characters who are not given any clear indicators, I don’t think it matters much if the reader visualizes that person as Nordic, Nigerian, Filipino, or whatever that reader sees in the mirror each morning.
Sometimes race does matter in a story. If that’s the case, as a reader I expect to be told, either explicitly or by knowing that the character’s name is Chu, Singh, or Katanapoulis. If the author intends a Chu of Nigerian heritage or a Jim Jones who is female, that needs to be made clear fairly early on. (Although it’s part of the charm of Hilary Tamar that we don’t know which gender s/he occupies—and remember when the part of Lawrence Block’s burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr—a Jewish man’s name if ever there was one—was played not by Bruce Willis, but by Whoopi Goldberg?) Neil Gaiman’s Shadow Moon (American Gods) is consistently described as mixed race, with light grey eyes and a swarthy tone to his skin, and his mother having had sickle-cell disease would suggest African-American rather than Romany, Mediterranean, Native American, or any of the other shades of brown.
(Aside: That doesn’t mean there isn’t some justification for the confusion when Ricky Whittle was cast in the part. When Shadow spends the winter in a small town in the northeastern US, I don’t remember any particular mention being made of his standing out to any degree, which [particularly when I first read it, fifteen years ago] I’d have expected. Not in a city, maybe, or in the South, but in a small northern town? No doubt that lack of any passing comment on the part of the town sheriff, or a shopkeeper, or Shadow himself, rather… er, colored my perception of just how dark his shade of skin would be.)
If the author has provided no hints, often the case with minor characters, I’m like most readers in that I assign the character my own skin by default: white.
But about Billy Mudd. Writing a series as I do, I’m forever discovering things about my established characters. Who knew Mrs Hudson was Clarissa? I sure didn’t, until I wrote The Murder of Mary Russell. And did I know Billy was black, or at any rate, mixed race? Had no idea. And although that’s something Conan Doyle might have mentioned in his stories—might have—nothing in the Holmes canon says he’s blonde or freckled. So when I came across the following descriptive sign in the Museum of London—
—I realized that this was where Billy came from. (Sorry it’s blurry, it describes the image as: “An African crossing sweeper, St Martin’s Lane, c1830. In the 1780s there were about 5,000 people of African origin living in London….” Click on it to see it larger.)
Does it matter, that Billy’s skin has more melanin than mine? No—and yet it does. Just as it doesn’t matter that a number of characters I’ve written are gay and lesbian, and yet at the same time, yes, it does. (And again, if the character’s orientation doesn’t come up in the course of the story, I figure that some ten percent of the reading public is gay, so probably ten percent of the characters are, too. Have fun choosing which ones!) Just like, who cares if a white actor plays a role that, in the book, is unspecified? But when all those unspecified roles are filled with white faces, it very much does matter.
We’re a world of many peoples, all kinds of colors and shapes. Sometimes we writers need to remember that, and celebrate the variety.
Dressing the part of Murder
One of my favorite times on the recent tour for Murder of Mary Russell was the launch, when friends near and far gathered to celebrate the publication–and to admire the amazing donning of Victorian garb by Caroline Bellios, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Fashion and assistant director of the Fashion Resource Center at SAIC.
I got in touch with Professor Bellios when I was looking for a fun way to launch the book, and a search for Victorian cosplay enthusiasts that began with The Victorian Society of Chicago ended up with a whole lot more.
Professor Bellios started off dressed in her combinations, stockings, and shoes (once you put on a corset, you don’t want to be bending to fasten your shoes…)
She laced on her corset with the assistance of her sister, Joanna Bellios Wozniak, playing the role of lady’s maid. First Caroline worked the front hooks of the busk, then let out her breath while the laces in back were drawn tight, after which she could tie the long strings. She noted that those corsets we see in museums, which give rise to the belief that all Victorian women had 20″ waists, would in fact not have been laced all the way together, but instead would be separated by a few inches. (Which may be something of a relief, although that doesn’t account for those tiny shoes one also sees…)
Then came the petticoat–which in 1879, the year Clara Hudson meets Sherlock Holmes, would have been relatively straight, since the fashion was for the long line rather than the exaggerated hips of the crinoline era.
It was followed by the underskirt and the skirt itself, with ruffles (removable for cleaning–the streets were filthy!)
After the skirts came a many-buttoned bodice
then the jacket with its long, snug sleeves.
In 1879, hoops were long gone and even bustles were (temporarily) in abeyance, replaced by ruffles that emphasized the smooth front and dramatic back line of the skirt:
We now added a hat:
..and with a small reticule fastened to her wrist, had the very model of the Victorian lady, out to conquer the world:
Professor Bellios even brought a few actual vintage garments, including gorgeously delicate silk 1920s undergarments, and a Victorian corset and pair of bustles, one with wires, the other composed of tightly-stuffed linen rolls (horsehair, probably).
This really was a thrill, and I owe a Victorian boat-load of thanks to Caroline and her sister, to Anderson’s at Naperville, and to long-time friend of Russell and photographic genius John Bychowski, who took all these photos except the last. (John is also a moderator in the Book Club.)
Finally, if you’d like to add a couple of pages to your meditative coloring book, a page illustrating a lady’s Victorian garments is here, with its 1925 counterpart here.
An everyday god on the road
As you probably know, I’ve been on the road since last Tuesday, talking about The Murder of Mary Russell in a variety of bookstores, tea shops, and even an opera house.
During that time, I’ve also been listening to the talk about it, in person and on Facebook, and I’m so very happy that you’ve been loving it even more than I. A book tour is a strange thing. Airports are diabolical in their ability to play on the nerves, airline apps that work fine one day turn their backs the next. E-boarding passes vanish. One scuffles onto and off of planes, sometimes on the same day–yesterday I landed in Austin at one, did an event for Book People at two, and got back on a plane at five, leaving my poor brain to wonder…What just happened there?
Even stranger is what it does to the self. Fifty weeks a year, I sit in my study and push words around on paper and screen, muttering snippets of dialogue under my breath, breaking off to make a cup of tea or greet the UPS lady in the driveway. I cook dinner, unload the dishwasher, do the laundry, tell myself I really need to mop the floor. Groceries need buying, packages need mailing at the post office, and grandsons demand complicated structures involving pvc pipe and golf balls on the deck.
Then I come on tour, and I’m a god. Beautiful and intelligent young women stand before me with shaking hands and halting tongues, trying to express how much it means to them that I deign to speak my gracious words in their direction. Lawyers and teachers break into smiles and say that they’ve been taking joy in my work since The Beekeeper’s Apprentice came into their hands twenty years before. People at the end of the line bend to unload a vast stack of clearly read and loved books that have been awaiting my signature since the collection began many years before.
And they leave with The Murder of Mary Russell treasured in both hands, as if I’ve given them a gift rather than made them spend $28 for a few hours’ reading.
And all that? It makes the airport hassles vanish in the past.
Yes, that sounds like him
One of the fun parts of The Murder of Mary Russell is that we see a very young Sherlock Holmes. Even then, he sounds very like himself…
**
The Murder of Mary Russell can be ordered as:
A signed US hardback from Bookshop Santa Cruz or Poisoned Pen Books
An unsigned hardback or ebook from B&N/Nook or Amazon/Kindle
A UK hardback from Waterstones, or hard/ebook from Amazon UK.
Street Life of London
Parts of The Murder of Mary Russell take place in 1925, but much of it goes back to the mid-nineteenth century.
Isembard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian spirit.
The Victorian era was a time of brilliant light, spectacular technological development, and enormous social development.
For the wealthy.
Gustave Doré
For the rest, it was a time of rotting teeth, foul diseases, hunger, cold, and the workhouse.
Life expectancy was in the low 40s, one in five children died before their fifth birthday, and the Thames in London stank like the sewer it was.
In 1876, the year young Clara Hudson was returning to London in The Murder of Mary Russell, photographer John Thompson set up his camera tripod and began to record the lives of common people in the capital city. He was joined by radical journalist Adolphe Smith, whose essays describe, in honest and even affectionate terms, the men and women in Thompson’s photographs. Here are the dustmen with their spavined horses, the public disinfectors, the Covent Garden labourers, baskets on head. Men carry advertising boards, men work on the decks of barges.
And the women in their many-layered clothing, their faces worn-down and older than their years, but their eyes gaze into Thompson’s big lens with dignity and strength.
And the children? They look cold and wary even in the photographs of summer.
You can read Street Life in London online, and there’s a video made from the photographs:
The Murder of Mary Russell can ordered as:
A signed US hardback from Bookshop Santa Cruz or Poisoned Pen Books
An unsigned hardback or ebook from B&N/Nook or Amazon/Kindle
A UK hardback from Waterstones, or hard/ebook from Amazon UK.
Women’s dress: 1879 & 1925
A key date in The Murder of Mary Russell is 1879, when Sherlock Holmes and his future landlady meet. The other date is, of course, 1925, when Mary Russell…well.
One thing that fascinated me is the difference in clothing between those two periods. Yes, Russell tends to wear her father’s old suits, but she couldn’t have got away with that in 1879.
One doesn’t think of the Victorian era as a time of rapid change, when it comes to women’s clothing, but in fact, even a relative neophyte to the history of fashion quickly begins to spot the differences.
John O’Connor
In the mid-1850s, multiple petticoats were replaced by crinolines, hooped skirts made of various materials but often steel. For a decade, huge and unwieldy skirts reigned supreme. Then in the 1870s, crinolines shrank into crinolettes, then bustles, until in 1879 the fashion was for the so-called “natural form” (hah!) of a long, rigidly corseted torso, a petticoat that emphasized the skirt backs, and a train.
During the 19th century, a woman wore 25 or more pounds of clothing—and that was before she put on her outer cloak. In 1863, at the height of the hoop skirt, 2500 people died in a church fire in Santiago, Chile, when crinolines blocked the way to escape. Throughout the century, women died when their skirts caught flame, or drowned when they slipped into the stream fetching water and their clothing pulled them under.
I was interested in the many and incredibly complex layers of clothing a Victorian woman wore (for an illustration of dressing, click here.)
The technology of the corset reminds me of a ship’s rigging, a series of balanced tensions and surfaces—and if I had to put one on every day, I’d probably throttle myself.
Why, even a woman’s drawers were engineered to meet the needs of a woman who couldn’t reach past her skirts, and couldn’t bend her torso.
Compare with this a woman’s dress in 1925, when The Murder of Mary Russell opens. Perhaps three or four pounds of clothing, half of which is on the feet.
I’ve made a handout for stores to give out at my events—you can print them out, and even use them as a two-page coloring book, if you like. The Victorian page is here, the 1925 version here.
The Murder of Mary Russell may be ordered as:
A signed US hardback from Bookshop Santa Cruz or Poisoned Pen Books
An unsigned hardback or ebook from B&N/Nook or Amazon/Kindle
A UK hardback from Waterstones or hard/ebook from Amazon UK.