As has become our habit during the Fifteen Weeks, Thursday is guest post day. This time I’m visiting the Tome Traveller, who herself is just back from the UK. Her post yesterday is a review of The Language of Bees, although if you don’t want spoilers, you might want to keep your eyes averted from that one…
Week twelve: research
The excellent Tony Broadbent, whose books I adore (surely Jethro the cat burglar and Mary Russell met, sometime?) asks, what is the proper collective noun for a set of Russells? A hive? A buzz? A sting? He nominates honey-pot—and please note: pot, not bucket.
The lady in question has posted a Myspace blog today, for week 12 of our fast-departing Fifteen Weeks of Bees, which finds things heating up in Oxford town for the world’s greatest detective, and her husband.
And this week’s contest is on YouTube, which is very lonely.
********
One of the purposes of this blog has been to allow me to talk about the writing process while it’s actually going on. I’m not a writer who likes someone looking over her shoulder (although I did that, more or less literally, with my writer’s improv, and may do so again for BoucherCon 2010.) I do not ask for feedback while the material is still being shaped, from family, friends, or a writers’ group. However, there are times when it’s valuable to me, and I assume of interest to some of you, to step back and think aloud about the process.
One question that often comes up, particularly regarding the historical novels, is research. And I think the question comes not because the person asking it is considering writing their own historical novel, but because they are interested in how one assembles the raw material and, more mysterious yet, how one carves it into a narrative.
In the interest of providing you with the material to craft your own version of The Language of Bees, we’ve posted links on the book page to a whole bunch of the material that went into the story. Cruise through, taste and sample the page on Norse Gods, study the pictures of the Stones of Stenness, wonder at the life and times of Aleister Crowley. Then, when you’ve finished, let me know what you think The Language of Bees is going to be about.
(This is not, by the way, for those of you who’ve already read an ARC…)
Red hot links
We got your red-hot links, right here, ground fine and fired up for your enjoyment.
First off is a video production of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Well, parts of it. Actually it’s a video of the Sussex landscape where Russell and Holmes live, with yours truly reading from the book.
Then there’s a podcast, or an MP3cast, of me again, talking to Rick Kleffel about writing, Russell, and the whole Fifteen Weeks of Bees thing.
And last but by no means least, to fulfill the print quota for the day, I have an interview over at International Thriller Writers about The Language of Bees.
For those of you who read this blog at work, tell your boss it’s research.
Literary sex
If, as Kurt Vonnegut declares, unusual travel invitations are dancing lessons from God, then the invites have been running hot this week. Wednesday’s memorable seder was followed by last night’s…reading? at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco. Minal Hajratwala’s memories of her Indian family, Stacie Boschma’s slam reading that was the very definition of performance poetry, Sean Stewart’s oddly moving dialogue between Yoda and Count Dracu, and Pam Houston giving us four cities and four adventures from a work in progress. Three of the four were about sex, more or less. In a bar packed to the brim with nicely intoxicated and enthusiastically raucous literary enthusiasts, who hooted loudly at the mention of, well, pretty much anything—body parts, Star Wars, bifocal lenses—made for the kind of reading you won’t see in too many parts of the world.
I hadn’t been to The Make-Out Room before, but I had a pretty good idea what I was in for: sex scenes. However, as you may have noticed, the Russell & Holmes novels don’t do a whole lot of sex, and I didn’t want to read from one of the older books that has a more graphic scene (anyway, as graphic as I do) such as Darker Place or Touchstone. So I read a discussion from Language of Bees between Mary Russell and 87 year old Clarice Ledger about sex. And black mass, and punting, and grouse.
The audience was very polite. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that they’d prefer the Touchstone scene where the young politician has symbolic intercourse with his lover’s country manor house.
Maybe next time…
And if you’re looking for something to do in SF on the second Saturday of the month, drop in at the Make-Out Room. Tell Charlie Jane (the world’s most enthusiastic MC) that Laurie sent you.
Week Five: Hey, an excerpt!
Just in case one or two of you might have been waiting to read The Language of Bees, I should mention that we’ve posted a two-chapter excerpt on the webpage—
BUT, before I get trampled in the rush to get over there, can I remind you of two things?
One, there are still ten Weeks of Bees left in the Russell celebration, which means ten (actually more than ten) giveaways and contests, which you can peruse here. Fanfiction, Russellisms, crossword puzzles, and just plain drawings. And some of the prizes are pretty great.
And two, if you wish to order The Language of Bees now, you can do so two ways: at the LRK Amazon shop, which puts a percentage not only of the book but of everything you buy from Amazon that time into our fund donating beehives to Heifer International.
OR, if you want a signed copy, you can get one from Crossroads Books, Poisoned Pen Books, Capitola Bookcafe, or any of the stores I’m stopping at during my tour (events tour will be posted here tomorrow!)
So now, with no further ado, chapters one and two of The Language of Bees. Enjoy.