Reviews come in and an ARC giveaway!

Well, I'm not being nearly as consistent as I had hoped, but I shall keep working on getting better at posting here, on my Silver Rush blog...

First, if you would like to get in the drawing for one of three ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies, otherwise known as "uncorrected proofs") of What Gold Buys... you have a week to enter the giveaway I'm hosting on Goodreads, and I encourage you to go for it! The odds are much better than striking silver in the Leadville mining district in 1879! :-) (Now don't ask me what those odds were, because I'm assuming here...)

So just click on the "Enter Giveaway" link below and good luck! But before you go... (keep reading below the widget)...

Goodreads Book Giveaway

What Gold Buys

by Ann Parker

Giveaway ends August 15, 2016.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

.... Reviews are popping up, ahead of publication. Since I consider them all valid data points (each reviewer approaches a book with different expectations, preferences, and so on, as do readers), I'm providing links to the three I've rounded up so far, along with a short pull-quote from each.

• Publishers Weekly starred review! (yes, that rates an exclamation point) "Emotionally and historically convincing."
•  Kirkus Reviews. "Better history than mystery, drawing the reader into the stunning beauty and harsh realities of life in 1880s Colorado."
• Historical Novel Society. "I haven’t read the first four but was so taken by Parker’s protagonist, Inez Stannert, that I’ll rectify that asap... I can’t wait for the sixth in the series." 

So please enter the Goodreads giveaway, if you are so inclined... and if you want to increase your chances of winning an uncorrected proof (which has hilarious goofs, such as Inez drawing her "Smooth revolver"... yes, a smooth move, but that should be *Smoot* ), sign up for my very occasional newsletter right here. I will be giving away ARCs to a couple lucky folks on this list, once the Goodreads giveaway is over on August 15.

And here, just for fun, is a couple of photos I took last year in the House with the Eye Museum in Leadville, the City in the Clouds...

The original stained glass "eye" from 1879. 

Guns, cards, and chips... note the "woman's purse gun" on the far right.

Leadville enthusiasts, rejoice!

On Saturday, I got a book in the mail that made me say YAY!!

Leadville historian Gretchen Scanlon's A HISTORY OF LEADVILLE THEATER arrived from Leadville's The Book Mine bookstore, and I couldn't be happier.

I know Gretchen has been working on this a long time, and I, for one, have been chomping at the bit for its arrival.

Here's the blurb from the back:

When the West was wild, the glitziest streets in Colorado ran through Leadville, where opera, variety and burlesque lit up Magic City theaters. Theatrical legends Buffalo Bill and Oscar Wilde graced the Tabor Opera House, while revolutionary Susan B. Anthony reached a rough mining audience from a stage atop a bar. Thomas Kemp spared no expense on the risqué Black Crook at the Grand Central Theater, complete with a grand waterfall, a trapdoor and dragons. Follow Leadville historian Gretchen Scanlon through these theatrical glory days, from the glamorous productions and stump speeches to the offstage theft and debauchery that kept the drama going even when the curtain fell.

You can find the book at all the usual places on-line, but I'm going to make a special plea that you  strongly consider ordering from The Book Mine in Leadville (phone: 1-719-486-2866) or your favorite indie bookstore. Show them you care! :-)

It's Christmas in February for me!

From Film to Book

I sat down to write this post, thinking "movies," mostly because The LadyKillers (a group blog I help administer and also post for every other Saturday) has a movie-related theme this coming week. What follows is my real-time, step-by-step journey of serendipity.

It all starts when I wonder: what movies have been set in Leadville, Colorado? Doing a very perfunctory search, I find mention of two: Silver City (2004) and Under Siege 2 (1995).

Attempting to cast my net a little wider, I come upon a list of Movies Filmed in Colorado. What I find interesting is how few “westerns” appear in the list and how many sci-fi/magic/fantasy/horror movies there are! The westerns were mostly filmed back in the 1950s and 1960s: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit (the version with John Wayne), How the West Was Won, The Searchers… and then, way back in 1926, The Great K&A Train Robbery. 

Intrigued, I dig a little deeper into this last one, which was a western starring Tom Mix. Apparently much of it was filmed in Glenwood Springs, and John Wayne (! see True Grit, above !) worked as a property assistant on the film and appeared as an extra. By my calculations, Wayne would have been 19 years old when the film was released.

It then occurs to me that some of these films might be fun to watch for the scenery. Hmmm. I surf over to Netflix.

Well, really, what was I thinking? A silent film from 1926?

So, I wander over to YouTube and end up spending 10 minutes watching The Great Train Robbery (1903).

Very interesting, but not the “filmed in Colorado” movie I was looking for. In fact, I noodled around and found out The Great Train Robbery was filmed in Milltown, New Jersey. While noodling, I also discovered that there is a 1905 parody, by the same director, titled The Little Train Robbery, which was acted out by children, and features a “bandit queen!” And it is also on YouTube!
 

I drag myself back to my pursuit of The Great K&A Train Robbery. I would like to know where the real robbery took place, now that I know it was based on a “true incident,” but I’m not getting very far and it’s getting very late now. I discover that there are a few copies  of the book (copyright 1897) listed on amazon.com. Gah! I turn to Google books. There it is, as an eBook … FREE! I click DOWNLOAD, and now I have it… if only in electrons.

I still don’t know where the robbery took place, but will find out.

Although this is the end of one journey, it looks like it might also be the start of another. Sometimes it's fun just to wander and see where the roads lead.

Real People in Mercury's Rise

Ann Parker, on the second day of a two-week (plus a bit) virtual tour for Mercury's Rise, the newest book in the Silver Rush series.

Today is a "home stop" at my own blog, which features random musings on writing, history, mystery, or whatever crosses my mind. This time (rubbing hands together gleefully), I'm going to talk about using real people in my latest mystery.

Now, there are several kinds of "real" people. There are the people who existed in that time and place. There are a few of that kind wandering through the pages, including Colorado photographer Anna Galbreaith, who is a source of curiosity and mystery to me (I would *love* to know more about her and her life). I do know she was a landscape photographer in Manitou, Colorado, during the mid-1880s and also ran a boarding house called the Ohio House. Since she signed her photographs "Mrs. Anna Galbreaith," I assume she was a widow... or possibly a divorcée? You can read more about Anna and see an example of her work here in a post I did yesterday to kick off this virtual tour. Other people of the day are mentioned in Mercury's Rise: William Palmer Jackson (founder of Colorado Springs and the Denver & Rio Grande) and Dr. William Bell (founder of Manitou Springs).

The real Robert Calder

But the real people I REALLY had fun with are folks I know in the present day world of 2011, who gave permission for me to use their names. In two cases, these folks "won" the honor of appearing in the story. Robert Calder (an artist who does wonderful watercolors that capture Leadville's past) had his name pulled out of a hat to appear as a character in the book. You can read a little about Bob and his work in this online article from Colorado Magazine. It seemed a natural fit to make Robert a plein-air artist, who is visiting Manitou with more than painting on his agenda. Sharon Crowson is a mystery reader and fan who has "been dying" (so to speak) to appear in a Silver Rush book. A bribe of chocolate did the trick, and she's there in the pages of Mercury's Rise, with a slightly different first name.

The real Dr. Prochazka

Dr. Aurelius Prochazka is a bona fide doctor... but not of medicine. You can get the gist of his claim to the Dr. title from this on his website: "Aure began his career at the California Institute of Technology  analyzing the aerodynamic stability of the F-117A Stealth Fighter and worked on computational fluid dynamics for his PhD thesis." Aure is a scientist, a musician, and an author in his own right. I've worked with Aure, and from those earliest days was just itching to steal his name (and some of his "renaissance man" personality) and plunk him down in 1880. He was a good sport about the whole thing when I asked (hopefully, he still is, now that the book is published!).

Finally, there are the Paces. While I was working with Aure, I also worked with Kirsten Pace and her husband Eric Cummings. I decided it would be fun to put Kirsten and her family (kids and all) in the story. She was fine with that, even after I gave her a much older, cantankerous husband (WHO IS NOT YOU, ERIC. Just want to make that clear. You appear at the end as a nice guy.) Kirsten just finished reading the book the other day and said she enjoyed it (well, she'd better say that! ;-) ) and then added it was odd to see her name crop up page after page after page... Just one of the hazards of being a key character in a novel!

There are shades of other "real people" in some of the continuing characters in my series. My protagonist, Inez Stannert is named after my grandmother. (You can read a bit about her and why she ended up my protagonist in another guest post here on Gayle Gresham's Colorado Reflections blog.) Doctor Cramer embodies elements of my own father, a kindly physician with a real knack for listening to his patients. Susan Carothers has a spirit much like a dear friend of mine from childhood, also named Susan, who like my fictional character forged a life to match her inner passions.

And then... there are those real people whom I shadow in darkness, twist their genders and their names, and gleefully make them murderers or victims and do horrible things to them (in fiction!) because at some point in my life they really ticked me off or hurt someone I loved. But I'm not going to say anything more about them. They will remain a mystery. ;-)
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Leave a comment on this post to be eligible to win a Silver Rush mystery prize! To see the rest of my blog tour schedule, check out my News page.

 

Mustaches of the past

Now that Mercury's Rise, the fourth of the Silver Rush historical mystery series, is well and truly done, I've time to turn attention to this rather neglected blog (blows virtual dust off).

In this latest installment of the ever-continuing Silver Rush saga, protagonist Inez Stannert and her friend, photographer Susan Carothers, travel to Manitou (sometimes called Manitou, sometimes Manitou Springs). The intent of the trip is for Inez to re-unite with her much-missed young son and her sister. Most of my posts here will focus on bits and pieces of research for the story. (I'll not promise all posts, because one must leave room for serendipity.)

I shall begin with mustaches, because... well, because I want to. And because the World Beard and Moustache Championships just finished. (Thank you, author Sarah Smith, for mentioning this momentous event on Facebook.) The connection to Mercury's Rise follows...

One of the characters in this newest book, Terrance Epperley, is a young British remittance man who sports a "facespanner" mustache.

When I started the draft, I could see this fellow clear as day in my mind's eye. His mustache extended straight along the horizontal, from one side of his face to the other, fierce in its impeccable grooming.

Can you picture it?

Now, I had no idea that this particular facial decoration was a well-known and documented style until I stumbled across the wonderful blog Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century (isn't the internet amazing??). Here, I found explanations, terms, and photos for the mustache I envisioned and many more besides. The blogger was (I use past tense, because, alas, the last post was in 2010) meticulous in keeping his/her list of classifications up-to-date, so you can search "facespanner" (I've done it for you here) and view some truly amazing photographs of facespanner mustaches of the past.

If you want to know what (the fictional) Terrance Epperley's mustache looks like I commend you to the 2007 post Straight and True, which features the image below: