Timothy Miller's Blog, page 3

Review: The Versailles Formula

The Versailles Formula starts with an eerie, haunting image: a ghost patters down a long, dark hallway night after night, past a suit of armor, trying in vain to seize its prize, the portrait of an angel--but always vanishing before he wins his goal. Genevieve Sturbridge nee Planche is back. And solving this mystery will only lead to more mysteries, a trail of bodies, and desperate danger.
Genevieve, of course, is the Huguenot heroine with French heritage and British loyalties, with one foot in t...

First Book Redux

 I've been behind-hand in reminding you about my favorite cause, First Book. With the administration threatening to shut down the department of Eduction, First Book's mission becomes even more vital. And what's the mission?

To put books into the hands of kids who can't afford them.

I know there are a lot of things poor kids need: food, shelter, safety, love. Having grown up in the projects, I have more than a passing acquaintance with those needs. But from an early age, reading was as important to...

Review: My Name Is Emilia del Valle

 I was afraid the book had gotten away from her. It had gotten away from me, and I thought irretrievably. It begins slowly like one of those austere Chilean warships, becomes unwieldy, and when the engine explodes, I was sure we were going to the bottom. It sailed into port like a hand in a silk glove. But let me try to be a little more prosaic. 

The titular Emilia del Valle grows up in San Fransisco during the 1890s, the last gasp of the gold rush. Her mother, an Irish girl, was about to take he...

Who will play the Sherlocks?

 

Sherlock Holmes devotees all have an opinion on one crucial question: Who played the best Sherlock? From William Gillette to Benedict Cumberbatch, they will wrangle over every actor who was ever measured for a deerstalker cap. Writers of Sherlock Holmes pastiches have a slightly different question, however:

Who would play my Sherlock best?

 

Or in my case, my Sherlocks. (Well,  it'sConan Doyle's Sherlock, of course, but my transliterations thereof.) And I use the plural because I have written thre...

Tom Robbins on writing

 

Tom Robbins, best known as the author of eight remarkable, subversive novels, died this month at the age of 92. Here's Robbins laying down the rules of writing:

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.

--Tom Robbins

May he rest in rebelliousness, riotousness, and redemption.

Favorite ...

Memory is a dangerous neighborhood

 

An odd thing happened recently. I was thinking of an old friend who's in the hospital. A song came to mind: the Doobie Brothers' For Someone Special. And then I thought of the first jukebox I first  heard the song on (pointed out to me by a friend as the B side of Takin' It to the Streets).

It was the jukebox in the first bar I worked at, over forty years ago in New Orleans, a college bar located in the armpit of Tulane University called The Boot. I could picture that jukebox, its location just ...

Inventing astrology

 

The origins of astrology are cloudy. The sky has been a problem for man ever

since the dawn of time, or possibly later that same week. What is the sky? asked primitive man. How far up does it go? What holds it up? How often should it be mowed? Is my neighbor Og’s sky bluer than mine? Does it cross the line into my sky?

Primitive man was extremely territorial.

Early civilizations avoided looking at the sky, afraid that it might get angry and fall on them. Assyrian nobles favored their much taller H...

How astrology was invented

 

The origins of astrology are cloudy. The sky has been a problem for man ever
since the dawn of time, or possibly later that same week. What is the sky? asked primitive man. How far up does it go? What holds it up? How often should it be mowed? Is my neighbor Og’s sky bluer than mine? Does it cross the line into my sky?

Primitive man was extremely territorial.

Early civilizations avoided looking at the sky, afraid that it might get angry and fall on them. Assyrian nobles favored their much taller H...

Happy Shadow Day

In 1962, the song "Me and My Shadow" seemingly enjoyed a renaissance. I say "seemingly" because that's the way I remember it. I was only four at the time, and the first time I saw it performed on tv, I thought it was a new song. That's the way it is when you are very young; each new encounter is a reinvention of the world.

In fact, the song was written in 1927, if Wikipedia is to be believed, by Al Jolson, Billy Rose, and Dave Dreyer. It's been performed by a hosts of artists since. In 1962, it s...

Third Villain

 

As you may know, I published a novel in 2020 called The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle, in which Sherlock Holmes investigates the transformation of Eliza (lifted from Shaw's Pygmalion)  from a girl of the streets into a lady who could pass for a duchess. There are three villains in the mix, two from the world of literature and one from history. There's one guy who did not make the cut for my third villain, though I was sorely tempted:

Rupert of Hentzau.

Not familiar with the name? Maybe this quo...