December 2024
In this issue: A Boxing Day gift, book and events report, The Man Who Invented Christmas, what I’m reading, and a new possum visitor.
A Boxing Day gift
From December 26 through New Years Eve, Jolie Tunnell’s Advent Calendar features my story Murder Steampunk Style as a free download. All you have to do is sign up for her newsletter (you can cancel later, although I didn’t – it’s one of the few worth reading). I’ve mentioned Jolie before – her Loveda Brown historical mysteries are based in Idyllwild, California. She has more freebies for December, including her own prequel to the series.
Book report
My literary novel, Before the Time Machine, is a dual-timeline story of H.G. Wells as a young man and a modern historian. The historian character is named Katherine. While she is only partly like me, her story is absorbing, as is her connection with her subject. People see “H.G. Wells” and think science fiction (which he called scientific romances), but mine is a literary novel, part Wells biography, part historical, part magical realism. And in its new cover, it’s particularly appealing in paperback.
In other book news, I’m delighted to report that my edited book of Wells’s science education writings was accepted into the collection at Senate House, University of London. Even more than I enjoy people buying my books is having them available in libraries. And this one, dedicated to historical research, will give scholars access to articles that haven’t been republished since the 1890s.
Event report
The North Park Book Fair in October was the fabulous event it always is, even though I was assigned a half-booth in blazing sun. I even went round fanning people who came in to look. I’d show you a picture of my booth, but I was so busy I forgot to take any! But the fair looked like this:
Book fairs are wonderful places. Unlike a street fair, you don’t have to seek out who might be a reader of books. At a book fair, everyone there either loves to read or is accompanying someone who does. At street fairs, sometimes all people want is an interesting place to bring their dog.
The Man Who Invented Christmas
No, it’s not a new movie, but I’ve intended to watch it since it came out in 2017. Charles Dickens, as I’ve said before, is a toughie for me. He wrote brilliant novels, but often in installments, so some of them read that way, with a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. According to Judith Flanders’ The Victorian City, he walked miles each day around London. I’ve also visited his house, mostly to see what they’ve done with poor Catherine Dickens. She was his wife and bore him ten children, then he wanted to have actress Ellen Ternan as his mistress. So he not only abandoned Catherine, but filed charges that she was an unfit mother to avoid admitting his adultery as a cause of divorce. (Read the wonderful book by Lillian Nayder, The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth, the first major work to even consider her, or read this short interview.)
You know that I always try to separate an artist’s work from his/her life. Dickens was a master of narrative. This included not only his stories but his own life and public image. I’m always aware that what he hands out is designed to shape our ideas. But just when I get fed up with him, I recall this image:
It’s the unfinished “Dickens’s Dream” by Robert W. Buss, 1875, and it shows the late Dickens in his study (based on a famous photograph) surrounded by images of his many characters. Even unfinished, it’s brilliant. Why? Because although he’s perfectly still, it shows his characters as active beings from his mind.
And that’s what I enjoyed about The Man Who Invented Christmas. It weaves together Dickens’s writing of A Christmas Carol with his own life. The characters come to him, upset at where the story is going. Or they appear to tell him something. The film shows the writing process better than anything else I’ve seen: the continual interruptions, the moments of inspiration, the writer’s block, the gathering of names and phrases from people he meets or overhears.
Christopher Plummer is Scrooge. Simon Callow (who played the best Dickens ever in Dr Who: The Unquiet Dead) is the illustrator John Leech. And I try not to miss a film with Jonathan Pryce, who plays Charles’s father.
What I’m reading
I just finished Richard Osman’s The Last Devil to Die, the fourth book in his Thursday Murder Club series. The first one is being made into a movie with an all-star cast (Stephen Spielberg is in the picture because production is a combined effort of Netflix and Amblin, Spielberg’s company).
The Last Devil to Die was good, although I think the first and second books were better. You can see my review here.
Now I’m in the middle of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes, based on real events. I knew before I started that Arthur was Arthur Conan Doyle, the Victorian/Edwardian novelist and inventor of Sherlock Holmes. George, as it turns out, is George Edalji, a Staffordshire solicitor who was tried for animal mutilation crimes that took place in 1903. He served three years in prison, and Sir Arthur became a champion for the case being reviewed. Edalji was acquitted but awarded nothing for the three years lost. As with all Julian Barnes’s writing, the characters are finely drawn — you almost feel like you’re in Doyle’s mind.
A new possum visitor
It’s hard to tell size in a photo, even more so online, but I’ve named him Pavarotti so that should give you an idea. He’s bigger than most cats.
Pavarotti is the one facing the camera, but he also agreed to share food with his daughter, Mickey P. So he’s sweet, and slow, and hungry, and walks with great confidence, marching across the deck like it’s a stage. But he always leaves some food behind for the others.
And more!
Want to read previous newsletters? They’re located here at my website, where you can also find information and buy links to all my books.