An Evening with Kathy Reichs

Kudos to KPL for always bringing in great authors.

Last evening I was lucky enough to attend “An Evening with Kathy Reichs” at my local library.    I have to start off this post by saying I am not really a Kathy Reichs fan – okay, that’s a bit cold – let’s say I do not read Kathy Reichs.  I went to this event because my BFF is a fan (of both the books and the television series) and since she had never been to an author event (shocking – I know) she asked if I would accompany her to this one.  It didn’t take much arm-twisting since these library events are always free of charge and, I know from previous experience, always interesting and entertaining.  Ms. Reichs was no exception.

Ms. Reichs is a wonderful speaker. 

She began the evening by explaining to her audience a little bit about what a “forensic anthropologist” actually does for a living.  Given her many work obligations, her numerous humanitarian efforts, her charitable work, being a producer on “Bones” and enjoying her six grandchildren I am surprised she has any time left to write her popular books at all.  Now, I must say that the topic of forensic anthropology, especially accompanied by graphic slides, could be a little tummy-churning but Ms. Reichs handled it gently and with a sense of humor that, for some reason, I was not expecting.  I’m sure had a been one of her readers I would not have been as surprised because, as she explained, she does try to incorporate humor into both her books and television series to lighten things up once in a while.  I couldn’t help but notice that each of her slides during the presentation had a little skeleton somewhere on the screen doing somersaults, dancing, or just walking back and forth.  I tried to capture him in a picture but failed.  The image will give you the idea though.

Ms. Reichs also admitted to frequently thinking “That's sooo cool!” when other folks not in her line of work might be thinking “Ewwww!”  She did try to convince the audience, while explaining the importance of entomology to her line of work, that maggots were cute.  She even brought a slide of a maggot magnified under a powerful microscope.  Yeah … I wasn’t buying into that one!

I am sure that I was the only person in the audience that was not familiar with every one of her books but she went through a few of them, starting with “Deja Dead” and explained which of her real-life cases the idea for the book came from.  Often it was a compilation of two cases or a “what-if” thought she had when puzzling out a forensic problem.  Even with authors whose works I do read I find the back-story of where the idea was born is always fascinating.  Ms. Reichs, taking the time to explain where the ideas for the books came from may have earned you a new fan … it definitely made me want to go out and pick up a copy.

Ms. Reichs also introduced the “Virals” series, YA books she writes with her son, Brendan Reichs.  Wow, that series sounded really good to me.

VIRALS (from her website)

Tory Brennan, niece of acclaimed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (of the Bones novels and hit TV show), is the leader of a ragtag band of teenage “sci-philes” who live on a secluded island off the coast of South Carolina. When the group rescues a dog caged for medical testing on a nearby island, they are exposed to an experimental strain of canine parvovirus that changes their lives forever.

As the friends discover their heightened senses and animal-quick reflexes, they must combine their scientific curiosity with their newfound physical gifts to solve a cold-case murder that has suddenly become very hot-if they can stay alive long enough to catch the killer’s scent.

Fortunately, they are now more than friends- they’re a pack. They are Virals.

Ms. Reichs next segment was about “Bones” the television series.  She did touch slightly on the fact that the show doesn’t follow the books too closely.  I had been people watching and eavesdropping (as I am wont to do while standing in line) on the people waiting to go into the auditorium and one of the major things I noticed was the division between fans of the show and those of the books.  Only a slight few seemed to like both?  One group of fans enjoyed one or the other enough to make the 260-mile trek from Rochester, NY to attend the evening.  Ms. Reichs does write one show each season and I had no idea the amount of time, from idea conception to final production, went into getting just one episode on the air.

As her talk was wrapping up she did introduce two upcoming books.  One, a compilation brought to readers by the Mystery Writers of America in which she teamed up with Lee Child to write a story where the action features both Jack Reacher and Temperance Brennan.  Interesting!  Her next book (I didn’t catch the slide in time to show you the cover image) but it’s titled “Two Nights” and will NOT feature Temperance Brennan.  The only tidbit she would share was the main character’s name – Sunday Night.

The enjoyable evening ended with a Q&A from the audience where were learned that she enjoyed reading murder mysteries, those on the darker side, such as Jo Nesbo, Clive Cussler and, with a sly smile, she emphatically assured the audience that she had never heard of Patricia Cornwell.

A very well deserved round of applause ended the evening and we went out to meet Ms. Reichs in the lobby of the library to get our books signed.  Yes, I purchased her newest book “The Bone Collection” because Ms. Reichs won me over and this book is composed of four novellas.  Ms. Reichs explained that they were intended to be short stories but she has a little problem with the “short” part of that description.  I thought this would be a good introduction to her characters for a newbie like me.  My BFF was quite excited to note that “First Bones”, included in this book and never published anywhere before, is a story that reveals how Tempe became a forensic anthropologist, leaving behind the world of academia and moving “into the grim but addictive world of criminal investigation”.

23/30

Hex - A Review

HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Hex:  

Noun:  A witch or a caster of spells

Intransitive Verb:  To practice witchcraft

Verb:  To put a spell on, to affect as if by an evil spell (jinx, curse)

Having seen the reviews about this book I was quite excited when I got the notice from the library that my copy was available for pick-up.  I wanted to like this book!  I really, really did!  I mean it had a small town with an evil curse – residents unable to leave for more than short periods of time without becoming suicidal, it had a centuries old witch – with her eyes and mouth stitched closed, no less, what was not to like?

Alas, I found it to be a little bit of a disappointment.

In her time Katherine van Wyler was a recluse, living just outside of the town proper.  Maybe she was a bit eccentric.  People talked and speculated and pointed fingers.  As was so often the case, innocents being persecuted for being different, she was branded as a witch and dealt with accordingly.  It seems in Katherine’s case the town’s folk may have been right because “The Black Rock Witch” still inhabited the town some 300+ years later.  She had a certain path she took into and out of town, but randomly appeared in people’s homes for unknown reasons and stayed until she decided to go elsewhere. 

When she appeared at the home of Tyler and his family she simply stood quietly in a nook in the livingroom while the family went about their daily lives.  They could not bear to look at her, so placed a tea towel over her head.  That image did me in.  No matter what took place after that, the image of the evil witch standing there with a tea towel over her head never left me and it colored the rest of the book.  In fact the first few chapters gave me the impression that this book was not one to take seriously … at times I found I was chuckling to myself.

Yes Tyler, a teenager with a GoPro and a blog, his friend with the nasty streak and a woman obsessed with befriending Katherine for her own gains and the hard won peace between Katherine and the town becomes tattered.  The excellent writing and the depiction of the town falling into mob rule is what kept me reading, but even that wasn’t enough as I found by the end of the book I was disgusted by the town and its inhabitants. I cared about what happened to Tyler and his family but a big part of me was rooting for Katherine to come out the victor – tea towel and all.  I don’t usually find myself cheering on the evil entity in a horror book so I have to conclude this one just didn’t push the right buttons for me.

I’m rating “Hex” at 3 ½ stars.  The extra half being given because there were some clever “easter eggs” in the character names and the author did a respectable job explaining how the curse could be kept secret in the 21^st century.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from Wikipedia)

Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a Dutch writer whose horror novel HEX has been sold to nine languages in fourteen countries, among them US, France, China and Brazil. His short stories have received awards like the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the Dutch Paul Harland Prize, and has been nominated for two additional Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award.

Olde Heuvelt was born in Nijmegen, Netherlands. He studied English language and American Literature at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and at the University of Ottawa in Canada, where he lived for half a year. In many interviews, he recalled that the literary heroes of his childhood were Roald Dahl and Stephen King, who created a love for grim and dark fiction. He later discovered the works of a wider range of contemporary writers like Jonathan Safran Foer, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Neil Gaiman and Yann Martel, whom he calls his greatest influences

Fashion. Titanic. Scandal ... My Local Connection

I recently read and reviewed the book "The Dressmaker" by Kate Alcott.  A principal character in the book was Lady Lucile Duff Gordon.  I knew that the character in the book was based on a real person, an early 20th century fashion designer and fashion innovator.

Tidbit:

 She was a trendsetter; introducing the first runway fashion show with live models, designing a line of "ready-to-wear" designer clothes for women and designing fashion/costumes for Broadway plays.

Unfortunately, despite her enormous contribution to the early days of the fashion industry what Lucile is most known for is being on the Titanic's first and only voyage and her allegedly deplorable, (dare I say it?) inhumane behavior as the ship went down.

What I did not know, and learned through happenstance watching a local news broadcast, was that Lady Duff Gordon had a local connection to my little part of the world.  I was puttering around in the kitchen getting supper things cleared from the table when her name being announced caught my attention.  So I immediately began listening a little more closely.  I learned that Lady Duff Gordon had lived part of her, somewhat notorious, life in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  And ... the Guelph Civic Museum happened to be having an exhibit featuring her that was going on right now.  Well ... I knew I had to visit the exhibit.  After all, there is no such thing as coincidence, right?  So this past Victoria Day weekend I spent a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon exploring the Guelph Civic Museum - a lovely building that I not visited before - and learning just a little bit more about this woman with the local connection.

The exhibit was staged on two floors of the museum, the first floor dedicated to her early years in Guelph and the "Titanic Incident" and the third floor dedicated to actual samples of her dresses and fashion innovations.

Tidbit:

She is partly responsible to getting women out of corsets and fashioning more

comfortable lingerie.  Sounds like the Victoria Secret of her time.  There is still a line of lingerie marketed under the "Lucile, Established 1890" label today.

THE LADY

Lucy Christiana Sutherland was born on July 13, 1863 to Douglas Sutherland, a Toronto civil engineer and his wife Elinor Saunders, an Anglo-French-Canadian.

As I was wandering the exhibit I overheard two other patrons, rather elderly ladies, discussing the picture of the house were Lucile was raised ... commenting that the house is still standing albeit sans wrap around porch.  All right ... YES! ... I WAS eavesdropping.

Lucile began sewing early in her life.  There probably wasn't much else to do in Guelph in the late 1800's?   At the age of seven she began making dresses for her dolls with materials from cases of cast off clothes and fabrics which were sent yearly from relatives in France.  She soon moved on to making dresses for herself and her sister, future novelist Elinor Glyn.

Lucile married for the first time in 1884, when she wed James Stuart Wallace.  Alas, despite having a child together, daughter Esme, the marriage was not a happy one.  Wallace was a alcoholic and was involved in several not so discreet love affairs.  Lucile consoled herself in love affairs of her own and in 1890 they separated and Lucile began divorce proceedings.  In 1900 she married Cosmo Duff Gordon, a wealthy Scottish landowner and sportsman.

THE FASHIONS

After her divorce from Wallace Lucile had supported herself and her daughter by working as a dressmaker.  Before long she had opened Maison Lucile, in the fashionable west end of London.  From all accounts Sir Cosmo supported Lucile's venture's into the fashion industry and invested in her business.  In 1910 she opened her first "fashion house" in New York City.  It was an almost instant success and it wasn't long before she moved to a larger venue.

Lucile made a name for herself on Broadway as well, designing many fashionable costumes for the stage and for the new phenom - the silver screen.  One of her frequent and loyal customers was Ontario born movie legend Mary Pickford.

Tidbit:

Lucille Limited can rightly be called the first international leading house of couture as in addition to her New York house, she opened a house in Paris in 1911 and in Chicago in 1915.  She was legitimately international with couture houses in three countries. 

Despite her success, the "French fashion world was scornful" and she often found herself the subject of cartoonists because of her innovative and the, hitherto unheard of,  idea of using "live mannequins" to model her clothes.

Lady Duff Gordon would enlist pretty shop girls working for her, dress them in her designer clothes and parade them around the room as "live mannequins" while patrons enjoyed tea and treats.  Although the practice was scoffed at and ridiculed at the time, we all know how that turned out ... can we say Milan, Paris, New York and Toronto Fashion Weeks!

 

 

 

 

 

 THE TITANIC

With her success as a fashion designer and her husband being a Baronet, money seemed to be no object for the Duff Gordons.  Needing to travel to America they booked first class passage on maiden voyage of the ill-fated Titanic.  For some unknown reason they booked their passage under the names Mr. and Mrs. Morgan.  Of course we all know that the Titanic hit an iceberg and began to sink.  As passengers were being evacuated Lucile, Cosmo and Lucile's secretary Laura Francatelli were placed in Lifeboat 1, the fourth lifeboat to be launched approximately one hour after the ship struck the iceberg.  The lifeboat was a "cutter" designed for the emergency use of the Titanic crew so had less seats than the other lifeboats.  Despite it's smaller size (pictured below) it still had a maximum capacity of 40 people and was launched with only 12 persons aboard.  Despite the infamous call for "women and children first" Lifeboat 1 carried 10 male passengers (seven of whom were crew members).

Lifeboat 1 was dubbed "the money boat" because of it's not near capacity cargo and rumors that Lord Duff Gordon had bribed the seamen on board to

keep rowing and not allow any of the multitude of people in the water to climb into the lifeboat.  Taking a page from Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake" guide, Lady Duff Gordon even commented to her secretary that it was too bad that she had now lost her "beautiful nightdress". 

A general inquiry was held into the sinking of the Titanic and fueled by pressure from the tabloid press in both the United States and England a special inquiry was held into the circumstances surrounding the launch of Lifeboat 1.  The appearance of Lord and Lady Duff Gordon, the only passengers called to testify at any of the Titanic inquiries, resulted in the largest crowd of spectators.  Lord and Lady Duff Gordon were never formally charged in any wrong doing but the court did admonish that "occupants of Lifeboat 1 should have made a more concerted effort to rescue survivors from the water".

 

 Tidbit:

Lucile Duff Gordon really had no luck when it came to traveling by sea and it could even be said that she had somewhat of a charmed life when it came to boat and ship disasters ...

When her mother remarried she and her sister moved to the Isle of Jersey with their mother and her new husband, David Kennedy.  In 1875 following a visit to relatives in England, Lucy and her sister Elinor survived a shipwreck when their ship ran aground in a gale force storm.

Lucile escaped with her life when the Titanic hit an iceberg.

In 1915 Lucile had booked passage on the RMS Lusitania.  It was reported that due to illness she cancelled her trip at the last minute.  On that voyage, where Lady Duff Gordon should have been aboard,

the Lusitania was hit by a German torpedo and sank.

I guess three times is the charm. 

 SOME ITEMS OF PERSONAL INTEREST TO ME

A few years back I went to an exhibit of "Story Quilts" entitled "From Oma to Oma" which left me with a bit of a fascination of how people can make quilts to reflect a story as clearly as any written on a page.  There was one such quilt, crafted by fabric artist John Willard, hanging as part of this exhibit entitled "A Night to Remember".  It was a beautifully crafted piece of art and looking like the caps of waves were the names of all the passengers and crew members that sailed on the Titanic on that fateful voyage.  I was able to locate the names of Lucile and Cosmo Duff Gordon and Lucile's secretary, Laura Francatelli (admittedly with a little prompting from an arrow on the descriptive picture posted along side the quilt) as well as the name of another rather well known survivor, the "unsinkable" Molly Brown (which I found all on my own - thank you).

  

And since this after all a "book" blog I had to include the following which were displayed among the object in glass cabinets filled with the smaller sized mementos of Lucile's life and accomplishments.  Two first edition books concerning Lucile and her family.  Lucile herself wrote two autobiographies, the American first edition of the first autobiography was on display.

Lucile's sister, Elinor Glyn, was a rather well known author.  She was a journalist, screen writer and author who was quite notorious in her own life, causing scandal on both sides of the ocean.  It is widely accepted that Ms. Glyn was this first to coin the phrase "It Girl" in her novel "The Man and the Moment" which throughout the 1920's was a common term referring to "sex appeal".

Her book "Letters to Caroline" was also included and it features an original sketch by Lucille on the front flyleaf.

A rather sad sidebar to this exhibit is based on another "local connection".  Thomson Beattie was born in Fergus, Ontario which is 20 Km north of Guelph.  Thomson and two friends were traveling on a winter vacation when one of his friends became sick and had to return home.  Tired of traveling themselves Thomson and his other friend, lifelong companion Thomas McCaffry, decided to make their way home as well booking passage on the Titanic.  Thomas wrote his mother before leaving "we are changing ships and coming home in a new, unsinkable, boat".

Beattie and his companions did make it on to one of the last available lifeboats, a collapsible, but died of exposure waiting for rescue.  A month after the Titanic went down, from the deck of the liner Oceanic, a lifeboat was seen bobbing in the water.  The three bodies in the raft were sewn into canvas bags and buried at sea.  Thomson Beattie was still wearing the evening clothes he had worn on the Titanic that last night.

In a coincidence odd enough to give you goose flesh ... Thomson Beattie was buried at sea on his mother's birthday at almost the exact spot were where she had been born 82 years earlier ... in the Atlantic ocean on a ship bound for Canada.

He is remembered with a stone on the family grave site in Fergus, Ontario.

So very many things I learned today because of one name in a book!

Thanks for reading.