Skip to main content

Birthday Book 2020

I reserved my copy of Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir at the only Barnes-N-Noble in Omaha.  It will be released on 4 August.  I asked the book seller questions about when it will arrive just to make sure I can pick up the copy before my birthday.  I told him it will be my birthday book.  He asked me how old I will be and I told my age without enthusiasm.  Then we chit chatted about life and getting older.

So I will receive an email when the store receives the books.  They will receive five copies and one of those is reserved under my name.  The book seller told me to come in when I get the email and they will be more than happy to pull it from the box for me.  I am happy.

This book will break a few of my birthday book rules.  One, at five hundred pages it is much longer than the normal 150-200 page book.  Two, it is the middle book of a trilogy.  The birthday book is supposed a stand alone novella and preferably by someone I have never read before.  It is supposed to promote finding out new authors.  Something I have been do already this year.

But due to the issues of selecting the birthday book due to the pandemic and the date of release for the book, I will make this exception.  It also helps that this is one of my most anticipated books of the year.

Recently I found out that the author lives and works in Oxford.  It makes me smile to think while I was walking around Oxford listening to Gideon the Ninth, the author was just a stone’s throw away.

Gideon the Ninth surpassed Dracula in my top ten books (a list that I actually never made).  Frankenstein is probably number one, I can’t see another book beating that.  A few years ago, probably more than a decade ago, publishers actually released an unedited version.  Mary Shelley’s husband Percy Shelley actually edited the book and added his poet flare to the manuscript.  I imagine that unedited version would read more like The Mortal Immortal, a novella Mary wrote after Percy’s death.

Anyway, I’m excited to get my hands Harrow the Ninth.  I will be taking days off for my birthday and so I may yet finish the book within the week I give myself to finish the birthday book.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

9 August 2020

  So I made some changes in plan for my birthday.   I decided to get a room at Aksarben Suites.   I’ll spend the day in Aksarben and pretend that I traveled.   What I will have, I’ll decide tomorrow, although I suspect that it will be Pickleman’s pizza.   I’ll read and chill.   Maybe I’ll take a bus to the Dundee Dell.   So many things I can do.   For coffee, I’ll go to the Starbucks on 90 th and Pacific.   That one has the Verismo coffee machine makes an excellent cup of coffee.   I can even take an early walk at the lake as I make my way to Aksarben.
Post a Comment
Read more

Trends on Horror

Here are some trends I picked up on recently. The big push for horror isn’t in October.  It’s June, July and August.  As someone who self publishes books, I’m not at all interested in what’s trending.  Mainly because I just need to write as many and publish as many books as possible.  Following trends gets thrown out the window when you want to publish four to six books a year. I already knew that books and dvds, perhaps most streaming get released on Tuesdays.  At one time I knew why. It was the whole business of everything getting shifted because of the pandemic that I realized that the push for horror was June through August.  Harrow the Ninth was supposed to be released in 25 June and now is 4 August.  The Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones was supposed to be released on 14 July and is now 1 September.  That was supposed to be my Birthday book this year. What I found out about Stephen Graham Jones is that a novel of his should have already been released, but i
Post a Comment
Read more

30 August 2020

  Song mood: In Too Deep by Genesis. It’s been an Inspector Morse weekend.  I’m halfway through the original series.  I think I came upon an understanding.  If the show follows the book closely, it will say based on the book.  After the second season, the shows stopped following the books closely and then it says based off the characters.  Some of them say based off an idea by the author, which would indicate that the author collaborated with the producers for the screenplay. The other thing that I realized is that if they are going to follow the series, Chief Inspector Thursday won’t be in the new show for much longer.  Which this last season hinted at. I expect to work on my own mystery this week.  It happens in Sandy, England.  My Inspector Trevor is surnamed after the Irish author, William Trevor.   Trevor is one of the biggest names in literature.  Or he was when I attended college for Creative Writing.  I’ve read a few of his short stories.  I think I should listen to a fe
Post a Comment
Read more