By Deb on February 2, 2010
Happy new year! In response to some reader questions, I’ve asked Barbara Hamilton (an author I am quite sure you will like, wink-wink), writer of the historical mystery Ninth Daughter, about her future plans. Her reply:
“My second Abigail Adams mystery – A Marked Man – is currently being edited at Penguin Books: Abigail is called on to defend a young Son of Liberty who is being framed for the murder of a Royal Commissioner who – it turns out – had a very long line of people queued up to murder him if they got the chance. She knows young Harry Knox didn’t do it… but whoever DID do it has started killing off others who might hold clues, and both Abigail and Lt. Coldstone find themselves on that list.
The third Abigail book – The Treasure of Beelzebub – is the inevitable pirate treasure-hunt book – at the end of which the British Occupational Force lands in Boston to take revenge for the Boston Tea Party.
I’m hoping – that is, Ms. Hamilton is hoping – that the series continues at least far enough for Abigail to do some sleuthing in tandem with Martha Washington in the seige-camp outside of occupied Boston during the Seige, and – crossed fingers – with Mr. Jefferson in pre-revolutionary Paris.”
But that lies in the hands of the publishing industry.”
Thank you, Ms Hamilton! My question for readers is: what would your pseudonym be?
…and in site news, I’ve just enabled a mobile version of the site for tiny-browser lovers (ie smartphones). Feedback is always welcome; I’ll be tweaking it a bit more this week.
Posted in Announcements, Information
By Barbara on December 3, 2009
Amid all the fuss and fluster I completely forgot to mention that the second graphic novel in my series The Garden of Emptiness is out this month!
This is the series – from PennyFarthing Press – about Anne Steelyard, rip-roarin’ rootin-tootin female archaeologist in the Middle East prior to WWI. The first of the series – An Honorary Man – came out last winter; I’m really curious to see the artwork on this one. Evil Germans and desert afrits and snotty upper-class English dowagers going on expeditions into the desert to find the Garden of Eden, whoo-hoo!
Posted in Announcements
By Deb on November 16, 2009
We’re introducing an (exciting!) new experiment called The Further Adventures Of…
Nearly everyone who writes in to the site asks: “When is Barbara going to write another story in X series?” As pretty much everybody knows, fantasy serieses get dumped by publishers – and as pretty much every author knows, other publishers generally do not fall over themselves to pick up these abandoned serieses. And as every fan knows, ten years is too long to wait to find out What Happened Next!
Thus, Barbara – in response to those who’ve loved the old Del Rey fantasy serieses – has written original short stories about the people and places in those serieses: Antryg and Joanna (Deb cheers loudly), Sun Wolf and Starhawk, the gang at the Keep of Dare, John and Jenny, the Sisters of the Raven… anyone from previous books. The stories are $5 apiece (Barbara, like everyone else, needs to eat), and if the experiment proves successful, more will follow.
To begin with, there are four stories: “There Shall Your Heart Be Also” and “Libre” are both Benjamin January stories, “Quest For Glory” is a short and silly pastiche about the casting-call for characters in an upcoming Hambly fantasy novel (Sisters of the Raven), and includes – besides people you later meet in Sisters – James Asher, Don Simon Ysidro, and Ben January. And finally,“Firemaggot” is new and original. Dead rock ‘n’ roll stars, deserted palatial ranchos in Ventura County, Los Angeles in the mid-80s, and strange tiny monster-spawn that Joanna Sheraton’s cat drags home to the house she and Antryg Windrose have just bought in Tarzana… Antryg has to be doing something while he’s hiding out in LA.
For more details, story excerpts, and to actually purchase the stories, fly on over to The Further Adventures Of…
Posted in Announcements, From Barbara
By Barbara on September 7, 2009
Just pressed the magic button, and the final draft of Dead & Buried (Benjamin January #9) whooshed on its way to Severn House in London. My fingers are now crossed. But, I’m very pleased with it. (I really hope I haven’t missed some excrutiatingly obvious clue…)
Posted in Uncategorized
By Barbara on August 21, 2009
Barbara Hambly Herself here – as I hope to be posting whenever there is news to impart.
The news is, that Homeland is in stores – after a long and stressful journey to fruition. I think it’s one of my best, of the “literary fiction” genre – a Civil War novel about friendship, emotional survival, and the use of fiction to get through unthinkable times.
Other news: I am nearly finished with – at long last! – Benjamin January #9, Dead and Buried – which picks up (the series was never intended to be on hiatus this long) at the end of the summer of 1836, only a few months after the end of Dead Water. Severn Press – a U.K. publisher – picked up the series for two books… and, I’m hoping, sales will encourage them to pick up more.
Severn Press has also contracted Asher and Ysidro #3, Blood Maidens, yay!
And I have been instructed to say – regarding the Project Which Must Not Be Spoken Of (that I’ve been working on in secret for the past year) – that if you like my work, you will almost certainly like a New Novel by Unknown Author Barbara Hamilton – in that genre that’s sort of known as Historical Sleuths. The Historical Sleuth in this case is Abigail Adams, and Ninth Daughter takes place in Boston on the eve (literally) of the Boston Tea Party, when the British garrison commander’s mistress is found murdered in the kitchen of one of the Sons of Liberty (in this case, a Daughter of Liberty) – who has disappeared. Abigail is sleuthing in tandem with the Assistant Provost Marshal of the regiment. Great fun.
MANY thanks to Deb for the wonderful job she’s done on the Website – and stay tuned for more changes upcoming.
I will continue to post here about new projects and status reports, since – although I’m delighted for you all to stop by my LiveJournal blog – it isn’t really fair to ask you to mush through paragraphs about my cats and World of Warcraft to get to information.
Many thanks, everyone, for hanging in.
Posted in Uncategorized
By Deb on August 19, 2009
Barbara’s newest book, Homeland, will be released on Aug 25 (that’s next Tuesday!). Read a synopsis over on the Random House site. Comments from readers are welcome – choose “leave a response” below.
Posted in Announcements, Information
By Deb on August 14, 2009
…to the newly designed Barbara Hambly Page!
In Internet terms, the Hambly site is pretty venerable; we’ve been around since 1995. I think this is the fourth or fifth major re-design. My main goals this time were to make the site more integrated and interactive, partially eliminate the need to check/answer the mail, and (very importantly) to make the site a lot easier to maintain. To this end, while you’re still welcome to e-mail me, general questions can/should be posted as comments here on the main page, and thus can be answered by either me or other readers.
Please note the rss feed and link (—> over there —>) to Barbara’s blog. This replaces the old Monthly Update. I think this is hugely better – her blog is updated frequently, contains a lot of news about upcoming books, and allows for reader comments.
Much of the site is still undergoing behind-the-scenes renovations. Future plans include renovating the books page to a blog format to allow for comments and reader reviews on books, automation of some stuff I procrastinate on (like sending out information for getting autographs), moving some of the older site content to an archive, and generally giving a more modern look to things. So far, this renovation has been a lot of fun. I look forward to seeing your comments!
Posted in Announcements, Random
By Deb on August 13, 2009
NEW! Hi everyone. Sorry about the long hiatus! I’m starting a remodel-and-rethink of this site and how it operates, so there’s likely to be a lot of rearranging over the next month or so.
For starters, the message board is being deleted – thanks to all who wrote to tell me that it had been hacked. Second, if you wrote an e-mail to me/the site: I am embarrassed to answer really old e-mails, and the in-box contains a lot of spam. A *LOT* of spam, actually. I need a fresh start. If you were looking for something important (an autograph, Barb is your long-lost sister, etc), please write again and I promise to answer.
For the time being, I highly encourage you to check in with Barbara’s blog – there’s fresh info there and exciting news about a third vampire book, too. On a more personal note, I’m considering the iPhone – it’s a major move, because I currently don’t pay for cellphone service, so if this is something you feel will transform my life in a positive way, let me know (e-mail info “@” barbarahambly.com)! (July 2, 2009)
Posted in Announcements
By Deb on August 13, 2009
Random sample post to check formatting. This is Sheila, my border collie, five minutes after her bath. She adores entropy and tries to introduce more into the world whenever possible.
Posted in Random
