A beautiful bookstore; a day spent among friends...plus Absinthe!

On Saturday, September 4th, the Kansas City chapter of Sisters in Crime and the I Love A Mystery Bookstore hosted an Absinthe Party to celebrate the paperback release of The Second Glass of Absinthe.

I hope all in attendance had as much fun as I did. In addition to showing some of the absinthe-inspired works of art created by Manet, Van Gogh, Degas, and Picasso, I demonstrated the absinthe ritual and handed out little samples of the Green Muse to anyone curious about whether the fabled libation might enhance their creativity (as those 19th Century artists and poets claimed).

We're Going to Party Like It's 1899!

A date has just been set for an Absinthe Party to celebrate the paperback release of THE SECOND GLASS OF ABSINTHE.


The setting will be the beautiful I LOVE A MYSTERY BOOKSTORE in Mission, Kansas.  If you are a book lover, no visit to Kansas City would be complete without a stop--nay, a pilgrimage--to this wonderful store.  Styled like a Victorian library "with a twist," this shop reminds us all how delightful and special an independent bookstore can be.  Biblio-heaven!


On September 4, 2010, at 11:00am, the local chapter of Sisters in Crime will allow your humble author to hold forth on the mystical history of absinthe and demonstrate the absinthe drinking ritual.  Everyone (over 21, that is) will be given the opportunity to sample the fabled libation.  Now some might suggest that 11a.m. is a tad early in the day to be imbibing this highly alcoholic beverage, but in the immortal words of Jimmy Buffett, "It's five o'clock somewhere," right?


And just what is involved in the Absinthe Ritual?  My character, Kit Randall, describes his version in the opening pages of "SECOND GLASS":

"His thoughts returned to that bizarre absinthe dream. Why did it refuse to leave him? What had really happened here last night? In his only solid memory he had "watched the clouds come out." That was his euphemism for gazing at the slow, tantalizing process by which one prepares to drink the liqueur the French called la fée verte, the Green Fairy.

The light emerald liquid was dripped through sugar cubes that sat perched atop a slotted spoon. Icy water was then added which rendered a spectacular transformation. The clear green absinthe blossomed into a milky opalescence and was ready to sip.

He recalled settling back deep into the sea of sofa cushions in Lucinda's bohemian-inspired second parlor and staring up at the famous Eye Dazzler rug hanging on the wall. He loved to watch the bright zig-zagging pattern come alive. A thousand triangles danced before his eyes in a carefully terraced lockstep, vibrating red black white, red white black, hypnotizing him as it always did."


Absinthe spoons will be given as door prizes, so come indulge in delicious decadence and mysterious camraderie! We're going to party like it's 1899!

Tale of Two Covers

This coming August, my publisher, Macmillan, will release my historical mystery novel, THE SECOND GLASS OF ABSINTHE, in paperback. The cover design is markedly different between the original hardcover and the new, mass market paperback. In different ways, I like them both.

The older version, shown at left, is special in that it incorporated important elements of the novel. The painting of the woman holding the parrot is a real painting described in the book, only incorporated into the story in a fictional way. The painting is supposed to represent a portrait of the widowed heiress, Lucinda Ridenour, owner of the Eye Dazzler mine.

The absinthe bottle is colored too darkly emerald green to be “real” absinthe, which is a lighter, almost peridot, but, in the cover designer’s defense, absinthe was still illegal in the United States when the first cover was designed, so perhaps the artist did not know what real absinthe looked like. A forgivable mistake.

The “label” on the bottle shows a contemporary illustration of the town of Leadville, Colorado, the setting of the novel. This picture first appeared in Frank Leslie‘s Illustrated News in 1879, the year before the time of the novel, but clearly showing the “city in the clouds” at its busy, raucous best, which the novels details in some length.

The new cover also highlights the absinthe theme, but this time using an absinthe glass with a spoon and lump of sugar as its centerpiece. The color of the absinthe filling the glass is more accurately represented this time around, but absinthe has since been legalized and available at most larger liquor stores in the U.S..

The background again highlights a beautiful, sexy woman, who looks like trouble (that is, I am assuming the artist intended this woman to be Lucinda, rather than the novel’s amateur sleuth, Eden Murdoch, who has an exotic past of her own--detailed in the two prior novels, AN UNCOMMON ENEMY and ABSINTHE’s prequel, SOLOMON SPRING--but has never aspired to become a femme fatale.)

Which is my favorite? I love them both. The cover art is considered to be a major element in the marketing of the book, so I guess the most successful cover is one that entices the most potential readers to try the book. Only time will tell...