C.S. Harris's Blog, page 9

Sunlight on Ripened Grain

Indie's gone. We were hoping for weeks, maybe even months. Instead, we had hours. He's left a yawning hole in our lives and in our hearts.

Do not stand on my grave and weep;I am not there. I do not sleep.I am a thousand winds that blow.I am the diamond glints on snow.I am the sunlight on ripened grain.I am the gentle autumn's rain.When you awaken in the morning's hush,I am the swift uplifting rushOf quiet birds in the circled flight.I am the soft stars that shine at night.Do not stand at my gave and cry.I am not there. I did not die.by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Indie Update

We're bringing Indie home today. It is FIP. All we can do is make him comfortable and love him for however many days he has left.

Indie Is Dangerously Sick

I'd planned to do an excited post about my book tour, but I came home to a very sick kitten, and somehow I just can't.

At first, Steve thought Indie was lethargic and not eating because he was missing me. As a result, the alarm bells didn't ring until late Saturday night, when he took a turn for the worse and Steve rushed him to the emergency vet. We took him back this morning, and the vet kept him. They're doing tests but not sure yet what it is--he may have come to us with FIP, which is being complicated by exposure to a flare in Huck's chronic toxoplasmosis. Whatever, he's very dangerously ill.

I think I took all the heartache from losing Banjo last summer and poured it into the tiny kitten that showed up at my door a few weeks later. He's the sweetest little guy imaginable, and I'm so afraid.

This Is the Week!

I'm all packed and ready to head out on my book tour, which officially kicks off with a signing at Garden District Bookshop here in New Orleans on launch day, Tuesday, March 3. Then I'll be heading out to Phoenix on Wednesday, Houston on Thursday, Portland on Friday, and Seattle on Saturday. You can see the schedule   here.

I also have a  guest blog, an interviews, and several new reviews up around the web:

Julie at Romancing the Book has a fun interview with me here. You can read her review of Who Buries the Dead (keep scrolling down below the book blurb)  here .
       
I also have a guest post up at Fresh Fiction. They asked me to write about any real historical events in any of my books, so I talk about the events that inspired Who Buries the Dead. You can read it
here.

And here's their review of the book: http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id=51086.

Busy, exciting week coming up!

Radio Interview on WWNO

I'll be doing an interview onTuesday, 24 February, with Susan Larson on The Reading Life, talking about the next Sebastian St. Cyr mystery, Who Buries the Dead. If you live in New Orleans, you can listen to it at 1:30 p.m. Central Time at WWNO 89.9. It will also be rebroadcast this Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at noon. If you're not in New Orleans, you can listen to it live stream by going to http://wwno.org/listen. You'll also be able to go to the website and find a link to the podcast on the lower right section of the page.

In other news, I've been working on the outline for the twelfth Sebastian St. Cyr book, Where the Dead Lie, although I'm still not quite ready to sit down and write yet.  I've also been doing a ton of interviews and guest blogs for various sites, and I'll be posting those when they go up. 
And I'm gearing up to head out on my book tour next week. Just seven days until Who Buries the Dead hits the stores!

Happy Mardi Gras, Everyone!

It's Mardi Gras time here in New Orleans. That means parades, king cakes, mounds of beads, house guests, crawfish boils, traffic jams, and late nights.

I've been in the city long enough that I take a rather laid back approach to Carnival. If the weather's beautiful and the crowds aren't too hideous, I go. This past weekend, the weather was gorgeous.
Today is Lundi Gras, the day before Mardi Gras, so of course everything is closed and I have husband and DD2 home from work/uni (DD1 is already driving back to San Antonio). I'm going to TRY to work on plotting out Where the Dead Lie. But it's already noon and I'm still nursing a latte....

The Subconscious Is a Scary Thing

As a writer, I've learned to trust my subconscious. If I'm having trouble with a plot, I'll go off and do other things for a few hours (or a few days) and let my subconscious work on the problem (sort of like an alcoholic turning things over to his higher power). The answer always seems to pop into my head eventually in some mysterious but helpful fashion, and while I'm always grateful, I've never questioned the alchemy involved too closely.

Yet even after all these years, the process can still sometimes take me by surprise. Remember the cross-dressing Frenchman, La Chapelle/Serena Fox, in WHY KINGS CONFESS? At the time I wrote that book, I could not have told you where he came from. All I knew was that he was a great character, particularly for a murder with a mysterious female shoe print left at the scene of the crime.

But then the other day when I was doing some research on French spies in London, I ran across a reference to the Chevalier d'Eon and went, "Oh, yeah!" You see, I now remember reading about d'Eon some thirty years ago (Jeez; was it that long ago? Yikes.) when I was doing historical research in Paris. But I had totally, totally forgotten about him.

So who was he? Born into an impoverished noble family, he joined the army, fought in the Seven Years' War, was a noted fencer,  and dressed as a woman to serve as a spy for Louis XV in Russia and England. In fact, for the last 30 years of his life he dressed as a woman. There is no doubt in my mind that he inspired the character I created, but it all took place in my subconscious.

And that's scary.

P.S. I've also been criticized by people who found Sebastian's easy acceptance of Serena in that book an anachronism. Yet a betting pool was actually started in London about d'Eon's true sex, with the Chevalier himself being good-naturely invited to take part. He was even allowed to attend court dressed as a woman when he returned to Paris. He claimed to have been born female, but after his death he was discovered to be anatomically male.

He What?

So the art department was getting ready to do the photo shoot for the cover of #11, WHEN FALCONS FALL, and they went to book the same male model they used for WHY KINGS CONFESS, WHO BURIES THE DEAD, and the new cover of WHAT ANGELS FEAR. And they were told....

He's gone. He joined the Navy.

Oh, dear. To be frank, he never looked like Sebastian to me. I still like the KINGS cover, but not so much the way he looks in the other two. Now they're scrambling to find someone who sort of looks like him. I said, "Can't we just get someone who looks good?"

And maybe, just maybe, can you let me help pick him?

So far, I haven't received an answer on that.

In other news, here's another great review of WHO BURIES THE DEAD, this one from RT.

So This Arrived in Today's Mail...

Yes, it's a copy of WHO BURIES THE DEAD, hot off the press.

This time of year is always oddly unsettling because I'm dealing with three Sebastian books at once. This morning, I was busy plotting out Book # 12 (Where the Dead Lie), when my editor called to talk about the edits and cover conference for Book #11 (When Falcons Fall). Then the doorbell rings and it's the postman with boxes and boxes of #10, Who Buries the Dead, which is scheduled to be released the first Tuesday of next month.

I tend to get a little confused.

The good news is that my editor loves When Falcons Fall. She's the first person apart from my husband, Steve, who has read it, and he thinks it's the best book in the series so far (I think my own favorite is still Why Mermaids Sing....). But my editor agrees with him, so maybe he was on to something. And I'm sorry if that comes off sounding like teasing since y'all won't be seeing that book for another thirteen months, but it's such a wonderful feeling to know that the book works, and the Powers That Be are happy, and I'm not looking at a huge rewrite (which would be difficult given that I am gearing up to go on tour for Who Buries the Dead).

On other fronts, it's been so cold that we haven't been able to deal with our bee problem yet. And it's Mardi Gras time here in New Orleans again, so you know what that means.

Looking Ahead

Whenever I finish a book, I try to spend some time doing all the things I put off while I was caught up in the throes of writing. I clean my office, work in my garden, tackle some of the house repair projects I'm always putting off, etc. In the process of reorganizing my files this past week, I found some notes I'd written back in 2003, outlining my vision for the future of the Sebastian St. Cyr series. I was stunned to realize that I am now starting book #12 and I STILL haven't done some of the things I'd envisioned happening by the end of book #5! Which made me laugh--and also caused me to give some thought to what lies ahead.

Someone suggested recently that I add to my website a peek at what lies ahead, so I thought I'd do that here. As you know, I've just finished #11, and it now has a title: WHEN FALCONS FALL. Not my first choice (I wanted When Doves Fall), but I'm getting used to it. And the nice thing is that I already have approval for the title of #12, which is still only in the beginnings of the outline stage: Where the Dead Lie. 

How many more books will there be? I honestly don't know. But sales are still growing, my publisher is more strongly behind me than ever, and I have a lot of Sebastian and Hero stories I still want to tell.

In addition to dealing with my ever-growing To Do list, I'll be spending the next month plotting out #12, writing guest blogs for a number of sites that will be featuring Who Buries the Dead next month, and getting ready for my book tour the first week in March. I'm really looking forward to meeting my readers in Houston, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle, and wish I could be going to even more cities.

I'm also planning a redo of my website, although that won't happen until April. My webmistress recently reminded me that it's been eight years now since she first did my site and pointed out that sites are much wider now than when my current one was made. So I'm going to be giving lots of thought to that and welcome any ideas for improvements.

There's a bunch of other stuff going on--I should be able to show you the cover for the audio book of Who Buries the Dead soon. And I may finally be officially getting the rights back for my first seven historical romances so that I can do something with them. But today I'm dealing with a swarm of bees that seems to have decided to make my home their home. I have a bee keeper coming this morning, so wish me luck!