Getting Medieval

One of the things I really enjoy about going to different places (and having a car) is being able to drive through the countryside and see something of the state I'm traveling through. I left Houston today to drive to Austin, some 160 miles away. I knew I would get to see some of rural Texas and I was excited about it. 

Actually, it looks a lot like California, except its green (our hills and fields would be golden brown and crispy at this time of year). And there is not a mountain to be had. Lots of flat pasture. But much use is made of it with grazing cattle, and many of those grazing cattle do their grazing peacefully alongside an oil well or two.

I seemed to have crossed the Colorado River several times as well. I think the river snaked, not the road. Smooth sailing, really, and I spotted the perfect place for lunch in Columbus. It wasn't a chain--one of my rules when I travel, no chains if I can avoid them--and it was bar-be-que.

I pulled in and I knew as soon as I walked into the door and saw that every square inch of wall space was taken up by an animal head, that this was perfect! I mean, this was a sort of roundhouse kind of place and all around you are glass eyes staring back. I loved it! 

These guys were standing behind me, staring. (I'm eating you, and you, and you...)

They had a cheap all you can eat buffet so I went for it. All kinds of smoked bar-be-cued meat; I had beef, poek, ham, chicken, turkey, sausage, a sort of spicy potato salad, and what I thought was cornbread with cheese but turned out to be a peach cobbler/upside down cake sort of thing. It was quite a meal.

I hit the road again and encountered many miles of burnt forest. This could have been recent, just this summer, perhaps? Miles and miles of it. Quite sad.

Not too long after that I had to stop for the giant squirrel statue (you know how I feel about giant things!) and I wandered in to look at the touristy stuff and buy a bag of pecans.

And then I could see the skyscrapers of Austin in the distance, yet the landscape around me was still rural. Alas, I was here too late to really go see anything. But on my way to the bookstore, I did get to drive down their historic 6th Street with all the old buildings turned to chi chi shops and bars.

BookPeople, the store, was a surprise to me. It's a HUGE place! Not unlike my book launch site at Vroman's in Pasadena. Three stories tall, each floor is stuffed with books of all kinds and gifts. An absolute must for those visiting Austin.

Only a very small section of this amazing store.

Scott Montgomery, the fellow in charge of "Mystery People," their store within a store, greeted me and led me to the room they had set up for me. Fun! With shields on the walls and "candles" for the tables. We had a mini party with a cake and all.

The tables were decorated with black tablecloths and "candles."

Even fellow author Kaye George stopped by.   

A very nice group was generous to me and listened to my spiel, laughing at all the right spots (without prior coaching!). We sold, we signed, and then Scott took me to a local hangout for some excellent tamales. It was a great trip to Texas. Can't stay longer as I am heading out early tomorrow. Must get back before Halloween night before I turn into a pumpkin. But next weekend, look for me in North Carolina in the Raleigh, Cary, and Charlotte areas.

 

The weather is cool here in Texas. I arrived a day early and settled in. And got lost (my GPS system was acting up so I circled for a bit in my rental but I managed to find my way).

My spacious room...

...and the view from my window. But don't get excited. I had to pass the Budweiser and Miller plants to get there and its a bit...um...industrial around here.

But I did get to check out the giant Armadillo at Goode's Armadillo Palace and it was quite the spectacle to see up close, as you yourself can see.

Stopped in at a restaurant at the Galleria--all the shops were too rich for my little ole budget. I mean, they had valet parking!--and saw this sign. Notice it says "unlicensed."

It was time to stop fooling around and head over to Murder By The Book and meet all the wonderful folks who work there. A great bookstore (see below). A superb mystery resource for the Houston area. All the biggies go there...and now me! They've got the store laid out by country, by genre--the way it should be so you can find just the kind of mystery you want. Also, there is a used section. I have found that many indies supplement by reselling used books. I can't begrudge them that. They work hard selling the new books, too, and sometimes you come to a new author through the used section.

There she is. Weapons laid out before her.

Good juxtaposition of The Maltese Falcon poster and my book. Part of the inspiration for Crispin is Sam Spade, after all.

A nice little group (a shout out to Facebook. It's bringing them in.) And good support from the bookstore owners. Well, it's that face time with fans, fans to be, and the bookstore owners that makes these trips worthwhile.

This little store pup was decked out for Halloween (his name is Jack Reacher, by the way.)

All in all, a good day and we'll set out, not too early tomorrow, for Austin and BookPeople.  

 

 

 

 

Wouldn't you like a morgue named after you? Well, if you were a mystery author that might be cool. Seems that Dundee University in Scotland is offering the name to the highest bidder--of votes--to be named after their favorite crime writers. Crime fiction fans can vote for their favourite author online - with each vote contributing £1 to the appeal. Dundee Uni has committed £1m of their own to the project, but another £1m needs to be raised.

The list of writers taking part in the "Million for a Morgue" campaign? Tess Gerritsen, Kathy Reichs, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Mark Billingham, Jeffrey Deaver, Jeff Lindsay, Stuart MacBride, Peter James and Val McDermid.

I don't see my name in there. Oh well. Overlooked again.

According to the BBC story: "The new morgue will adopt a "revolutionary" way of embalming - called the Thiel method - which keeps bodies flexible for longer. This gives medics and researchers a more realistic way of testing techniques and practising procedures, as well as developing new equipment and approaches."

The Jeri Westerson Morgue at Dundee. I like the sound of that.

We are wrapping up the Arizona tour with our last stop at the Velma Teague Library in Glendale.

I was very happy to be included as one of the Authors @ the Teague. I talked again about TROUBLED BONES and Canterbury. And then I whipped out the weapons! Middle Ages discussed by the middle-aged. It doesn't get much better than that. Thank you Lesa Holstine and the Velma Teague staff! It was a nice wrap up to an eventful weekend.

The audience was into it. Especially when I did this...

A woman and her sword.

After that, we scooted off to the oldest soda fountain in Arizona, Macalpine's. As part of their whole retro thing, they also have a cool retro clothing and chotchkie store attached. The old-fashioned banana split hit the spot.

We'll see you next week in Houston and Austin. (See my schedule.)

 

It was warming up. Phoenix was going to get up to about 95 or so today, continuing the same sort of endless summer we were sweating through in southern California. But we got an early start (for us) leaving Cottonwood for Scottsdale and Poison Pen Bookstore, the best little indie in the entire Phoenix area.

See my lovely stand-up banner to the left?

When I gave my presentation, I explained how The Canterbury Tales are integral to my book, TROUBLED BONES, and how it was also integral to me personally while growing up, and then I followed through with my Canterbury talk, complete with visuals.

Listening carefully to the question.

And signing.

We sold books, I signed them, and as we were leaving for our hotel in Phoenix, we discovered the A/C in our car had died. Not the news I was hoping for, since the heat won't be letting up anytime soon. But we soldiered on to the hotel, unloaded, and the Long Suffering Husband took a look. He's a MacGyver sort of fellow, so I usually don't worry too much, but we are far from home and the tools he needs. But he managed to give it a temp fix with--I kid you not--my sword, an ether net cable, and a Swiss Army knife. If that ain't MacGyver...

We settled in, barbequed a couple of steaks, sipped some cheap Happy Hour wine, and are relaxing for the next day when I do another presentation at the Velma Teague Library in Glendale, AZ, at 2 pm. There will be books for sale! Come on down. The sword will be swung!

 

A leisurely day where we sat by the pool before heading out to Sedona and Sedona's best bookstore, the Well Red Coyote, now in it's new location--just around to the front of the building it was in before. A truly stunning little independent bookstore, hosting author even after author event.

It was my turn today, and I offered a workshop on Researching for Authors, with a slight slant toward writing the historical. We had a good crowd who responded quite well to the workshop. We sold out of all the available copies of all the Crispin books, in fact, except for one copy of Troubled Bones. It's signed so go get it! A good day, I must say.

The Well Red Coyote in its new location fronting the highway.

Jeri speaks.

Particpants examine my samples of unusual objects. As an exercise, they were to write down five things about each object that they knew, and five things they didn't. It's about getting the writer to thinking about all the little details that are important to know concerning an era.

Eating out of my hand. :)

And now, some scenery from Sedona. You can see all of this from town.

We were going to wander Sedona but it was hot! The same weather I left behind in California. And really crowded. This is the season here for snowbirds to start migrating west so we decided to head out of town a bit to Cornville and catch a winery for some tasting.

Javalina Leap Winery.

In their mesquite garden.

A stop at the grocery store for some local brew to go with our Mexican food leftovers with some chips and salsa.We were happy campers. Tomorrow we head on over to Scottsdale to Poison Pen at 2 pm. Hope to see some of you there.

 

Actually, it was a travel day yesterday and we started out as we usually do at the Farmhouse restaurant for a hearty breakfast, where there was quite the variety of grape jelly packets to chose from, so we had a jelly tasting. Looks like Smuckers and Knott's had the most flavor with slight tannic notes and a chewy texture. So now you know.

We took the scenic route since we knew it was strictly a travel day. We saw a lot of desert country, sometimes flat wasteland filled with mesquite, palo verde, ocotillo cactus and, once we crossed over the Colorado River into Arizona from California, saguaro, those cactus with the arms. 

We passed through a town called Hope and stopped by this amusing sign as we were leaving. Looks like someone forgot their punctuation when they left Hope behind.

 

We left some of the flatlands and slowly climbed from the desert floor into the red rock mountains. The vistas changed with each turn. Now we were seeing incredible rock formations, building blocks of the gods stacked in crazy patterns, and then were among the pine forests of Ponderosa, and then climbing still higher away from them into scrub again. The road flattened out to pastureland of cattle and horses and small 1930s communities gave way to large rancheros. Then were were climbing once more.

We meandered through Prescott, a lovely little berg, the county seat, with its town center park surrounded by turn-of-the-last-century buildings of shops and bars and other businesses, and headed up into the hills again to Jerome (ghost town turned artist colony--but more on that in a minute). Along that route was a marriage proposal spray-painted onto the asphalt (although we were going the wrong way, so we knew how it turned out ahead of time). I guess that is the best short story going. "Billy, will you marry me?" and then the answer "Yes" and in the other direction, "He said yes no" with the "yes" circled. Don't know if it was a girl asking a guy or a guy asking a guy but we wish Billy and his partner well.

And then we headed into Jerome. Jerome's claim to fame was a copper mine. Its housing for the miners were built along the hillsides of this steep, mile high town. Soon all sorts of shops were built. When the boom ran out in 1953, the town was mostly abandoned and became a semi-ghost town as so many do in the western deserts. I've been to quite a few of them in all states of decay. In the last twenty years the town seems to have been revitalized into quaint little shops, wine tasting rooms, eateries, and all manner of things a toursit would want to see. Amazing how these houses, abutting some derelect structures to remind everyone that this was a ghost town, still cling to the hillsides. Its got steep streets as you can imagine, and good wine!

House of Joy. Used to be a brothel and now enjoys new life as a shop of knick knacks.

What is that feller doing to that tree? Or what is that tree doing to that feller?

We finally wended our way down to Cottonwood where we are staying. I had some excellent Mexican food last night and even more excellent tequila that put me to bed early.

I'll have pictures tomorrow of our event this afternoon. If you are in the area, do come to the Well Red Coyote in Sedona at 2 pm today where I will give an hour-long workshop on researching for the historical novel.

 

 

Everyone, we made our goal!!! 228 hardcover copies reported on Bookscan last week, and Troubled Bones made #30 on the Bookscan mystery hardcover bestseller list. (Those actual sales numbers might be a bit higher since Bookscan doesn't pick up absolutely all sales.) But kvetching and bothering you for several months did the trick. Thank you all! Thank you for getting the word out!

Cheers!

It was quite a busy weekend. Before we could officially launch the newest Crispin Guest novel, TROUBLED BONES, on October 15, we had a pre-launch event at the small but mighty indie mystery bookstore Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks. We didn't get a picture of the event, but when we stopped for a brief picnic in a nearby park, I was able to steal a ride on a camel (I'll do just about anything for a photo op).

Off we went to Pasadena. It was going to take about two hours to set up at Vroman's bookstore. Once we arrived, the time whizzed by and soon the tables were set with meats, cheeses, figs, dates, nuts, grapes, olives, and wafers. And then my son and his friend Eric got the champagne and mead ready to pour. There were three baskets to raffle for some added fun as well as "goblets" to give away and rubber ducky knights (those were a hit).

And then I began. This time I offered a powerpoint demo about Canterbury and the cathedral, The Canterbury Tales and Geoffrey Chaucer, since all of that features so prominently in my past and in the book.

It was a great crowd again, with fewer relatives and more people I don't know. A mark of rising success!

And then, of course, we all toddled downstairs to watch the knights duel.

Here's a link to my performing some bad Middle English, the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

It went off great and I met a lot of Facebook friends there (Crispin has a page here.) We went through a little over a case of champagne and three jeroboams of mead, so if everyone wasn't happy by the end of the evening they at least thought they were. And we sold oodles of books, of course. A big fat thank you to Vroman's for allowing me to make a spectacle of myself time and again. We'll see them next fall, too.

After the festivities, I invited anyone who can make it across the street to join me for a no-host dinner at a Mexican restaurant where I finally got to settle down with a margarita (I think it best I don't indulge in the champagne and mead while I'm working). There were about 20 of us.

The next day we headed out to Book Carnival, a mystery indie in the city of Orange.I had a modest crowd there as well, and gave another Canterbury history lesson. I have some wonderful fans, let me tell you. It's still a weird concept to me to even have fans. But I suppose they are mostly Crispin's fans, which is fine by me.

This photo was taken by fan Rebekah Hendershot.

Thank you all for your wonderful support!

And here's the rest of the tour. If you are in the area, stop in and say hello. Support your local indies:

I know what you're thinking. Finally, someone went back in time, snapped a shot of Wat Tyler and his rabble destroying John of Gaunt's London manor house the Savoy, or perhaps when Tyler was ambushed by King Richard II and the mayor of London when they were supposed to be parlaying with him in good faith--and then wisked the photo back to the modern era. Well, almost.

Actually, it's British photographer Red Saunders who takes huge tableaux vivants, living pictures in which dozens of actors recreate key moments in British history.

It's actually pretty neat. Looks like he takes shots of groups and Photoshops them together. Of course projects like this take a great deal of planning, attention to detail, and research. Although some historians that saw the shot view it as bloodier than they expected, perhaps they just haven't really thought about the actual down in the mud aspects of a revolt. I imagine that it would, indeed, have been pretty bloody. And incredibly frightening for a populace recovering from the plague just thirty years before and now enduring heavy taxes when prices and wages were not allowed to be raised to cover the costs. Sound familiar? The middle class is squeezed to pay for unrelenting wars while the rich live, well, the rich life?

At any rate, this is a remarkable photo (and it's much larger and more detailed than the excerpt above) and you can see it here along with the rest of the story from The Mail.