2017: my writing year in review

This year I had three pieces of writing-related news.

1. An audio book of Woman of Ill Fame was released in May from Tantor. Confession: I still haven’t listened to it! At some point I will do a giveaway for one of the downloads. Perhaps 2018 will slow down enough that I can listen to it myself. I’d love to hear the narrator blustering through some of Nora’s creative Irish swearing. And I liked very much the new cover they gave the book.

2. In February, the third book in my Y.A. trilogy The Arnaud Legacy was released by Kensington Books, titled Avenged. It’s written under my pen name Lynn Carthage. This was to protect teen readers from my other books (see unapologetic Gold Rush prostitute novel, above), but I decided it was okay to publicize from Erika to Lynn, just not the other direction. I love this spooky neo-Gothic series and heartily encourage it for grown-ups as well. The sequence is: Haunted, Betrayed, Avenged. I think it’s okay to jump into the series with either Haunted or Betrayed, but probably more challenging to start with Avenged.

3. The Murderer’s Maid: A Lizzie Borden Novel launched in October. The book has received some wonderful trade reviews and some good press.

NewYork Journal of Books, Kirkus, Foreword, Booklist, A&E, The Millions

And thanks to Diana Gabaldon and Kathleen Kent for the fantastic bookjacket blurbs.

I did a big round of events in the San Francisco Bay Area, my courage rising despite intimidation by natural disasters (sorry if that sounds overblown...I love that line from Pride and Prejudice). The Santa Rosa wildfires affected attendance at two events (at one in Sausalito, Peg Alford Purcell’s lovely Why There Are Words monthly reading series, air quality was so bad I couldn’t stand outside for more than a few minutes. Litquake’s Litcrawl in San Francisco was similarly affected by the smoke). I felt awful for people who had lost much more than attendance because of the fires. One dear friend even came to my event although she had evacuated to a hotel; she wanted some “normal” in her life (and thank goodness, her home survived, as did Peg Alford Purcell’s!)

Then, more significantly, the hurricane delayed unloading at port of the cargo ship that happened to have my books on board. Again, I realize this is a very negligible “loss,” but it did mean that books were not available for two weeks of front table display at Barnes & Noble as previously scheduled, and undoubtedly affected sales. My sister had preordered on Amazon, and since the book was so delayed, she was sent an email offering to cancel the order. I shudder to think of how many people may have done just that. Luckily, my publisher had rush-ordered a substantial number of early copies, so we had enough to sell at the launch events. We held or participated in events at a haunted museum in Oakland, an art gallery after hours in San Francisco, and of course multiple bookstores. I had a great time talking about the bewildering, complex case that is the Borden family murders. It’s always cool to see what questions people come up with.

The Murderer’s Maid was my first stab (oh please, no pun intended) at writing a “marquee novel”—one about someone who is already famous enough that there could be some built-in readership. I’m excited that a movie about Lizzie Borden is showing at Sundance in January 2018. I cannot wait to see it! Even just a trailer would probably keep me happy for a week.

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In 2017, I presented at several conferences, the Gold Rush Writers Conference in downright adorable Mokelumne Hill, California, and Summerwords, a literary conference hosted by American River College in Sacramento.  I joined a new local group organized nationally by Jonathan Maberry called the Writers Coffeehouse and continued attending a small monthly meeting of local historical novelists. I did radio spots (I'll post clips in another blog post) for Beth Ruyak's Insight program on NPR's Capitol Public Radio in Sacramento, Rich Ehisen's podcast, Tim Weisberg's paranormal show Spooky South Coast, and guest host Joey Garcia on KFBK. Many writer friends had launches this year and have my congratulations and support, too many to name here. I feel invigorated by my community and by the privilege of being able to focus on what I love so sincerely: words.

 
Wishing you and yours the very best for 2018. Happy New Year, everyone!

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