March 2024
How’d it get to be March already? It really doesn’t seem fair that the older one gets, the faster the years fly by. I remember being a kid in school and thinking days would never end, much less years. One of the many mysteries of life, I reckon.
Library Spirits was released on February 6. Think I told you how worried I was about this book because it might be considered weird, what with a couple of hauntings and a murder with which Daisy has to deal. But people seem to like it! I hadn’t considered the disparate characters in the book until someone reviewed it on Amazon (bless the person forever and ever). The reviewer mentioned that the book contains a medium, a detective, a cranky old former bounty hunter, crazy ghosts, dogs and a cat, a gay best friend, Voodoo mambos and pretty much something for everyone. The reviewer is right, by golly. Anyhow, the book is getting better reviews than I thought it would.
Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews online. Anywhere online. Even bad ones are better than none, although not by much. If someone explains why s/he didn’t like a book, the author can decide if that person’s point is valid or whatever. One beta reader (that’s a person who volunteers to read a book before it’s published) said the book mocked Christianity at the end. Honestly, I was shocked. I don’t personally mock any religion or set of beliefs. How can I? I grew up in a Methodist Church (which is why Daisy goes to one. It’s the only church I know anything about). I also grew up in a place that pretty much embraced all ethnic, religious and cultural groups extant in the area at the time. Most of us kids thought the whole world was like that. Boy, were we wrong! The point I was attempting to make in Library Spirits is that fanaticism isn’t a good thing. In other words, people (as ever) are the problem. The older I get, the more I consider the human species to be a dangerous and destructive one. And invasive? Good grief!
Oh dear, that reminded me of a story. When I lived in Pasadena, California (my hometown), I danced in the Balkan section of the dance company Avaz (based in Los Angeles). I also sang in a Balkan women’s chorus called Zhena. When our glorious leader didn’t think we were singing lustily enough, he’d bellow, “You sound like a Methodist choir!” It wasn’t a compliment. Yet when I moved here to Roswell, Balkan women’s choruses were thin on the ground. Therefore, I joined my church’s choir. I love to sing. Breaks my heart that my voice is shot to heck. Ah well. Nobody told me old age would be like this, which is probably just as well because I might have decided to skip it.
Bam-Bam has chosen wieners of Library Spirits! They are Trish Rucker, Bea Smith, Julie Stafford, Carol Goerz and Chris Worth! I’ll get your ebooks to you as soon as possible.
But enough about that. I’m just glad the book didn’t offend any more people than it did. And if you haven’t bought one and don’t win one today, you can still get it in ebook, paperback and hardback, although anyone who can afford hardbacks these days is a heckuva lot better off than some of us. Here’s a link where you can get it anywhere:
I still expect to finish writing Celluloid Angels, Mercy Allcutt’s ninth adventure, soonish. As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, I bumped head-first into some plotting problems. Fortunately a dear friend, Mimi Riser, an author who lives in Spur, Texas, helped me out there. Then, because I had to do a whole lot of other things before I could get back to writing the book, I forgot what she recommended. But I took notes (organization isn’t one of my most prominent traits), managed actually to find them and I think the problems are more or less ironed out. Whew!
By the way, Celluloid Angels has Mercy’s movie-mogul brother-in-law, Harvey Nash, calling upon Mercy, Ernie Templeton and Lulu LaBelle into helping him find whoever’s behind the sabotage on his flicker-in-progress, Helen of Troy. They’re more or less happy to help, although of course they all get into trouble of one sort or another.
Oh, and after several years of pregnancy (in the books), Chloe has finally had her baby! It’s a little girl, whom Chloe and Harvey haven’t named yet because they want to get to know her first. Poor Mercy has taken to calling the wee darling No Name. The baby will have a name by the end of the book. Promise.
Writing books set in the 1920s creates some research hurdles to leap. For instance, at first I had Helen and Paris being played by Anita Page and John Gilbert. Then I dug deeper and decided Anita would be too darned young to play Helen (although a bunch of teenage girls began their Hollywoodland careers as youngsters—and generally died young of drug- or alcohol-related problems). Also, John Gilbert, who has appeared in another couple of Mercy books, wore a moustache. I couldn’t feature the young lad, Paris, with a soup-strainer. So now the two main characters are played by Blanche Sweet and Ramon Novarro (who was Dolores del Rio’s cousin, by golly!) Anyway, Blanche and Ramon are both better fits to play Helen and Paris.
Sadly, John Gilbert also died young of alcohol-related problems. Poor Ramon was not only an alcoholic, but he ended up being tortured and murdered! I’m kind of glad none of my characters are actors. Even Lulu LaBelle has seen the tawdry side of the flicker industry and no longer wants to be a star.
Oh, and to complicate matters, the story of Helen and Paris, while briefly mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, were actually written about in Virgil’s Aeneid. The story is pretty much bonkers. When Mercy tries to explain it to Lulu, Lulu thinks it’s idiotic. I’d never say so myself. I mean Virgil’s is still spoken of today. He’s a famous master of Greek mythology and writing. I’m old, but I’m not that old, and I doubt people will remember me ten years from now much less a thousand. Heck, in a thousand years, I expect we human beings will have killed ourselves off and Earth will still be recovering from the damage we did to it. Her. Whatever pronoun goes with Earth. And I worked at JPL. Never did much care about space, being infinitely more interested in history, although my love of history and extensive reading thereof has given me a low opinion of human beings as a species. And don’t get mad at me about that. I’m a human, too, y’know.
Did I tell you guys that a couple of Albuquerque friends, Tabitha Hall (whom I met through New Mexico Dachshund Rescue) and David Bedini (whom I met through a letter he wrote me from North Carolina, of all strange places, before he moved to Albuquerque) came to visit my hounds and me on Christmas Day? Not sure about them, but I had a great time and appreciate them so very much that I asked Dave if he’d mind being a villain in Celluloid Angels. He said he’d be delighted, so there you go. I couldn’t bear to make him a truly horrid criminal, so he’s the brother of a villainess. He doesn’t appreciate her roping him into her life of crime, but we can’t choose our relatives, can we?
I’ll be very glad when I finish Celluloid Angels because I actually want to write Daisy’s twentieth (20th!) adventure, Spirits Adopted. You know who’s directly responsible for the plot for Spirits Adopted? The folks on the Facebook page Daisy Daze! My thinker was empty, so I begged for help and I got it! Boy, the folks who belong to Daisy Daze are wonderful and I love them all.
So here’s the Amazon Kindle link for Celluloid Angels:
And looky here! It’s my very own mother, Wilma Rachel Wilson Duncan (before she became a Duncan) on the back of a too-skinny horse! The photo was taken in 1936 (which makes her 23 at the time). It was also taken just about where I live now, my maternal grandmother having bought the property upon which this house sits in 1903. Roswell, New Mexico, was even more nothing in 1936 than it is now. Astonishing.
You know (or maybe you don’t), I wrote three books set here in the Roswell area. They’re cozy mysteries set in the 1920s, too. There’s a long and complicated reason for my having written the books, but I don’t feel like going into it now. Anyhow, Wolfpack Publishing decided to re-publish them, for which I will be forever grateful. The books’ heroine is Annabelle Blue, whose family runs Blue’s Mercantile and Grocery Emporium. Annabelle is slightly nosy, and her 12-year-old brother drives her nuts. Her incredibly patient boy pal is Phil Gunderson, whose brother owns a hardware store in town and whose family has a ranch nearby. The books are as follows, and if you click on a pic, the link will take you to the Amazon Kindle site:
Please leave a review if you like a book. You can just give it a number score if you don’t want to write anything. Or you can say something simple like, “I liked this book.” It would be extremely kind of you to leave a review (or even a number) on Amazon, GoodReads, Barnes & Noble or wherever else books can be reviewed. I’d appreciate it. Thank you.
If you’re on Facebook, join Daisy Daze! Anyone who has an interest in the 1920s will probably find Daisy Daze interesting, at least sometimes. As mentioned earlier, Daisy Dazers even give me plotting advice sometimes. Often even. Daisy Daze was founded by Iris Evans and Leon Fundenberger, both of whom like Daisy and Mercy. Daisy Daze is a great place for Daisy Gumm Majesty Rotondo and Mercedes Louise Allcutt fans to hang out, as well as anyone who is interested in the “Roaring Twenties.” We concentrate pretty closely on the Pasadena and Los Angeles areas, because the books are set there. We also cover a lot of stuff relating to early motion-pictures, because both Daisy and Mercy have friends in the biz. Daisy Daze is fun, it’s educational and if you’d like to be a member, check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/905100189878318/
If you’d like to visit my web page, here’s the link (thanks to Lyndele von Schill): Home | Alice Duncan . If you’d like to be Facebook friends, please go here: (20+) Alice Duncan | Facebook .
Here’s a link to my author page at ePublishingWorks: Alice Duncan Author Page (ebookdiscovery.com)
Thank you!
