If you were one of the several thousand people who entered a Goodreads giveaway last month to win ten signed copies of The Cry of Cicadas and came up short, you have better odds this time, but only until the end of April.
We’re giving away 100 ebook editions of this “immersive journey into the tumultuous era of WWII, filled with rich historical detail and compelling characters to delight fans of well-penned mystery,” as a Readers’ Favorite reviewer described it. The giveaway, available to Goodreads members in the U.S., began on April 4 and runs through the end of this month.
Joining the contest is easy. Just go to the bottom of this post and click on the ‘Enter Giveaway’ tab. Good luck to you all!
Camilla Trinchieri is the author of the Tuscan Mysteries series, launched in 2020 with Murder in Chianti. This series features the former NYPD detective Nico Doyle, who has left detective work behind, moving to the Italian hometown, Gravigna, of his deceased wife, Rita, and hoping to find some peace. The village is in the Chianti region, and Nico, half-Italian and half-Irish, slowly builds a new life working with Rita’s relatives. But soon he is also pulled back into the world of policing, recruited by the local Maresciallo, or marshal, Salvatore Perillo, to aid in a murder investigation in quiet and peaceful Gravigna.
Camilla Trinchieri
As the series progresses, Nico aids in several further investigations with both Perillo and Brigadier Daniele Donato, and also continues to build his new life and home with his dog, OneWag. Over the course of time, Nico becomes a beloved member of the community, and even finds a new special person in his life in this village in Chianti.
The series, now four-books strong, has won praise from reviewers from its launch onward. A Publishers Weekly critic called Murder in Chianti a “vibrant mystery” with “enticing descriptions of food and wine,” while Kirkus dubbed that series launch an “engaging procedural that introduces a delightful cast of characters readers will want to spend more time with.”
The series now stands at four novels, with The Bitter Taste of Murder published in 2021, Murder on the Vine from 2022; and The Road to Murder from 2024. Along the way, the series has continued to gain new readers and excellent reviews, often compared to the Venetian procedurals of Donna Leon and the Chief Inspector Gamache works of Louise Penny.
The author, Trinchieri, has herself lived a life worthy of a novel. She was born in Prague to an Italian diplomat father and American mother, moved to the U.S. with her parents when she was twelve, and then after graduating from Banard College, moved to Italy. There she lived in Rome and worked in the film industry as a dubbing producer and director on films from Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Lina Wertmüller and many others. Then back to the United States where she married, became a U.S.citizen, and earned an MFA from Columbia University’s renowned Graduate Writing Program.
Trinchieri has published numerous other novels both under her own name and writing as Camilla Crespi, including seven novels in the Simona Griffo Mystery Series.
Camilla, welcome to Scene of the Crime. I’ve been looking forward to talking with you about your excellent Tuscan Mysteries series. Let’s start things off with your connection to Italy and Chianti.
My first connection is being Italian. I discovered my Chianti town one summer while town-hopping though Tuscany. Something about the place drew me in a way I hadn’t experienced in other towns. I knew I wanted to place a story in this town without really knowing why. It didn’t matter. I have always let my gut feelings lead me. Having only lived in cities, I knew nothing about town life so the year I went back I stayed for a month. I have gone back every year, staying for two or three weeks each time.
What things about Gravigna make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?
It’s a simple town, beautifully situated above a valley covered with vineyards and surrounded by verdant hills beloved by cyclists. It is a feast for the eyes, but so are many more beautiful towns. It is unique to me because I discovered warm, welcoming people, many of whom have become friends. The town has become my home away from home.
Did you consciously set out to use your location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?
I think it would be hard to write about any place in Italy without it being a character. Gravigna was my first character, then my stories spread out to neighboring towns and the surrounding landscapes. As I write, I go where Nico and OneWag, the Maresciallo and Daniele go. I walk the streets with them, follow them, listen to them with my eyes taking in where they are, what they see.
How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?
I developed a strong sense of place as a child. My father was an Italian diplomat. Growing up I changed countries, schools, languages. I learned to study my new surroundings, to assess where I was in order to place myself there quickly. I try to place my characters so that the reader is in the same place with them, seeing and hearing, and I hope, feeling what they are feeling. I don’t think of myself as being conscious of referring to my town in an overt way. I am just there with my characters, watching and listening to them.
How does Nico interact with his surroundings and vice versa?
Nico first interacts with his deceased wife’s cousin, who runs Sotto Il Fico, a local restaurant. The restaurant setting recurs throughout the stories as Nico enthusiastically starts cooking. I suspect he would have been happy to stay in that kitchen, and after work grow vegetables in his garden, enjoy the small farmhouse he has rented, and have breakfast with Gogol, his Dante quoting friend at Bar Al Angolo, another setting where Nico is welcomed and made to feel at home. I think that by moving to Gravigna, Nico expected a quiet life far from the murders he had to deal with back in New York. It’s a dog’s cry that gets him further into the life of the town. He finds a body. At first reluctant to help Maresciallo Perillo solve the murder, Nico accepts the job. By doing so he becomes one of the town, part of the setting. The setting helps him stop grieving, gives him a new life.
Has there been any local reaction to your works? What do the residents of Gravigna think about these books?
Local reaction has been wonderful, despite the books not being read as only a few townspeople read English. I think they get a kick about being featured in American books. A weekly Chianti newspaper wrote a nice article about the mysteries. The Italian publisher who had brought out three other books of mine thought the Chianti mysteries were too oriented toward foreigners and so declined to have them translated. I agree with her, although I would love to have my Chianti friends read them.
Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).
I am sure I have made many goofs, mostly in the area of Italian criminal law despite the help I received from the Greve-in-Chianti maresciallo. Since the mysteries have not been translated, my goofs have not been spotted.
Of the novels you have written set in this location, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?
From Murder in Chianti:
The air was still chilly at that hour, a fact Nico welcomed as he set off for his three-mile run along the winding road that led up to Gravigna. It was steep going and dangerous in the predawn light. Even at that hour cars kept whizzing past in both directions on their way to work.
When the town appeared, perched on its own small hill, Nico stopped to catch his breath and take in the view of the old town of Gravigna, with its medieval castle walls, its two towers, the proud steeple of the Sant’Agnese Church. In the meager predawn light Nico could, with the help of memory, make out the hundreds of neat rows of vines that covered the Conca d’Oro, the golden bowl below the town that had once only grown grain….
Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?
My love for mysteries started with Agatha Christie and Rex Stout. Through the years Tana French, Aaron Elkins, Laura Lippman, Ann Cleeves and many, many others. I am sure they all have influenced me in one way or another. For one thing, they make me want to write well.
If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?
La bella Italia. In Panzano, with occasional trips to Rome, my old home and where I have family. I left Italy for New York many years ago, but it is still very much in my heart.
What’s next for Nico?
A murder in the medieval town of Pitigliano, also known as Little Jerusalem. Nico is hired by a woman who wants her partner, the father of her child, cleared of the murder of his business partner.
Camilla, many thanks for joining us at Scene of the Crime. It’s been a pleasure. Looking forward to further installments of this fine series.
My guest today is Kate Brody, author of one of my favorite novels of the year, Rabbit Hole, a glimpse of the dark side of online fixation and true crime cases. Theodore “Teddy” Angstrom’s older sister, Angie, disappeared ten years ago. The case remains unsolved and has also undone her family. Teddy’s father, Mark, kills himself on the anniversary of Angie’s disappearance. Teddy soon discovers that her father had been investigating the case through a Reddit community that has become obsessed with Angie. All too soon, Teddy finds herself falling down that same rabbit hole with unforseen consequences.
Kate, welcome to Scene of the Crime. The conceit of this blog is to feature authors with a strong spirit of place. Though your novel is physically set in Maine, I am pleased that you are open to investigating spirit of place on the internet. So, let’s start out with your connection to online communities such as Reddit.
Like everyone else, I spend too much time online. I eschewed social media for years, because I’m a little afraid of it, so when I sat down to write Rabbit Hole, I forced myself to look at the scariest part: Reddit. I ended up a little bit addicted to the site, but now I’m recovered again. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a real sense of comfort with the internet. I am constantly amazed by the way people give up all privacy, cry, complain, confess. It’s alien to me, in a way that makes it a good subject for fiction. I want to figure it out.
What things about the online space make it a unique and appropriate setting for your debut novel?
Rabbit Hole is concerned with the aftermath of a disappearance, and Reddit serves as a perfect “setting” for that kind of story since there are cold case obsessives who gather online to investigate other people’s lives. I was able to create fictional subreddits that would be perfect rabbit holes for Teddy and her dad Mark to fall down in their grief and paranoia.
Kate Brody, photo by Annabel Graham
Did you consciously set out to use this location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story?
I definitely saw Reddit as a collection of voices. The fun part of writing the site was finding a way to recreate that cacophony so it feels like all of these faceless anonymous characters are a part of the story as well.
How does Teddy interact with her surroundings?And conversely, how does the setting affect Teddy?
Teddy goes online initially as a way of looking in what her dad was up to. I think she’s approaching it quite fearfully and cynically at first. But the internet is pretty addictive, and soon enough, she’s hooked on the same thing he was. She wants to believe that maybe these people will provide her with some closure with respect to her sister or her dad.
What’s next for your protagonist, Teddy?
I don’t know! I think the book leaves Teddy in an interesting place. Maybe she has bottomed out, and she’s on her way back up. Maybe she’ll be able to move on and start living for herself. Or maybe all her impulses are still driving her towards destruction, even in spite of her best efforts. I want so much for her.
Are there other writers who influenced you in your use of this particular spirit of place in your novel?
Jennifer Egan and George Saunders are experts at capturing the oddness of communicating via tech without losing the human component of it. I think they both think a lot about voice, and how it shifts and changes online vs. IRL.
Thanks for taking part in Scene of the Crime We will be looking for your next novel!
I am pleased to present a guest post by my great good friend and fine poet, George Vance:
Following publication of a series of incisive essays critiquing our brave new algorithmic world, Giuliano da Empoli’s first novel, The Wizard of the Kremlin, is a galvanizing read full of incisive analysis and acute bons mots. This politico-propaganda thriller, whose outcome we already know, elucidates the machinations behind Putin the Tsar’s rise.
The Wizard is Vadim Baranov, a phantomesque figure modeled on the real Vladislov Surkov – politician, avant-garde theater director, writer, and shadowy advisor to Putin himself, during the lead-up to the 2014 war on Ukraine.
The novel’s narrator, clearly da Empoli himself, lands in Moscow in the years after the Wall has crumbled and wild capitalism has unleashed a free-for-all of Oligarchs, shootouts, and cultural/political anarchy. Browsing an old bookshelf, he comes across First Dissenter Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1922 novel We, a satiric take-down of the budding Soviet regime, but also an astounding prophecy of Vlad Putin’s Russia a century later. Surfing the Net, he lights on an enigmatic quote by a certain Nicolas Brandeis (pseudo for Baranov) citing the self-same Zamyatin. A twittery chat ensues and he is off to Baranov’s dacha hidden away in the obscure Siberian forest.
Da Empoli builds on his earlier non-fiction essays, such as Obama: Politics in the Age of Facebook, 2008, and The Chaos Engineers, 2019, parlaying his deep research into a tour de force, with Baranov delivering an eye-opening narrative decoding the intricate propoganda machine behind the persona of Russia’s consummate, albeit totally fabricated, savior-potentate.
The Kremlin at night
Familiar figures appear : Boris Spasky (chess champion and supporter of One Russia); Bill Clinton (the famous Yeltsin-inspired laughing jag); Angela Merkel (the Dog anecdote); Mikhaïl Khodorkovsky (tycoon, prisoner, exile); Prigozhin (founder of the Wagner militia, suicidal risk-taker). These are joined by a cast of other lesser-known characters.
Quotable quotes abound. Here’s Limonov, in an anti Western tirade : “Do you know what the beginning of the end was ?… Richelieu. It was he who abolished the duel…can you imagine ? Western man never recovered. From there to paternal leave, a straight line…TV, a drudge job…, vacations at the beach, and it’s over before you know it…A wasted life – the only unpardonable crime.”
The novel is populated with flashy, short-lived characters, each worth a novel of his own, and many are writers themselves. Members of the siloviki, the close circle of politicians/oligarks/criminals (all three at once), they are sometimes in and sometimes out, each with an ego that only Putin’s sovereign democracy (‘fake’ democracy, according to a Muscovite professor in the 1990’s) can contain, and does. They all end either in jail, exile, house arrest with varying lengths of leash, or of course, death by ‘suicide’.
Baranov, in da Empoli’s telling, lives out his post-Wizard retirement in the serene company of his vast and hallowed library, but takes this one chance to let all the pent-up cats out of the bag, to the great satisfaction of the amazed and charmed listener-narrator.
Read it before we’re submerged in the coming AI deluge.
The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli, translated by Willard Wood, Pushkin, 2022, originally published in French as Le Mage du Kremlin.
George Vance is the author of a number of poetry books including A Short Circuit & Xmas Collage, from corrupt press. Has read at Paris venues IVY, Poets Live, Live Poets, Wice, Spoken Word. Published in Upstairs at Duroc, Bastille, on-line mags Nth dgree, RETORT, EKLEKSOPEDIA, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Paris Lit Up Poetry Journal (PLU Gazette). His video ‘Heights of Experience’ was presented in Brussels as part of ARTCETERA, and an experimental piece (In)(de)finite Gist was presented at the 2018 David Foster Wallace Conference. He lives in the Champagne Region of France.
2833— That is the number of people who entered a Goodreads giveaway last month to win ten signed copies of The Cry of Cicadas. Those ten copies are already on their way to the winners.
You’ve got better odds this time. We’re giving away 100 ebook editions of this first novel in the Byrns on the Homefront Series, an “immersive journey into the tumultuous era of WWII, filled with rich historical detail and compelling characters to delight fans of well-penned mystery,” as a Readers’ Favorite reviewer described it. The giveaway, available to Goodreads members in the U.S., starts on April 4 and runs through the end of the month.
I hope to reach as many former and new readers as possible, as I believe this is a series you will take to heart, just like so many of you did with my earlier VIENNESE MYSTERIES. This new series blends a similar care to historical detail, compelling characters, nuanced suspense and mystery, and a gripping setting–in this case, WWII on the American homefront with all its resilience and, of course, crimes.
So, beginning April 4, go to the bottom of this post and click on the ‘Enter Giveaway’ tab. Good luck to you all!
Popular mystery and thriller writer S.J. Rozen and novelist and former publisher at Marvel Comics, John Shen Yen Nee, team up for a meaty and fast-moving historical mystery set in London in the 1920s.
The authors engagingly repurpose two actual historical personages for this “bewitching series kickoff,” as a Publishers Weekly reviewer dubbed The Murder of Mr. Ma in a starred review.
Lao She, here a shy academic lecturer, is the pen name for an actual Chinese novelist in mid-twentith century, known best for his novel, Rickshaw Boy. The other major character in The Murder of Mr. Ma, Judge Dee Ren Jie, is also based on a semi-historical figure who was a county magistrate and statesman of the Tang court. If the name sounds familiar, it should: Judge Dee was previously put to service in a series of detective novels by Robert van Gulik.
Rozen and Nee set their series launch in 1924 London. Lao She is summoned by famed mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, when Judge Dee, a friend of Russell’s, is arrested with a group of Chinese protestors. Russell wants Lao She to help him free Judge Dee, who has come to London to investigate the murder of shopkeeper Ma Za Ren. This is personal for Judge Dee, as he knows Ma from World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps.
Judge Dee ultimately escapes prison, and he and Lao She team up to investigate the deaths of Ma and a series of others, all killed with the same butterfly sword. Along the way, the reader is served a good measure of humor and action scenes, as well as accurate period and historical detail.
The novel has won praise from Library Journal, whose reviewer felt that “fans of the Sherlock Holmes canon will appreciate this fast-paced, exciting novel.” A critic for the Washington Post concurred, calling the novel an “appealingly unusual, action-packed Sherlock Holmes pastiche with deep roots in both Chinese crime fiction and the history of early 20th-century England.” Further praise was offered by bestselling authors Laurie King, who called it a “joy,” and New York Times bestselling author Xiran Jay Zhao, who dubbed The Murder of Mr. Ma a ” refreshingly unique mystery,” and further noted that “Lao She and Dee Ren Jie are a hilarious and compelling duo to follow!”
Release date for The Murder of Mr. Ma is April 2. This is one to watch.
Edinburgh-based author Philip Miller took the long route to novel writing, working as a journalist for a couple of decades and twice named Arts Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards. In 2015, he published his first novel, The Blue Horse, following it up two years later with All the Galaxies. His breakthrough novel, The Goldenacre, appeared in 2022, winning the Shamus Award for Best Private Investigator Novel, and scoring rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. That novel deals with the authentication of a famous painting, ‘The Goldenacre,’ by legenday Scottish painter and architect, Charles Renni Mackintosh, and also with a string of gruesome murders in Edinburgh. The Goldenacre introduces Miller’s protagonist, the tough and driven newpspaer reporter Shona Sandison, who is covering the murders and eventually finds a connection between these murders and the Mackintosh painting. Famed Scots mystery author Denise Mina termed this series debut a “riveting, brutal journey into the high-stakes world of legacy art and inherited wealth.”
Now Miller is following up that series launch with the scond novel featuring Shona Sandison, The Hollow Tree, to be published April 2. The Wall Street Journal termed this second installment “ambitious and wonderfully realized,” while The Times in the UK dubbed it a “first-class thriller.”
This is truly an immersive read–I am absolutely taking my time with reading The Hollow Tree, wanting it to last. Miller’s descriptives are quite amazing. Example: his protagonist is on a ferry on her way to a wedding. It’s a chilly day, and most writers would leave it at that. Not Miller, who in fact will soon be publishing his first poetry collection, Blame Yourself. Here is Miller’s description of part of that short voyage:
The ship sunk into a thick mist. It was as if they had entered an erasure. The form and volume of the hills and the sea had been rubbed out by a blanket of dreary light. The distant deep hulks of mountians were smudged and edgeless. The sky was as solid as the water below–grey, lightless, faintly but dully illuminated.
Philip, it is a real pleasure to have you on Scene of the Crime. Let’s start things off with a description of your connection to Edinburgh. How did you come to live there or become interested in it?
I live in Edinburgh, having moved back here eight years ago. Before that I lived in Glasgow for 20 years, and before that, I lived in Edinburgh as a student, [allegedly] studying history at the city’s University for four years. Before that, I grew up in a northern English town – Barnard Castle.
What makes Ediburgh unique and a good physical setting in your books?
Edinburgh, as someone once said, can resemble a dream in stone. It is rich with history of course, but also with modernity, with beauty and also darkness. I love its light, and its sea, its harbours and beaches, as much as its hills and peaks. It’s got great bookshops, and coffee shops, and galleries and cinemas and pubs. It has wild green patches amid the asphalt and stone. It feels human-scale – it is walkable and bus-able, despite the grandeur. It has its issues, of course – everywhere does. And I saw a badger the other day, tottering across Newhaven Road. Big, aren’t they?
Did you consciously set out to use Edinburgh as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?
I just wrote about what I know: I live in Edinburgh. I’ve lived in Glasgow. I’ve spent a bit of time in London, and grew up in a rural town in northern England – these are, so far, my settings, because I know them. And Scotland is big enough to contain a multitude of stories – an infinite number.
How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you? In other words, similar to the previous question, are you conscious of referring to your specific city or locale as you write?
I always want to help the reader feel they are, even slantingly, in a real place – with real light, texture, and scent. Even if they aren’t, of course. It’s just trying to cast a little cantrip. [SOTC note: Google it–I did.] Making four dimensions with two dimensional words. You can lean them on each other, like stacking cards into a pyramid.
How does your protagonist interact with his/her surroundings? Is she a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster? And conversely, how does the setting affect your protagonist?
Shona Sandison is from Glasgow – the south side of Glasgow in particular. So she is from a world of red tenements, high camber roads, urban parks and cramped pubs. But also of Glasgow, in all its light and shadow. So, in Edinburgh, she is in a very different place to her home town, albeit still in Scotland. She feels like a blow-in there. But in The Hollow Tree, she has to investigate a story in the rural north of England – she feels completely out of place. The silence, the space, the deep horizons, the moors: she is not used to it. She’s a city person. Not a deep dale person.
Has there been any local reaction to your works? What do local (ie those who actually live in your novels’ setting) reviewers think, for example.
I have had some very generous reviews in Scotland (so far).
Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).
Yes. I described a lane next to the rather grand West Register House in Edinburgh as ‘crooked and medieval’ when it is neither. This has been pointed out….in my defence, it was crooked and medieval in my mind, which is also where The Goldenacre came from, so. Can’t have everything. Anyway, that little lane should be crooked and medieval. I will write a letter to the city council, see if they can change it. In The Hollow Tree I have taken some liberties with the major rivers of the north of England (Tees, Tyne, and Wear), by adding another one, the Tyr.
Of the novels you have written set in this location, do you have a favourite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?
In The Goldenacre there is a scene on a misty Portobello beach (a beach in Edinburgh) which I am quite fond of, and a rave on Calton Hill, with animal masks and a spot of brutal ego-death, likewise. In The Hollow Tree, there is a scene in a wood where we observe the tree, and nothing much seems to happen, but many things happen, and I think that is my favourite scene. In The Blue Horse, there is a short dream chapter which I am still reasonably pleased with. In All The Galaxies, there’s a scene on the Scottish island of Eigg which is very important – and it is based on something in my own life, when my father cleared a beach of jellyfish, so my sisters and I could play. It is as it was. Or close enough.
Who are your favourite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?
I have many favourite writers – some do place very well, others are concerned with other things. I have definitely picked up the importance of place from Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Jon McGregor, Turgenev. I love the savage light of Greece of Don DeLillo’s The Names. I love the Paris of Simenon’s Maigret, but his descriptions are really quite spare and passing. Early influences would be DH Lawrence and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and they of course conjure spaces and places like magicians. Annie Proulx is very good at conjuring location well, too, I think: you know where you are. And of course Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles – you know exactly where you are, at all times. And you know what the gimlets taste like.
If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?
I love Edinburgh. I feel lucky to live in such a beautiful, walkable, mercurial place. As I get older, I find myself pining for the dales and vales of the north of England more. Maybe it’s inevitable.
If you mean anywhere in space and time? Doggerland, before the flood.
What’s next for your protagonist?
Shona’s next investigation takes her through the UK after Covid, and after Brexit. It’s not a happy place.
Hello folks! I want to let you know that I am on the Goodreads Book Giveaway for ten signed first editions of my new historical mystery, The Cry of Cicadas. This is the series launch of BYRNS ON THE HOMEFRONT, inspired by that wonderful Brit series, Foyle’s War. For those of you who enjoyed my VIENNESE MYSTERIES, I am sure you will bond with this one, as well. A similar eye to historical detail, compelling characters, nuanced suspense and mystery, and gripping setting–WWII on the American homefront with all its resilience and, of course, crimes.
I am also offering the ebook edition of The Cry of Ciadas on Amazon for a reduced price and for a limited time on Amazon’s Countdown Deal. I want to reach as many former and new readers as possible, as I believe this is a series you will take to heart, as so many of you did with the VIENNESE MYSTERIES.
But unlike that series, I will be the one who determines when BYRNS ON THE HOMEFRONT ends. My Viennese series ended when my publishers were purchased by a larger house. So, I determined that I would be the publisher for this series. It is all on me.
Good luck with the giveaway–be sure to click on the Goodreads Book Giveawy above–contest lasts until March 30. Available only to Goodreads members in the U.S.
I look forward to signing and sending those ten copies.
You can get the ebook of The Cry of Cicadas today (3/09/24) at Amazon for $.99. Price goes up soon to $1.99 and ultimately back to the regular cost of $3.99. Unlimited members can get it for free. So take advantage of the savings–hope you enjoy it!
I come from a farming family, though I am very far removed from the land now. I make my living with my imagination, not my hands. But there is still a strong connection to those roots: like a farmer, I consume what I produce. Not many jobs like that.
I write books, and I read books written by others. Continuously. That’s what writers do. Farmers produce food and consume food, mostly produced by others.
But like many other readers, my consumption pattern has changed over the years. Our home library has a couple thousand books double-rowed in floor-to ceiling shelves. On many of those shelves, more books have found residence horizontally on top of the upright books. No Dewey decimal system, but I have a vague sense of where books belong: foreign-language titles, far left; then British and American fiction spanning the mid sections; nonfiction in the final rows to the right. And another smaller bookcase on the opposite wall is filled with paperback mysteries and thrillers.
I also carry in my left front pocket a library of equal breadth in my digital library. And now we finally get to the nut graph:
I read more from that electronic library than I do from the physical one. Oh, I will pick up the odd Steinbeck or Dickens or Robertson Davies for a re-read, but for new titles and convenience I must admit the e-reader gets a lot of use.
In part this has to do with my peripatetic life-style as a younger man, traveling in countries where English-language books could be scarce and/or expensive. Much time and energy was spent tracking down other likely looking travelers for a book swap. So having a library of books in my pocket is a security blanket.
But it is more than that. There is the ease of it, especially reading in bed, standing on a crowded subway train, waiting for a delayed dentist appointment. The smart phone accompanies us on our daily activities—you always have your books with you. And I am an avid library user: digital libraries make my selections available wherever I have wifi, worldwide.
Yet, there is that niggle of guilt of leaving print books mostly behind. A mini betrayal. I mean, when one of my books is published, it is of course the hardback or softcover copy I hold lovingly, new baby-like in my hands with a feeling of pride.
And there is a rich and lengthy tradition for physical books. Book production of some sort has been around since the 1st century B.C.; printed books started in China in 868 A.D. with hand-carved wood blocks cut in reverse for the printing of The Diamond Sutra. And let us not forget Herr Gutenberg and his bible from mid-15th century.
While our e-book stepchild has only been around since 1971.
Let me know in the comments section about your own battle of print vs digital. Where do you stand? Is it a divide for you or a happy combination? And let me also know if I can publish your comments in a further post (with your name or anonymously).
I look forward to hearing from you all. And keep on reading!
J. Sydney Jones is the author of the acclaimed "Viennese Mystery" series, set in Vienna 1900. Novels include THE EMPTY MIRROR, REQUIEM IN VIENNA, THE SILENCE, THE KEEPER OF HANDS, and A MATTER OF BREEDING.
“What Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for Victorian London and Caleb Carr did for old New York, J. Sydney Jones does for historic Vienna.”
-Karen Harper, New York Times bestselling author
Jones is also the author of a number of stand-alone thrillers and mysteries, including THE CRY OF CICADAS, an "immersive journey into the tumultuous era of WWII, filled with rich historical detail and compelling characters to delight fans of well-penned mystery." --Readers' Favorite
Visit him at his Web site: www.jsydneyjones.com
The Third Place
A MATTER OF BREEDING
The Keeper of Hands
The Silence
Requiem in Vienna
The Empty Mirror
Honors/Awards
Named one of the 50 Best Blogs for Crime & Mystery Book Lovers (courtreporter.net)
Named to the 2010 Top 45 Mystery Blogs
Scene of the Crime 