Eric Mayer

A Lone Daffodil

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:48:00 GMT

On the Poisoned Pen Press blog, for the last month of spring, Mary reminisces about A Lone Daffodil.

Those Brilliant Debut Authors

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:36:00 GMT

I'm not very familiar with the work of Dean Koontz but Mary has been on a bit of a Koontz kick which convinced me to give him a try. I thoroughly enjoyed The Taking, a very very creepy science fiction with an end-of-the-world scenario.

Koontz must have improved vastly because his early sf, as far as I can remember (I seem to recall something in Fantastic) was barely memorable. Well, aside from Invasion.

I reread Invasion after I read The Taking. It impressed me back in the seventies and it held up pretty well. It's a tautly written account of a family, trapped by a snowstorm in an isolated farmhouse, being menaced by alien invaders. (The situation is either trite or classic -- take your pick) Not only did I enjoy Invasion, but it probably scored extra points for being a Laser book that was actually good. You might recall that Harlequin's attempt to manufacture a line of crank-em-out science titles in the mold of their Romances didn't pan out very well from either a financial or (IMHO) artistic standpoint.

However, when I first read Invasion I thought I was reading a book by a promising new author named Aaron Wolfe.. What else would I have thought, given Laser editor Barry Malzberg's disingenuous introduction:

"This is Aaron Wolfe's first novel. Thirty-four years old and successful in another artistic field he has asked for compelling personal reasons that his real identity not interfere with his fiction and therefore "Aaron Wolfe" is a pseudonym. He is thirty-four years old, married with one child and lives in the midwestern United States.
"Aaron Wolfe's work has appeared in Escapade, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and the Virginia Quarterly; fiction and poetry. He was the recipient of a North American Review writing fellowship in 1965 and one of his stories published that year appeared on the Martha Foley Roll of Honor of distinguished American short stories. INVASION, nonetheless, is his first novel and his first work of science-fiction.
"I've always loved to read science-fiction," he says, confessing to owning a "large collection" of old pulp magazines and anthologies, "and even have a passion for it. I've been addicted since I was ten and when I sit down with a science-fiction novel I'm like a child again. Who could react otherwise to this marvelous stuff?"
"INVASION gives some indication of what a literary writer of the first rank can do when he essays fiction for a wider audience. It is simply one of the most remarkable first novels, in any field, that I have ever read."

I realize that authors employ pseudonyms with various degrees of transparency for many reasons. As often as not pseudonyms are used to avoid confusing readers when a writer puts out books of different sorts or in different genres. Today it is often necessary to adopt a new literary identity to escape the tyranny of BookScan sales figures in a publishing world where disappointing sales can instantly doom an author to what is, essentially, a blacklist.

But how far should an author go in inventing a whole new persona? It is one thing to label a particular line of one's books with a pseudonym and quite another to invent a fictitious author. Or is it?

Malzberg really stresses the first novel aspect. Sure it was "Wolfe's" first novel but certainly not Koontz's. Truth or lie?

I suspect first novels tend to garner extra attention. Exciting new authors generate excitement. (More so than slowly improving authors who have been around a while) I also suspect that this "first novel" scam is currently rampant. Did you ever notice, browsing Amazon.com or looking through reviews, what a ridiculous percentage of books purport to be rookie efforts? Not to mention how many of them are, as Malzberg describes Invasion "remarkable first novels." Well of course, writers who have been publishing books for years probably can write remarkable "first" novels and reap undeserved plaudits.

Returning to the old introduction to the Dean Koontz book, I wonder about the detailed publishing history Malzberg sets out. Did Koontz actually publish all that work as Aaron Wolf or as Dean Koontz or is it a complete fabrication?

How much of the biographical material is true? Was Koontz really successful in some other artistic field? What was that? Or was that just Aaron Wolfe?

Yes, Malzberg admits that Aaron Wolfe is not the author's real name but what about his explanation for why the author wants it that way? "...compelling personal reasons that his real identity not interfere with his fiction"? Which is to say that his real identity as Dean Koontz -- a fiction writer -- would interfere with Dean Koontz' fiction?

I guess by now someone is saying, but wait, Head of Zeus is bringing out the Byzantine mysteries originally attributed to "Mary Reed and Eric Mayer" under the pseudonym M.E.Mayer. What about that?

Well, it was a big surprise to us. We knew nothing about our pseudonym until we saw the book covers. I suppose I could plead that M.E. stands for Mary and Eric. But honestly, we weren't given any explanation. I think it is because author teams, unless they are already individually famous, are difficult for readers to remember, thus, for example, there are teams identified as Ellery Queen and Charles Todd. Using both our names initially was a marketing mistake. Mary figures it was so the author name could fit on the spine.

However, it is merely a matter of branding. No one ever told us to pretend that there actually was an individual named M.E.Mayer. Head of Zeus' biographical material for M.E.Mayer makes it clear that M.E. is us.

For me it is a complicated problem. I would prefer not to have my real self attached in any way to my writing but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that the biographical information in a novel might be as much of a fiction as the book itself.

Green

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:36:00 GMT

The leaves came out this week. Last Friday there was nothing but a hint of incipient vegetation, a green haze of opening buds softening the stark limbs of the bare trees. Today we're surrounded by full foliage. Now looking through our windows we can see mostly green, the light is tinged with green, outside the air smells green, if that's possible.

And not just one sort of green. As Mary likes to point out the spring brings every shade of green, from light yellowish to brilliant emerald, to dark and dull, all contrasting, as different in their own ways as red is from blue.

I've always loved the color green as applied to the outdoors, but only there. I have no liking for green kitchen appliances, or living room walls, or clothing. A green shirt? No thanks. It is probably my least favorite color, maybe because I figure it belongs on vegetation.

Even in art work I dislike green but that might be due to my limited experience of watercolor. The typical greens that come out of tubes are acidic, harsh, dull, ugly to my eye. I guess it has to do with chemistry. Pigments are different than light. They don't mix like light either, as I used to discover when I'd try to mix up some variety of green on my palette. I'd always end up with something poisonous looking or like muddy swamp scum. My spring landscapes made me feel like taking some antacid.

Even so they weren't so revolting as my mom's one time only Saint Patrick's Day mashed potatoes, to which she added green food coloring.

I prefer to enjoy green where it belongs, in the wild.

Review: The Sweepstake Murders

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Sun, 5 May 2013 12:05:00 GMT

Although little remembered today, J.J. Connington, pseudonym for Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947), was a major writer of Golden Age Detective (GAD) fiction. A professor of chemistry, he found time to write one science fiction novel and seventeen mystery novels.

In The Sweepstake Murders a nine-man syndicate holds a winning ticket worth a quarter of a million pounds. Quite a sum, particularly in 1931, the year of publication. After one member dies in an airplane crash, court action by his estate delays the payout. The survivors agree that the prize will be shared equally by those still alive when the money is actually paid.

What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, that's right. Quicker than you can say "tontine," syndicate members begin to die in apparent accidents, starting with a tumble over the edge of a cliff at the delightfully named Hell's Gape. As syndicate members go down the value of the survivors' shares goes up. Obviously these guys should have read more mysteries before making that agreement.

Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield happens to be visiting the countryside, staying with one of the syndicate members, his friend Wendover -- the sort of gentleman of leisure so often featured in novels of the era. And a lucky thing too because the local police inspector while brilliant at collecting evidence is not as good as Sir Clinton at putting everything together. At least not putting it together the right way.

The suspense never lets up because the reader is kept guessing who the next victim will be. For those of us who never manage to figure out the killer, the ever dwindling number of suspects at least gives us a decent chance of making a blind guess.

The mystery becomes increasingly complicated because each new "accident" needs its own explanation. Connington belonged to the "fair play" school, which is to say he presents the reader with all the clues the detective has, all the clues necessary to solve the mystery. In a sense a novel like this is a huge puzzle. Everything the writer relates might be a clue, or a red herring.

Connington offers a huge variety of evidence for each of the multiple murders: personal entanglements, financial motives, timing sensitive alibis, physical and forensic clues, to name a few. You have to love a mystery where the solution depends on disparate clues like photographs and punctuation. Oops. I hope I didn't give anything away there. Unless you're a real mystery puzzle expert I doubt it.

And who is expert at figuring out complicated puzzles these days when practically every mystery is required to be in large part a psychological drama or thriller? Personally I think rationality is as much a part of human makeup as our underlying psychology or emotions like fear or love and therefore as worthy of being a subject of literature, even if publishers and academics disagree.

An interesting aspect of this book is that the mystery hinges in part of technology of the era, some of which was rather new in 1931. However much a novel like this might seem old fashioned, Connington was right up to date.

I happen to enjoy GAD mysteries. To me, they are much more inventive than the tiresome cookie-cutter mayhem we get too much of today (Hey, there's an idea -- The Cookie-Cutter Serial Killer!). The Sweepstake Murders is an excellent example of the Golden Age detective novel.

The Bloody Spur

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:13:00 GMT

When I was following the coverage of the Boston bombing, as newspapers and television networks battled to break every new revelation first -- sometimes even trying to play detective and identify the culprits and failing miserably -- I was eerily reminded of the book I'd just finished reading, Charles Einstein's The Bloody Spur.

The 1953 Dell paperback original, filmed by Frtiz Lang as While the City Sleeps, isn't a western. The title's "spur" refers to a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. As the blurb explains, after a serial killer has struck again....

"...in the city room of the fabulous Kyne News empire, four big-time newsmen went into action. All four knew that an exclusive beat on the killings would mean the top job at Kyne -and they were all hungry for that job. Hungry enough to buck the police, sell out their mistresses, and commit blackmail. Four decent men - corrupted by the bloody spur of ambition."

Though the story revolves around efforts to capture a serial killer, the book isn't a detective novel either. There's plenty of speculation about the identity of the psychopath but Einstein, a newspaperman and sportswriter, concentrates mostly on the newspaper drama. He throws the reader into the fog of war in a big city newsroom during a breaking story.

I found the details of the business circa 1950 fascinating in themselves, everything from how to write a headline to how to arrange print runs for different editions according to how many trucks would be available. The frenzy to beat the competition by putting a story on the wire five minutes ahead or hitting the streets with an extra in the morning rather than the afternoon, was on display, in its 21st century version, last week.

Most important, however, are the maneuverings of the high powered executives, their allies and enemies, in the battle to be appointed successor to the newly deceased executive director. As the book progresses the professional and personal entanglements become so complicated I needed to keep a character list. The newspaper men are almost as driven and tormented as the warped killer they each hope to be the first to reveal.

By the end of the book, the winner of the executive director contest won't surprise anyone who is even vaguely aware of how corporate personnel decisions are really made.

The Bloody Spur has everything covered -- the streets, the offices, the bars and bedrooms. The novel is densely written and plotted, and the characters are painfully realistic and mostly unlikeable, but it's a classic.

Classic Novels in Twelve Words

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:44:00 GMT

At the Poisoned Pen Press Blog Mary and some other PPP authors offer up Classic Novels in Twelve Words (or less).

Example: The Odyssey (Okay a very old novel) Man gets lost on way home. Refuses to ask directions.

Some Mite Like It

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:09:00 GMT

You "mite" like to check out the new Orphan Scrivener online, with our writing news, and Mary's essay All Creatures Great and Ghastly about unwelcome insect invaders. My own contribution is about ghastly food:

Some Mite Like It

After one of our typical home heated-up dinners I noticed that the ingredients included gorgonzola. Neither Mary nor I like to cook. To us, ingredients aren't things you measure, chop, or mix, but reading matter on the back of packages.

"Gorgonzola. That's cheese, isn't it?" I said, immediately activating the useful auxiliary brain called Google. Quicker than I can remember my Social Security number, I learned that gorgonzola is indeed a cheese, with bluish green veining.

"Whoa," I muttered, not quite turning to stone. "Blue cheese. And look at this, the varicose veins are caused by -- you're not going to believe this -- mold spores growing into hyphae."

Mary frowned. "It doesn't really say varicose does it?"

"Gaaa," I replied sensibly. "I ate mold spore hyphae!"

In case I'm not being clear here, I don't care for blue cheese.

"Tasted all right to me. At least it's not the kind of cheese where you have to scrape the cheese mites off before you eat it."

"Cheese mites! Don't say that when I've got coffee in my mouth," I choked, frantically wiping off my keyboard. "You're kidding?"

"Look it up."

Unfortunately I did. According to Wikipedia, mites clinging to the rind of MilbenkÃ¤se are consumed along with the cheese, which has a 'distinctive zesty aftertaste'."

"Well, I can believe it has a distinctive taste!"

Mites are also help age Mimolette, the grayish crust being the result of cheese mites intentionally introduced to add flavor by their action on the surface of the cheese.

"I guess we can be sure that frozen pizza is never topped with MilbenkÃ¤se or Mimolette," I observed hopefully.

"If it were, the mites would have frozen to death."

"Maybe, but a mouthful of crunchy hard-frozen mite doesn't appeal to me."

I really should have stopped researching, but you know how it is with Google and the Internet and Wikipedia. You start out looking for information on the most innocent subject and a half hour later you are deep in the realms of things man was not meant to know.

Such as casu marzu, otherwise known as "rotten cheese".

Found mainly in Sardinia casu marzu contains live insect larvae. To be exact -- although "insect larvae" seems all you really need to know -- the larvae of the cheese fly. These larvae resemble translucent white worms about one third of an inch long. (So they say, and I'm willing to take their word for it and leave it at that.) A typical cheese contains thousands of these larvae -- known to the non-cheese lovers amongst us as maggots.

Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I've never been into eating maggots. In fact, I was always been pretty much against eating anything while it was still alive. When my family went out to eat, the "very rare" (i.e. bleeding) steaks my mom ordered looked to me as if they were going to moo when you stuck them with a fork so I always demanded my steak be well done and then burned to a crisp, twice, just to be on the safe side.

Once, I admit, I ate a raw oyster at a street fair in Brooklyn. What can I say? I was young and stupid, the sun was hot, I'd had too much sangria. Sometimes when I remember it I can still feel the slimy mollusc sliding down...

Okay, so when it comes to food I've always had delicate sensibilities. I had to avert my gaze every time I passed the Rochester restaurant with the big sign announcing Tripe Pizza. Mary told me she liked tripe but I couldn't force myself to go there, not even when we were first married. I did however try to please her once by preparing another of her favorites, liver and onions. (Yes, we did try to cook once in a while until we gave up.)

As a child liver had revolted me and I had revolted when it was served for dinner. But, I told myself, now I am an adult. Surely I am mature enough to consume a few token bits of a cow's internal organ?

So I forked up a chunk and chewed, and chewed, and chewed. It was like trying to chew a sponge. I couldn't grind it up, nor could I swallow it down. Every time I tried to gulp my throat balked with an instant gag reflex.

Yes, as an omnivore I am a dreadful failure.

But not even tripe or liver can match the aforementioned rotten cheese.

Apparently connoisseurs of the finer things in life enjoy spreading the stuff on bread. But then they have to hold their hands over the bread to eat it because those living maggots can jump as much as six inches! Holy leaping larvae, Batman! You wouldn't want a maggot up your snout when you were trying to get your tasty treat down your gullet, would you?

Now I think I'll go and have some tasty Pepto-Bismol.

Anthologies? We Love 'Em

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Tue, 2 Apr 2013 13:14:00 GMT

Towards the beginning of her fiction writing career in the eighties Mary made three short story sales to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, straight out of the slush pile. Later we teamed up on sales to the same publication but mostly we've confined ourselves to writing the occasional short story only when asked to do so for an anthology.

In the April SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network) newsletter Mary tells how our series of nine (so far) Byzantine mystery novels began with a single very short story in an anthology.

She is one a several authors who write about their experience with anthologies.

As the introduction says: "Anthologies? Are they really worth the trouble? Is there money in it for writers, or are there other benefits? How do you get in one? ...

"Many anthologies are by invitation only. Once the editors see your work in magazines or ezines or on genre sites, you may be invited to join the fun. This method saves a lot of time for editors - they'll already know your style and know you can meet a deadline. Read Mary Reed's story below and see how that first invitation grew and grew for her."

Read: Anthologies? We Love 'Em

Before Chicks Wore Minis

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:43:00 GMT

My memories of Easter go way back, to before chicks wore mini-skirts, back to when they gave chicks away at gas stations. Those were the days.

Easter was what you get when you substituted a magic rabbit for a magic fat guy from the North Pole and a basket of candy and some dyed hard boiled eggs for great heaps of brightly wrapped presents? That's right, a sort of second-rate Christmas. On the holiday scale Easter rated below Halloween. My trick-or-treat bag held more candy than my Easter basket and although some spoil sports gave out apples at least no one plopped any hard boiled eggs into the sack. Even the tangerines that took up so much valuable space in the Christmas stockings were preferable to eggs. What do you do with dozens of hard boiled eggs? I recall choking down egg salad sandwiches until the Fourth Of July (A holiday that barely deserved a ranking because fireworks were illegal in Pennsylvania and school was out for the summer anyway.)

I did enjoy coloring the eggs and hunting for them Easter Morning after they'd been hidden by the bunny even if it wasn't quite as thrilling as roaming dark streets in weird costumes. My family was lucky enough to have a big lawn where eggs could hide behind tree trunks, in clumps of weeds, amidst the stones in the rock garden, up in the crook of the huge maple tree in the front yard, in the corner of the sandbox, underneath a flower pot by the backdoor, up in the latticework of the rose arbor.

One early Easter it snowed. Four or five inches of heavy wet snow. My gloves were soaked through as soon as I poked around the shrubbery in front of the house. I guess the rabbit must have carried out its task in the small hours of the night because there were no tracks leading to the eggs. Those eggs were a sorry sight after they'd been hunted down and carted inside. Between sitting in the snow and my wet gloves, their colors were runny, the designs smeared. And after I'd worked so hard dipping them into the different pots of dye at various angles, blocking out patterns with a clear wax crayon. (Turned out to be good practice for the glories of tie-dye.)

The dyed eggs were left out for the Easter Bunny to retrieve and hide, you see. Which also served to prove the reality of the bunny, just as the absence of the cookies and milk set out for Santa proved that he had, indeed, visited.

There was more to the holiday than colored eggs, but not much that enthused me. I've never been fond of Easter candy. The big, candy eggs are so overly sweet they make my teeth ache and plain chocolate is...well...plain.

The fluffy chicks were more appealing. Not to eat, mind you. Although since my grandparents' chicken coop never got overcrowded, despite the traditional influx of Easter chicks....well, that's something I prefer not to think about. I suppose it taints my memory. That and pondering the fate of all those chicks they used to give away at gas stations. Sure, the ones we brought home had a coop to go too ( and never mind the chicken that showed up on my dinner plate months later. I prefer to think I was eating fowl with whom I was not acquainted, that I had not romped with in the grass.)

One year I had measles or some other childhood disease (back then there were too many to keep track of) which required me to be confined to my room for what seemed forever. I watched the adorable, baby chicks grow up in a cardboard box near my bed, which is another reason I don't recall them as fondly as I might. There's nothing uglier than an adolescent rooster, unless maybe an adolescent human male.

What Easter memories have I left out? Oh yes, the religious aspect. How you get from the crucifixion to chocolate rabbits is beyond me. Once or twice my family piled into the car and went to the drive-in where there was a sunrise service. All I remember is being half-asleep and impatient to search for eggs while the speaker in the window droned on, the words crackling and garbled. The show was longer and more boring than Lawrence of Arabia which I was also dragged to the drive-in for -- and no popcorn.

Anyway, I don't think I really believed in death at that young age, let alone resurrection. Death was just something that happened to cattle rustlers and bank robbers in television westerns. A dramatic device. I'd roll around on the ground at play, gleefully pretending to be shot dead and resurrected myself every time.

So the egg hunt was the big thing. Mysteriously, almost every year, there was an egg which eluded the hunt, only to be found weeks later, while I was mowing lawn, or weeding, a thrilling find, a faded artifact of the past nestled someplace I must have neglected to look. Best of all, you wouldn't dare use a month old egg in a sandwich. In later years I've wondered if those eggs had really been overlooked during the hunt, or saved and planted, but I never asked -- even after I figured out the Easter Bunny ruse -- and now it is too late.

Spring? Hello?

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:06:00 GMT

Okay...uh...is this thing still working?

I've been hibernating.

It's been a long hard winter.

As a matter of fact it is still a long hard winter.

Look up there, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema's painting, Spring. There you see exactly what would go on here if spring were ever to arrive.

But we are at the beginning of April and it might as well be mid-January judging by the temperature and patches of snow back under the pines. The famous woodchuck weather prognosticator, Punxsutawney Phil, emerged -- or rather, was ceremoniously yanked -- from his burrow February 2nd and he promised an early spring. Maybe he felt he was under duress with all those lights shining in his eyes. Presumably he is now in hiding for his own safety. None of our local woodchucks have shown their stubby little tails this year either, probably afraid of collective punishment.

Maybe I'm too impatient. After all Alma Tadema was depicting May Day. Maybe by then it will be warm with flowers in bloom and we will be staging a procession.

Certain scenes in the Cecil B. De Mille's film Cleopatra (1934) were inspired by the painting. But I doubt anyone will be basing spectacular movie scenes on activities at Casa Maywrite. A few blog entries, if I'm lucky.

Back With More BSP

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Fri, 1 Mar 2013 18:12:00 GMT

Yes, it is pretty pathetic when the best entry I can come up with in a month is nothing but Blatant Self Promotion.

Well, actually that's not quite true because this time I want to alert everyone to a £4.99 ebook from Head of Zeus that contains not only One for Sorrow by Mary and me but also Bruce McBain's Roman Games and Wine of Violence by Priscilla Royal.

ROMAN GAMES: Rome, AD 95 â a city under the thrall of a tyrant. It is up to Gaius Plinius Secundus - better known to posterity as Pliny the Younger - to investigate the murder of one of emperor's favourites. He has just 15 days to solve the case, 15 days that will threaten Pliny's conscience, his life and the stability of Rome itself.

ONE FOR SORROW: Amid the splendour and the squalor of sixth-century Byzantium. A treasury official has been murdered. Could someone have killed him for a priceless holy relic? A Knight from distant Bretania seems to believe so...

WINE OF VIOLENCE: AD 1270. On a remote East Anglian coast stands the priory of Tyndal, a place dedicated to love and peace. But Eleanor of Wynethorpe, the new prioress, will find little of either... Only a day after Eleanor's arrival, a brutally mutilated monk is found dead in the cloister gardens.

That's a trip of not 500 years, not 800 years, but nearly 1,200 years and all for only £4.99.

3 Great Historical Mysteries

Review: The Rome Express by Arthur Griffiths

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 18:44:00 GMT

Someone has got to kick off the February entries. Hey, it's a short month. Time's running out. So at least Mary has managed to come up with something, for the M.E.Mayer blog at any rate, a review of another classic (1907) mystery: The Rome Express by Arthur Griffiths.

A Golden Age Detective Review

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:11:00 GMT

Over at the "M.E.Mayer" blog Mary reviews a Golden Age Detective novel (freely available online) from 1922: The Red Redmaynes (1922) by Eden Phillpotts.

Scotland Yard Detective Mark Brendon is on holiday and while on his way to fish in an abandoned quarry on Dartmoor meets a lady whose looks strike him more than somewhat. Then a man appears, chats about fishing, and tells him about a couple building a bungalow not far from the quarry. Four days later the husband of the couple is found murdered and the finger of suspicion is pointed at his uncle-in-law, a man fitting the description of Mr Fish Chatter. And what's more, the striking lady turns out to be the murdered man's widow.....

The Whole Review

When Byzantines Flew

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:47:00 GMT

You will believe a sixth century Lord Chamberlain can fly. Well, kind of, enough to avoid breaking his neck. Or so we hoped when we wrote about John's daring escape from a tower overlooking the Golden Horn in Four For a Boy.

In When Byzantines Flew on the Poisoned Pen Press blog Mary writes about the historical events which inspired us to write the scene: on one hand, a Sultan, and on the other a crinoline.

Hogmanay: New Year in Scotland

ericm09@earthlink.net (ericmayer) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:52:00 GMT

Today I'm happy to turn the blog over to Jane Finnis whose Roman mysteries are set in a different time and place than our own. Jane's mysteries tell of life and death in first-century Roman Britain, the turbulent province of Britannia, on the very edge of the Roman Empire. They all feature innkeeper Aurelia Marcella as a reluctant sleuth.

Eric, thank you for inviting me to post on your blog, and forgive me for beginning with a cliche: travel broadens the mind. I don't know who originated this saying, nor who added the rider, "It broadens the beam also, from too much sitting around in planes and cars."

Sticking to the mind...travelling, which I love, can produce two quite different reactions in me. Sometimes I think (but am far too polite to say,) "Gosh, these foreigners are odd, the way they do this-or-that." But sometimes I realise, "Heavens, we English are odd, people do this-or-that much better here."

I've just come back from a lovely holiday in sunny Gran Canaria, and we were there for New Year. And heavens, we English are decidedly odd about the way we are only just now learning to appreciate New Year properly. The Spanish have a ball on New Year's Eve, mark midnight with wonderful fireworks, and make New Year's Day a public holiday.

Not that we English need look as far as Spain for New Year festivities. Our neighbours the Scots are world famous for their long and glorious tradition of going to town at Hogmanay and taking January 1st off to recover. Yet on our side of the border we're only belatedly catching them up. We at least have a holiday on New Year's Day now, a relatively recent development, and you can find good New Year's Eve parties and midnight fireworks. But you can also still find people who - shock horror - go to bed at their normal time and sleep the night through.

I could no more sleep through New Year than fly in the air. I love the occasion, I'm excited by the whole idea of a new start, of turning over a new leaf (or should that be opening a new file in the word processor.) I haven't a drop of Scots blood, and was born and raised in Yorkshire, but I was lucky in my childhood. I had two uncles with proper Scottish notions of Hogmanay. Uncle Whittaker loved a party and had lived and worked well north of Hadrian's Wall, so he knew how things should be done. Uncle Harry loved a party and had the distinction of being the darkest-complexioned man for miles around. A great combination! Every New Year's Eve they celebrated in style, and then in the wee small hours Uncle Harry went out "first footing", visiting the houses of all his neighbours. We, the rest of the family, tagged along, even as quite young children.

As all Scots know, to bring good luck to a household, the "first foot" over its threshold in the New Year must belong to a dark man, bearing token gifts to ensure prosperity - a piece of coal and a piece of bread were what Harry brought. Once safely inside, the luck-bringer was naturally offered a "cup of kindness" for his trouble, before he went on to the next house, and the next. His capacity for "cups of kindness" was legendary.

The Ancient Romans had the right idea about Near Year; they made a big thing of it. My mysteries are set at the very end of the first century AD, in the area round York, and as my sleuth Aurelia is an innkeeper, she would certainly organise first-rate New Year parties for her friends and customers. There was a serious religious element to the occasion as well. The god Janus was one of the most important Roman deities, and he's always pictured with two faces, one looking backwards and one forwards.

Isn't that an excellent symbol for the start of a year? Welcome the future but don't discard all of the past...and make sure the celebration is a good one!

SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT was published in hardback and ebook last November by Head of Zeus for UK and the Commonwealth, and the paperback will come out this coming April. It's the first in the Aurelia Marcella series, and has already been published by Poisoned Pen Press as GET OUT OR DIE in the USA.

Website: www.janefinnis.com Blog: http://janefinnisblog.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Jane_Finnis

The Aurelia Marcella Roman mysteries, published in the UK by Head of Zeus, and in the USA by Poisoned Pen Press