Spirits United!
I apologize for
last month’s blog. I was so down in the dumps, I just couldn’t bear to be
funny. Losing a best friend and another friend losing her daughter to murder
just sort of wiped out the joy in life for a while. For the record, the
murderer of my cousin’s daughter has been found and extradited to New Mexico to
stand trial. So maybe he’ll be convicted and imprisoned. That’ll be okay, but
it won’t bring Anita back, you know? And I doubt there’s any way a mother can ever
recover from the loss of a child, especially to murder, so my friend whose
daughter was murdered in June (and whose murderer then committed suicide) is pretty
much doomed, I guess. As another friend of mine said, if a person decides to
commit a murder-suicide, it’s better to commit the suicide first. I think
that’s a brilliant solution to a dire problem, but I doubt it’ll catch on,
people being what they are.
Anyway, enough of
that. I’ll be in touch with the winners of July’s contest via email since I
didn’t specify a book to be given away. You get to pick your choice if you’re a
wiener. I mean a winner.
SPIRITS UNITED,
Daisy’s eleventh adventure (actually, it’s her twelfth, but who’s counting?)
was just released, so here’s the cover art and links to it on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble:
Okey-dokey, a
little bit about SPIRITS UNITED. I was afraid the book would be terrible. You
see, I had such an emotional investment in BRUISED SPIRITS, I figured the next
book would be a flop. However, people seem to be enjoying it! Go figure. I’m happy
about that, and I’m working diligently on the next Daisy book. It seems to be
coming along nicely. In order to prepare for it, which is titled SPIRITS
UNEARTHED, I’ll be taking photographs at the Mountain View Cemetery in
Altadena, California, when I’m in California next week for my friend’s memorial
service. Feel free to speculate from there.
As for SPIRITS
UNITED, it begins at Daisy’s home on Marengo Avenue in Pasadena, but Sam
Rotondo (Pasadena police detective and Daisy’s betrothed) comes over just as
Daisy is about to visit the library (she hangs out there a lot). Therefore, Sam
goes with her on her jaunt to the library since he doesn’t trust her not to
stumble over a dead body if she visits there alone. Doesn’t work. A woman is
murdered in the biography stacks while Sam is with Daisy at the library.
Horrors! Worse, Daisy’s friend, Robert Browning (not the poet), is discovered
holding the bloody knife used to murder the poor dead woman. This naturally
puts Robert at the top of Sam’s suspect list, although Daisy doesn’t believe
for a second he did the dirty deed.
Anyhow, Sam, still
recovering from the gunshot he got in BRUISED SPIRITS, and still hurting from
it and forced to use a cane, is cranky as heck. Nevertheless, he gets to work.
Daisy gets to
work, too, although Sam doesn’t want her to. Eventually the murderer is
discovered, thanks to a lot of snooping on everyone’s part. Not only that, but
Daisy is thrilled that she’s become a matchmaker. Again. She’s almost as good
at matchmaking as she is at sewing and spiritualist-medium-ing.
Oh, and in SPIRITS
UNITED, it’s Sam’s Voodoo juju that acts up rather than any of Daisy’s
spiritualist paraphernalia. Sam neither believes in nor appreciates its help.
In order to get a
feel for the library where SPIRITS UNITED begins, I wanted to see pictures of
the Pasadena Public Library as it was in 1924. The present library was opened
in 1929. I used to practically live there when I resided in Pasadena, and I
worked for quite some time in the children’s room there. Love that library and
still visit it when I’m in Pasadena. However, that’s not the library in which
Daisy’s latest body was found. Here are photographs (found for me by my lovely
niece, Sara Krafft, and a wonderful Facebook buddy, Andie Paysinger) of the old
library. It looks like it was a beautiful place:
The only truly
awful thing about SPIRITS UNITED is that I murdered a librarian in it. It’s not my fault! Lynne Welch, a valued
friend and excellent beta reader, is a librarian, and she told me she’s always
wanted to bump off a librarian. So I did it for her. I still feel guilty about
doing so, too.
I’ll
let folks pick any old book you want from my backlist at the end of August. If
you’re name is chosen from my special contest doggie dish by Bam-Bam, my
winner-picking wiener dog, I’ll send you the book you select, providing I have
a copy.
Oh,
and a word about my monthly contests. I love giving my work to people; however,
I found out quite by accident a few months ago that sending books to Great
Britain, Australia, and other countries outside the United States is beyond my
monetary capability. If a resident of a nation other than the United States has
an e-reader, I’ll happily supply that person with an e-book. If a person
doesn’t have an e-reader and still likes to read book-books, he or she is on
his or her own. I’m sorry, but what I laughingly call my writing career hasn’t
made me wealthy yet. And it probably won’t, but let’s not get in to that,
because it always depresses me. So. That’s that.
If
you’d like to enter the contest, just send me an email (alice@aliceduncan.net) and give me your
name and home address. If you’d like to be added to my mailing list, you may do
so on my web site (http://aliceduncan.net/) or email me (you
won’t be smothered in e-mail, because I only write one blog a month, and that’s
an effort). If you’d like to be friends on Facebook, visit my page at https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925.
Thank
you!
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