C.S. Harris's Blog, page 4

Three More Sebastians!

I can finally announce that I have accepted an offer from Penguin Random House for three more Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries: #13, 14, and 15 (#12, WHERE THE DEAD LIE, will be out next spring).



I won't deny that with all the firings and cuts at PRH these last ten months or so, I've been just a wee bit tense. I lost my long-time editor last summer, and then a few weeks ago news broke that they were cutting twenty mystery series--and that was only the beginning. So I'm even more excited about this contract than I normally am. And the three-book offer is a nice surprise--in the past I've only signed two-book contracts.


They assure me they're more behind the series than ever before. So now I can relax, take a deep breath, and get back to writing WHY SOMETHING SOMETHINGS!

The London of Sebastian St. Cyr: Pickering Place

I have news about THREE different developments I've been hoping I could announce this week (don't get too excited; only one of them is about Sebastian St. Cyr and no, it's not a film deal). But since my ability to talk about them keeps getting delayed, I thought I'd put up a post about Pickering Place.
Pickering Place is a tiny, totally enclosed square in London, just off St. James Street. It can only be entered through this tunnel-like passageway that's still lined with its original, 17th century oak paneling:
The square itself still has all its 18th century Georgian buildings. In Sebastian's time it was a pretty rowdy place, home to gambling dens and brothels and bear-baiting. It's also said to be the site of the last duel ever fought in London, when two bucks got into a quarrel in Whites and crossed the street to have it out in Pickering Place. Seems a pretty crowded spot to me, but then, one assumes they were drunk. 
The above tunnel runs between two old 16th century shops on St. James Street. One of them is Berry Brothers and Rudd, the famous wine merchants whose cellars run under the entire area. Berry Brothers is also the site of the large coffee scales where the Prince Regent and Beau Brummell used to weigh themselves. 

Sebastian has ventured into Pickering Place a few times in earlier books, but the square plays a key role in book #12, Where the Dead Lie, which is currently working its way through production and will be released in March 2017. 
Hopefully next week I can put up the first post about my news!

Looking Ahead

I've been busy the last couple of weeks with book signings for WHEN FALCONS FALL plus struggling with the editorial revisions (i.e., the revisions suggested by my editor) to #12, which is probably going to be titled WHERE THE DEAD LIE. I have some exciting news I still can't talk about, but hopefully soon. I'm still working on getting my first historical novels up as ebooks--oye, but it's a lot of work and aggravation. But for those of you who are curious, here's a sneak peek at the first chapter of Where the Dead Lie, coming March 2017:

Chapter 1
Monday, 13 September 1813: hours before dawn The boy hated this part. Hated the eerie way the pale, waxen faces of the dead seemed to glow in the faintest moonlight. Hated being left alone with a stiffening body while he dug its grave. He kicked the shovel deep into the ground and felt his heart leap painfully in his chest when the scrape of dirt against metal sounded dangerously loud in the stillness of the night. He sucked in a quick breath, the musty smell of damp earth thick in his nostrils, his fingers tightening on the smooth wooden handle as he paused to cast a panicked glance over one shoulder. A mist was drifted up from the Fleet to curl around the base of the nearby shot tower and creep along the crumbling brick walls of the abandoned warehouses beyond it. He heard a dog bark somewhere in the distance and, nearer, a soft thump.What was that?The boy waited, his mouth dry, his body tense and trembling. But the sound was not repeated. He swiped a ragged sleeve across his sweaty face, swallowed hard, and bent into his work. He was uncomfortably aware of the cloaked gentleman watching from the seat of the cart that waited at the edge of the field. The gentleman had helped drag Benji’s body over to the looming shot tower. But he never helped dig. Gentlemen didn’t dig graves, although they could and did kill with a vicious delight that made the boy shiver as he threw another shovelful of dirt onto the growing pile.The hole was beginning to take shape. Another six inches or so and he’d—“Hey!”The boy’s head snapped around, and he froze. A ragged, skeletally thin figure lurched from the gaping doorway of one of the tumbledown warehouses. “Wot ye doin’ there?”The shovel hit the ground with a clatter as the boy bolted. He fell into the newly dug grave and went down, floundering in the loose dirt. Feet flailing, he reared up on splayed hands, found solid ground, and pushed off. “Oye!” shouted the ghostly specter.The boy tore across the uneven field, his breath soughing in and out, his feet pounding. He saw the gentleman in the cart jerk, saw him gather the reins and spank them hard against his horse’s rump.“Wait for me!” screamed the boy as the cart lurched forward, its iron-rimmed wheels rattling over the rutted lane. “Stop!’The gentleman urged the horse into a wild canter. He did not look back.The boy leapt a low, broken stretch of the stone wall that edged the field. “Come back!”The cart careened around the corner and out of sight, but the boy tore after it anyway. Surely the gentleman would stop for him? He wouldn’t simply leave him, would he? Would he? The boy was sobbing now, his nose running, his chest aching as he fought to draw air into his lungs. It wasn’t until he reached the corner himself that he dared risk a frantic look back. That’s when he realized the skeletal figure wasn’t following him. The man—for the boy saw now that it was a man and not some hideous apparition—had paused beside the raw, unfinished grave. And he was staring down at what was left of Benji Thatcher. 

A Wonderful Saturday

Saturday was my first FALCONS book signing, at Garden District Book Store here in New Orleans. Thanks to everyone who turned out; it was a lot of fun.



Steve, Danielle and I then went and walked around the Big Lake at City Park. The weather was glorious and the tulips were still in bloom. Tulips do not grow naturally here in New Orleans and need to be dug up and refrigerated.  But since I grew up in colder climes where spring meant tulips and daffodils, it was wonderful seeing them. We then went out to dinner and I had a decadent desert.


All in all a wonderful day!

March 1st is here!

Today is release day!
And for those of you who like to listen to the books, I have some good news: the Audible version, narrated by Davina Porter, should be up in a day or two, as well. And wonder of all wonders, they've given it essentially the same cover:

In fact, this one's kinda cool because you can see parts of the artist's original painting that the art director cropped out. 
Blogger is really not cooperating with me here, but hopefully it will straighten out its issues soon.

Books Signings for WHEN FALCONS FALL

Release date is one week from today! (And I'm wondering, Did no one look at the calendar and realize 1 March also just happens to be Super Tuesday?)

No grand book signing tour this year, but I do have a few signings lined up.

First up is a signing here in New Orleans at the Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania Street, at 1:00 pm on Saturday, 5 March.

And then on 19 March I'll be doing a signing in Houston at Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet. That'll be at 4:30 pm.

On May 7th, I'll be in Phoenix, Arizona, for a small conference at The Poisoned Pen. More about that later.

And then in September I'll be at the Bouchercon Conference here in New Orleans. There will be a signing associated with that, but nothing has been finalized yet.

I think I mentioned before that WHEN FALCONS FALL takes place entirely outside London--far from London, in fact. It makes for an interesting and different dynamic.

And Another Great Review, This One from Library Journal

Release date is just two weeks away! I'm currently nursing an awful cold and trying to summon the energy to clean up the mess left by some "minor" renovations that were supposed to take 1 1/2 days last week and instead $$$$$stretched to yesterday. But anyway, here is a great review from Library Journal:

WHEN FALCONS FALL: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery by C. S. Harris
"When Emily Chance's body is discovered near the Shropshire village of Ayleswick-on-Teme in 1813, the local squire calls on Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, to investigate the suspicious death. Sebastian soon discovers that the widow was not what she pretended to be and several people had motives for her murder. [I'm going to snip a few lines here about aristocrats and smugglers and Lucien Bonaparte because I don't want to give away a key plot point.] It's up to Sebastian and Hero, his intrepid wife, to figure out which secret killed Emily before it destroys them, too. VERDICT Harris's 11th series installment (after Who Buries the Dead) is both an engrossing tangled mystery and astonishing tale about a tragic search for identity. An excellent choice for St. Cyr fans and readers of historical mysteries. ---Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC, Duluth, GA"

Historical Novel Society Reviews FALCONS

Another wonderful review, this one from the Historical Novel Society:

When Falcons Fall: A Sebastian St. Cyr MysterySt. Cyr, better known to his readers as Devlin, arrives with his family in a small Shropshire village in 1813, ostensibly on a quest to discover the truth about his own identity and to pay homage to a slain friend. What he finds on his journey is more than he bargained for.Of course, Devlin quickly becomes involved in a murder investigation. Despite the town’s efforts to classify the death of a young widow, found dead on the banks of the river, as a suicide, the pieces don’t fit. Why is Emma Chance in Ayleswick? Who is she sketching and why? As Devlin digs deeper, he learns she is not the first young woman to have died under mysterious circumstances.The inhabitants of Ayleswick are not what they seem, either. The town takes on a personality of its own – a history of deadly fire, black market doings, and just plain bad folks with nasty secrets. To add to this messy stew is newly ensconced Lucien Bonaparte, estranged brother of Napoleon, who appears to have more up his sleeve than first appears.What a delight!  Not just a fun romp, this is well-written and plotted, and, again, as Devlin attempts to sort out truth from artifice, a showpiece for Harris to create wonderfully fleshed out and complex characters.  One of the best Devlin entries, and highly recommended!

Happy Mardi Gras!

This is the time of the year when everyone else in the country hums along working as usual while New Orleans spends ten days throwing a crazy wild party. Even if you don't go to parades (and I'll confess that these days I usually only go one day or night), it's hard to escape the spirit of the times. A huge percentage of businesses and factories close Monday and Tuesday; all the schools do (actually, many are closed on Wednesday, too, in anticipation of everyone being too hungover to be of any use).

So here are some photos, including a shot of the 610 Stompers, a male marching group that is a real hoot. And at the end is a video I made for Danielle a few years ago when she was going to school down in Florida and very unhappy that she was missing all the fun. Happy Mardi Gras, everyone!

The Book Video for WHEN FALCONS FALL

I tried to upload this video directly to the blog, but it didn't work. So here's the embedded YouTube version. (Sorry about any resultant ad.) You can click on the lower right corner to make it full screen.