As the ball drops this New Year’s Eve, here’s all the news from Stabenowland…
…seven…
Death of an Eye dropped on December 6th. Set in Alexandria in the time of Cleopatra, it’s the first novel in what I hope will be a series of history mysteries featuring the Eye of Isis, Cleopatra’s private investigator/hatchet man/fixer. My first first novel in a long time and I’d forgotten how hard it was to write a first in series, trying to create an ensemble cast that will be interesting enough to keep me interested in writing it and you interested in reading it. Fingers crossed…
…six, five…
At present I’m working on the 22nd Kate Shugak novel, called No Fixed Line. The title comes from the Robert Frost poem ‘There Are Roughly Zones,” this passage:
…though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed.
A plane crashes in the Quilaks on New Year’s Eve, the only survivors two children who don’t speak English. The crash occurs in the middle of an off-and-on blizzard that began the previous Thanksgiving (where Kate21 ended), the NTSB is busy elsewhere, and ex-Trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement (temporarily! he insists!) to try to identify the aircraft, collect the corpses, and determine why no flight has been reported missing. Meanwhile, Kate Shugak receives an unexpected and unwelcome charge from beyond the grave that will change the face of the Park forever.
[Publishing in November, signing at the Poisoned Pen on November 9th.]
…four…
After which (somebody hold Sandy Nolfi down) I will be writing the fifth Liam Campbell novel. The marvelous and miraculous Nic Cheetham at Head of Zeus in the UK is reprinting the first four, and I have wreaked havoc on Liam and Wy’s lives. She said modestly. Here’s a clue:
…three…
And then I’ll get to work on the second Eye of Isis novel, which begins with Tetisheri disappearing into the bowels of the Great Library of Alexandria to read through the case files of Eyes past. Think she’ll find a cold case to tackle? Me, too.
…two…
In re Storyknife, there is nothing but good news to report. The Rasmuson Foundation has awarded us $400,000 in infrastructure costs that will kick in as soon as we raise the last of our construction funds, Nancy Nordhoff is matching every dollar donated to Storyknife from the end of October to the end of the year in our end-of-year campaign, and we are hoping for good news from the Murdock Trust in the first half of next year. All by way of saying we hope to begin construction in 2019 and to be in operation in 2020.
Thank you all, every one of you, who have donated to the cause. You are nurturing and sustaining the women writers of the future, and you better brace yourselves for being bored to tears by being thanked because we will never stop. Starting now:
Thank you!
…one. Happy New Year!
