ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year FINALIST
02 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year FINALIST
Wow! Just learned DEATH AT PULLMAN is a Finalist for Book of the Year in the Mysteries genre in ForeWord Reviews! That is great. I’m sure it’s partly due to the great cover and book design by Emily Victorson at Allium Press. I am going to American Library Assn meeting in Anaheim in June. I believe that’s where they announce winners. I’ll plan to attend. Just getting named is Great!
Foreword interview
07 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
There was a really nice interview in Foreword in early Feb. FOREWORD LINK Thanks to them for that! Am currently working on DEATH IN CHINATOWN, while my editor Emily Victorson works on DEATH AT WOODS HOLE which is due out this summer
A Woman’s-Eye…
12 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
A Woman’s-Eye View of Chicago
at the Turn-of-the-Century:
An Illustrated Lecture
Monday, December 5th at 1:15pm
19th Century Club
178 Forest Avenue
Oak Park, Illinois
Thanks to the sponsors at the Nineteenth Century Club. We had a great turnout with lunch and tea and a prefect set up to do the presentation on women in Chicago.
Cook Memorial Public Library District Book ClubExtravaganza! You Are Cordially Invited!
04 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in EVENTS
There’s No Mystery to Having a Good Book Club
Anyone who is in a book club, wants to be in a book club, or simply loves books is invited to our Book Club Extravaganza on Saturday, September 24, from 10:00 a.m. – Noon at the Sullivan Center,
635 N. Aspen Drive in Vernon Hills.
This year’s theme is There’s No Mystery to Having a Good Book Club, and we are honored to present Chicago-area authors Frances McNamara and Joan Naper, who will present A Woman’s-Eye View of Chicago at the Turn-of-the-Century. After their presentation, the authors will be available for Q & A, book sales and signing. Participants can also browse a wide array of ideas that book clubs can use to enhance their reading and discussion experiences. These will include recipes, movies, music, local area tours and more!
Frances McNamara is the author of the Emily Cabot mystery series, which includes: Death at the Fair, Death at Hull House, and Death at Pullman. Her character, Emily Cabot, is introduced in 1893 at the height of the World’s Columbian Exposition, while she is attending the newly established graduate program for women at the University of Chicago. Ms. McNamara is a librarian at the University of Chicago and is working on the fourth book in the Emily Cabot mystery series, Death at Woods Hole, set in Massachusetts.
Joan Naper is the author of Beautiful Dreamer, set in early 1900s Chicago. In this novel, Irish immigrant Kitty Coakley is determined to be independent but is faced with challenging decisions as she is courted by two men of very different backgrounds. Naper is a proud fifth-generation Chicagoan who is endlessly fascinated by the history and possibility that can be found here. She is the research communications director at Northwestern University.
1130 South Michigan Yard Sale
04 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in EVENTS
1130 S. Michigan Avenue — 3rd Annual Garage Sale! Saturday September 10th 9a.m.- 5p.m Lot south of 1133 S Wabash (behind 1130) and North of Trader Joes parking.
I’ll be out there next week, selling books. The ones I’ve written and ones that won’t fit on my shelves any more. That’s a brand new Trader Joes opening up behind my building.
BOUCHERCON
04 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in EVENTS
I’ll be attending Bouchercon with Emily Victorson of Allium Press. I’m on a panel Saturday Sept. 17 8:30-9:30 AM Panel RELEASE ME : Finish your Research and Write Your book. Hotel room location: Majestic A,B,C
Panelists: Sasscer Hill (Moderator), Dan Johnson, Frances McNamara, Judy Moresi, Roberta Rogow, Nancy Means Wright.
I’m busy reading books by folks on the panel. Part way through FULL MORTALITY, Sasscer’s book about horse racing in MD. Also part way through Nancy’s MIDNIGHT FIRES with Mary Wolstonecraft as the protagonist. I’ve started Dan’s THE DETROIT ELECTRIC SCHEME set in 1910 when there were electric cars. Need to get to Judy’s WIDOWS WALK and Roberta’s THE PROBLEM OF THE SURLY SERVENT which has Holmes and Watson as protagonists. That sounds like fun. Say hi if you attend.
Reading the Past review of DEATH AT PULLMAN
06 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
There’s a nice review from Sarah Johnson at:
http://readingthepast.blogspot.com/2011/06/book-review-death-at-pullman-by-frances.html
Had a great time in San Diego at Historical Novel Society conference which Sarah helped to run. My publisher Emily Victorson attended with me.
Next up is Cape Cod Writers Center annual conference in Craigsville Aug. 14-19. I’ll be working on DEATH AT WOODS HOLE while I’m on the Cape. Emily and friends go to Cape Cod for the summer session of the Marine Biological Laboratory where scholars from University of Chicago meet scholars from all over the country and do research. Of course murder intrudes… working to get this out next spring.
Busy Summer
16 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
I was at the Chicago Tribune LitFest in Printers Row at the beginning of June. I helped Allium Press editor Emily Victorson at the Chicago Publishers Gallery booth. That was fun. I even missed the thunderstorm.
I’m off to HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY meeting in San Diego this weekend. I’ll be signing books on Saturday with the rest of the many authors who attend.
I’ll be at AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION annual meeting in New Orleans June 23-27. I’ll help at the Sisters in Crime booth at the opening reception in the Exhibit Hall Friday night. I’ll be signing and giving away copies of a short story about Streeterville in Chicago. I’ll also be giving a talk on a panel Monday but it’s not about the books, it’s on Identity Management!!!
Q & A for ForeWord Reviews
28 Mar 2011 1 Comment
ForeWord Reviews asks authors to submit some information in the form of a Q & A. I have just submitted that via email and my editor Emily Victorson told me to post it to the blog too. Thanks to ForeWord for the nice review, here’s the info:
When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a child?
I read lots of Nancy Drew books. In fact my father used to pay me a quarter for every book read and I loved those stories. I thought the roadster she drove around was cool. My father got a big kick out of the sheer number of books I would go through. I grew out of children’s series quickly and soon tackled Agatha Christie and historical fiction.
When you were growing up did you have books in your home?
Not so many. My father had a college degree but he was a real man of action, he received a Silver Star as a PT Boat skipper in WWII, played pro football briefly then was an FBI agent and eventually Police Commissioner of Boston for ten years. My mother could have gone to college and she started but she lost interest. Unlike some of my siblings I was lousy at sports and wore glasses. I soon found I could make a bigger impression by succeeding in academics so I concentrated on that. I was also able to retreat from a noisy family of five kids by reading a book. I probably got more books from libraries then from owning them.
When did you think about becoming a writer? Who inspired you to write?
I had a couple inspirational English teacher in high school and I majored in English at Mount Holyoke College. I needed a job so I worked at Wellesley College Library while getting a Masters in Library Science nights. That wasn’t interesting enough so I also did a Masters in English (and 5 years of Chinese language). But I wasn’t really interested in criticism or teaching. As early as freshman year in high school I made friends with someone who also had read all of Agatha Christie and when our parents rented beach houses near each other I can remember us walking along inventing a story. In college I read through all the golden age writers like Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Raymond Chandler and Dasheil Hammet, as well as all the literary authors I read in my classes. I think Agatha Christie inspired me the most. I really liked her puzzles.
How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What’s good, bad, and ugly about the process?
It’s good to set yourself up so that you can do the writing and feel like you are avoiding doing something else you don’t want to do. I’m not married and I don’t have children, but I do have a full time job that is very interesting. I write best when I can just do nothing else for a day or a weekend. I do need to rewrite. I get good input from a monthly meeting of my writers group (we named ourselves the Complete Unknowns a while back), and when I get a full draft I pick a couple of close readers who are fans of historical mysteries to give me comments. My editor is very helpful as well.
Do you have any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?
I can’t remember how I picked the Pullman strike, because it was a few years ago I started looking into it. But as with my other books I find it very interesting to be able to actually visit a historical site. I have been on a number of different tours of Pullman which exists as a neighborhood of privately owned homes now. You can feel the influence of the people who planned a place like that in the past. Once I started to look into this story I was amazed at the things that happened. I think the fact that an American city was occupied by federal troups was just mind boggling to me. I found a tremendous dramatic build up just in the facts of what happened. These provide a great sense of impending conflict as a background to the fictional story I am telling. Also, I had described some African Americans and Italian immigrants in the first two books. I have some Irish immigrants in this one. My father’s family would have come to Boston from the west coast of Ireland around this time period.
What advice have you received concerning writing? What advice would you offer young writers?
Write a lot, I guess. And at least in the mystery genre, other writers can be very generous. I also worked with a group of amateur actors when I lived in Columbus Ohio. They presented mystery nights to raise money for a local library. I provided the plots and characters. That was fun and a great learning experience. I have a number of unpublished manuscripts in a drawer. You learn by writing. Keep writing.
How did you find the publisher for this book? What has your experience as a publisher been like?
Allium Press is a small local independent publisher. I actually published my first book myself first then moved to Allium. The experience is fine. For me, at this point, a small independent publisher is a way to be able to build a readership without having to sell 10-15K books. I think for my books they can have time to catch on in Chicago, where they are set and to move out to others. Also, Allium is putting out ebooks automatically and I believe that is something needed for the type of book I write.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on DEATH AT WOODS HOLE. I discovered that scholars from the University of Chicago actually attended and ran the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I’m from Boston and have a family house on Cape Cod. The Laboratory is still an important institution, and like the other places I write about you can visit it and wonder about the people who were here in the past. It is a fascinating aspect of that turn of the century that science and scientists were coming into their own. Think of what scientific research brought us in the course of the twentieth century. So, my characters will go to Woods Hole next. After that I’d like to set a story in Chicago’s Chinatown. I’ve already started the easy part, the research for that.
What are you reading now?
I just finished a Rhys Bowen historical mystery Danny Boy. She just published one set in New York’s Chinatown in the early 1900′s. I’d like to read that. Ive run into a number of mentions of Tim Hallinan’s Queen of Patpong, so I’ve started that, and I just finished No Less in Blood a modern story with a parallel story in the 1890′s and I recently read a few time travel stories by Connie Willis. I have piles of to be read materials too.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
Besides all of the Nancy Drew stories, I remember I also loved Anne of Green Gables.
What are your top five authors?
Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, for books that helped me lately to do historical mysteries I especially like Laurie King and Steven Saylor. Ah, P.G. Wodehouse
Have you ever bought a book because of its cover? If so, which one?
No, don’t think I have. I do really, really like the covers that Emily Victorson of Allium Press has designed for my books though.
What book changed your life?
Pride and Prejudice. Don’t know why. Just loved the voice.
Do you have a favorite line from a book?
“How could I spend the springtime of my life staring into the eyes of a dead fish?” From P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith.
Chicago Tribune review by Julia Keller
13 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
Thanks to Julia Keller for a writeup in the Chicago Tribune
Photographer Heather Charles of the Tribune came down to the Florence Hotel in Pullman and took a fantastic picture. I love having the Florence in the background.
Picture at Florence Hotel by Heather Charles
