I apologize for the lateness of this post. I had a medical appointment early this morning and it’s taken me awhile to get caught up. (I’m still not caught up, but it’s time I got this done and posted.) I have a medical condition known as psoriatic arthritis, an auto-immune disease, and every eight weeks I have to go get hitched up to an IV for a Remicade infusion. It takes about three hours, while I sit in a very comfortable chair and read. I would have brought my laptop along except it’s having battery problems – the charge runs out in minutes. I finished Dr. Bob Brier’s The Murder of Tutankhamen. It’s a wonderful book and I recommend it.
Saturday I had a publication party at Once Upon A Crime Mystery Bookstore in Minneapolis. Pat and Gary are wonderful to local authors, and we had a good turnout. There were Christmas cookies and hot chai tea for the customers. I don’t think any were new readers, though several were buying books as Christmas presents to introduce friends or family to my Betsy Devonshire series. And I bought some books myself: the well-reviewed Ellery Adams mystery, The Last Word. I don’t like starting a series in the middle, but since this got such a rave review I decided I’d take a chance. I haven’t started it yet. And since I finished Professor Huang’s marvelous take on Charlie Chan, I asked Gary if they had any of Earl Derr Biggers novels about the detective – and they do. Academy Chicago Publishers has brought all six out in trade paperback size, and they had all but number one on their shelves. I bought the remaining five, one of my Christmas presents to myself. They'll go on my TBR stack, probably near the top.
I have another signing this coming Saturday at Excelsior Bay Books in Excelsior, MN, where my Betsy Devonshire mysteries are set. They're the ones who found The Murder of Tutankhamen for me.
How many of you – unlike me – are all ready for Christmas?
Showing posts with label Charlie Chan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlie Chan. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Threadbare, Charlie Chan
December 10 is suddenly very close. That’s the pub date of Threadbare, the fifteenth Betsy Devonshire needlework mystery. I think it’s a pretty good story, about the murder of two homeless women. The murderer obviously thinks they were throw-aways, but they were people with dreams and hopes like anyone, and they had families who cared about them. It was interesting doing the research on the homeless. And sad. Some of them are people fate ganged up on, but others seemed to set out to make themselves homeless and no amount of intervention or aid could stop them.
I keep having to get out a bookmark listing the needlework titles and counting them, as I find it had to believe this is number fifteen. It didn’t seem all that long ago I was working on number seven. But number seven was Cutwork, and now I think again, that was a long time ago.
Meanwhile I’m still struggling with And Then You Dye, though it is moving, if reluctantly. I got a one-month extension of the deadline, for which I am grateful.
I keep a book on my headboard to read a little before I go to sleep. Right now I am reading a marvelous book: Charlie Chan, the Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang, who was born in China and who is currently a professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I have loved the Earl Derr Biggers’ novels, which I read after enjoying the Charlie Chan movies, particularly the ones in which the title role was played by Warner Oland. I never thought of the Charlie Chan stories as racist – Charlie was brighter, more honest, and had more integrity than any of the other characters. Some of the other characters were racist about the Chinese and were always shown as seriously mistaken in their attitudes. The racist element in the later movies involved an irritating black caricature played by Mantan Morland, who played him as excitable, stupid and cowardly – nobody like him appears in the novels. Considering that these novels appeared at about the same time as the Fu Manchu stories, which were very racist, Charlie Chan is even more remarkable. What’s interesting is that Charlie Chan was based on a real Honolulu police detective named Chang Apana, whose extraordinary life story is told by Professor Huang in the first half of the book. I can hardly wait for bedtime to continue reading.
What are you reading right now?
I keep having to get out a bookmark listing the needlework titles and counting them, as I find it had to believe this is number fifteen. It didn’t seem all that long ago I was working on number seven. But number seven was Cutwork, and now I think again, that was a long time ago.
Meanwhile I’m still struggling with And Then You Dye, though it is moving, if reluctantly. I got a one-month extension of the deadline, for which I am grateful.
I keep a book on my headboard to read a little before I go to sleep. Right now I am reading a marvelous book: Charlie Chan, the Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang, who was born in China and who is currently a professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I have loved the Earl Derr Biggers’ novels, which I read after enjoying the Charlie Chan movies, particularly the ones in which the title role was played by Warner Oland. I never thought of the Charlie Chan stories as racist – Charlie was brighter, more honest, and had more integrity than any of the other characters. Some of the other characters were racist about the Chinese and were always shown as seriously mistaken in their attitudes. The racist element in the later movies involved an irritating black caricature played by Mantan Morland, who played him as excitable, stupid and cowardly – nobody like him appears in the novels. Considering that these novels appeared at about the same time as the Fu Manchu stories, which were very racist, Charlie Chan is even more remarkable. What’s interesting is that Charlie Chan was based on a real Honolulu police detective named Chang Apana, whose extraordinary life story is told by Professor Huang in the first half of the book. I can hardly wait for bedtime to continue reading.
What are you reading right now?
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Left Coast Crime
Even though this posts on Saturday, I’m writing it Friday night. Did I really get home from Hawaii this morning at 7? I was supposed to arrive at 5:30 a.m., but the plane was delayed two hours getting to Kona. The Kona airport is basically outside and it was kind of chilly. All those people dressed in their shorts were shivering. Actually the weather was very untypical the whole time I was there.
It is supposed to rain 11 days a year. It rained four of those while I was there. When the sun finally came out, the wind picked up and was bad enough to make them cancel the whale watching boat ride I was supposed to take. That’s not to say that any of it was uncomfortable. I kept the door to my patio open the whole time and let the air blow in my room. I sat on the beach watching the sunsets (when the clouds made it possible to see them), went on a wonderful trip to the north end of the big island and back with stops at the Parker Ranch and several towns, and watched a sea turtle as it slept on the shore.
It was my first Left Coast Crime conference. I met lots of great people and there were lots of fun activities. Opening night featured a dessert buffet and some getting to know you games. Every night there was some kind of entertainment. They screened a movie or some TV shows and one night there was a nicely done production of a play someone at the conference had written based on a Charlie Chan book. A lot of the actors were from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. They were very actorly in their performance, which I particularly enjoyed. One man seemed to have a signature wave of his arm he used to punctuate a scene. The play was preceded by a luau minus the pig for budgetary reasons. No loss to me the vegetarian.
The panels were fun. My brain is still in tired mode so I hope this makes sense. These panels were the first I’ve done since the crochet mysteries started coming out. It was extremely neat to find out some people in the audience had actually read one or more of my books. I have to admit that me and my fellow panel people all had a hard time with the Hot Sex and Cold Blooded Murder panel because most of the sex in our books is suggestive rather than overt and mostly off scene. I’m not sure what the people in the audience came expecting.
Even with having fun, I managed to get a lot of work done on the book I need to turn in next week. What a great place to work. I’d look over my shoulder and see the ocean – and sometimes rain drops. I also sat on the balcony crocheting samples of the patterns in the book.
Another really nice touch was the gourmet grocery store in the mall a short walk away. Instead of having to eat in a restaurant, I was able to pick up fruit and salads and vegetable sushi. I hate having to eat somewhere and order something and tell them to hold the shrimp, but I still get charged for it.
Hawaii didn’t go to daylight savings time, so between the half of my clocks at home that haven’t been changed to daylight savings time and my brain which thinks it’s earlier than it is, I’m still a little confused. But nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.
It is supposed to rain 11 days a year. It rained four of those while I was there. When the sun finally came out, the wind picked up and was bad enough to make them cancel the whale watching boat ride I was supposed to take. That’s not to say that any of it was uncomfortable. I kept the door to my patio open the whole time and let the air blow in my room. I sat on the beach watching the sunsets (when the clouds made it possible to see them), went on a wonderful trip to the north end of the big island and back with stops at the Parker Ranch and several towns, and watched a sea turtle as it slept on the shore.
It was my first Left Coast Crime conference. I met lots of great people and there were lots of fun activities. Opening night featured a dessert buffet and some getting to know you games. Every night there was some kind of entertainment. They screened a movie or some TV shows and one night there was a nicely done production of a play someone at the conference had written based on a Charlie Chan book. A lot of the actors were from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. They were very actorly in their performance, which I particularly enjoyed. One man seemed to have a signature wave of his arm he used to punctuate a scene. The play was preceded by a luau minus the pig for budgetary reasons. No loss to me the vegetarian.
The panels were fun. My brain is still in tired mode so I hope this makes sense. These panels were the first I’ve done since the crochet mysteries started coming out. It was extremely neat to find out some people in the audience had actually read one or more of my books. I have to admit that me and my fellow panel people all had a hard time with the Hot Sex and Cold Blooded Murder panel because most of the sex in our books is suggestive rather than overt and mostly off scene. I’m not sure what the people in the audience came expecting.
Even with having fun, I managed to get a lot of work done on the book I need to turn in next week. What a great place to work. I’d look over my shoulder and see the ocean – and sometimes rain drops. I also sat on the balcony crocheting samples of the patterns in the book.
Another really nice touch was the gourmet grocery store in the mall a short walk away. Instead of having to eat in a restaurant, I was able to pick up fruit and salads and vegetable sushi. I hate having to eat somewhere and order something and tell them to hold the shrimp, but I still get charged for it.
Hawaii didn’t go to daylight savings time, so between the half of my clocks at home that haven’t been changed to daylight savings time and my brain which thinks it’s earlier than it is, I’m still a little confused. But nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.
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