Hey, I got top billing at the Ann Arbor library!

Penny and John are going all out to make us welcome, and plan to round up as many pals as are in town to attend the library 'do'.  The library plans to film this presentation, no pressure or anything.   Maybe I could come down with the measles or something :)

There'll be a (short) slide presentation and I'll tell the story of how the book happened, trying not to give TOO much away!  I think it might be sort of cool.  Fingers crossed, anyway.

Michigan NPR Online has a blurb about the book serialization, yowza!

OK, OK, "Faithful" shares top billing with  "A Spell on the Water" by Marjorie Cole, who has a plug by Barbara Kinsolver.  It would be so grand to get a "I couldn't put it down." note from someone like Barbara Kingsolver.  Or, say, Patricia Cornwell, who could really help pinpoint WHEN the fatal dose was administered, and would probably blow my solution out of the water but in a gripping way.

But still, we're there, in an NPR writeup.  We'll take it!

U of M is serializing Faithful Unto Death.

Feels like Charles Dickens.  Only not quite the rock-star quality.  But anyway, if you're patient and lack the means to buy your very own copy of "Faithful Unto Death" (or don't have a friend to borrow it from, in which case you are poor indeed!), you can read it in installments by dint of "liking" U of M's facebook link.

Personally I'd lack the patience.  When Stephen King did "The Green Mile" in that way, I just waited until the whole thing was done and got all (seven, was it?)  volumns and read them clear through.  Still am pissed about the Delecroix execution.

-becky t-

Grand book event at Bookmamas in Indianapolis!

University of Michigan has released my historical mystery of arsenic murder in Benzonia, Michigan in the 1890s, and we are having a grand book event in August to celebrate this.

The event will be on Wednesday, 8/17, at 6:30 pm (gives you time to get there from work and still have dinner afterwards!).

Bookmamas is located at:
Bookmamas
9 Johnson Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana 46219
317-375-3715

Here are the book details, for those of you who are not already in the know:

Faithful Unto Death

-Becky Thacker-

Published by University of Michigan Press:
Cloth
978-0-472-11788-8
Paper
978-0-472-03469-7
Ebook Formats
978-0-472-02764-4

Arsenic shatters a family in 19th-century Michigan

Benzonia, Michigan, 1894: a sleepy Congregationalist community, dedicated to the education of hardworking and virtuous young people of both sexes and all races. Anna Spencer Thacker is the daughter of missionaries, a faithful wife, and mother of five, pious to a fault. She is suddenly stricken with a mysterious ailment that soon proves fatal. Was it truly an unfortunate illness? Or was it murder—or suicide?

Events, here and there.

Have lots of possible things happening in the next few months. BookMamas http://www.bookmamas.com in east side of Indy in July (still nailing down dates), Ann Arbor downtown library http://www.aadl.org/ on Friday, August 5th at 7:00 pm, and POSSIBLY a gig at Horizon Books in Cadillac, MI on Saturday, August 6th.

Stay tuned....

-becky t-

Books have arrived!

Two copies of THE BOOK were in the mailbox, thank the goddesses, and not on the porch in the pouring rain.

Hardcover looks very official and academic, plain blue cover with author name and title on the spine and front, no book jacket. It kind of scared me; "Who is this important person?" I wondered. Holy sh*t, it's me! No, it's I.

Anyhoo, the paperback is too cool for words, very moody cover with subtle detail under the shadow.

Harriet and I are arguing about who takes which copy to work tomorrow to show off. She says I'm on a college campus so I should take the collegiate version. I'm going to walk it all over our building. If work permits, that is.

Was it Tina Turner who sang, "I'm so excited!" Too many exclamation points here. But you get the idea.

Faithful Unto Death has arrived!!!

U of Michigan tells me that this grand book is available to bookstores NOW. Also, they're thinking of serializing it on the web site--right up there with Chas. Dickens and Stephen King, yowza!

We're planning some Michigan events, one at Ann Arbor in August, and hope to include one at a bookstore in Cadillac, plus a visit to Macinac Island (Island Books) in September. I expect we'll need to include a Traverse City bookstore, too, since that's close to where the action was.

I sooooo much hate it that Uncle Gale and Aunt Charlotte are no longer with us. I remember them all gathered around the table at the farm, saying things like "No, it couldn't possibly have been him", and "Well, it COULD have been suicide, or even an accident!" "Oh, don't be ridiculous".