The Lord Chamberlain's Mother

by Eric

According to Amazon.com -- which has a better memory than I do -- our first novel, One for Sorrow, had an official publication date of November 15, 1999. So shockingly enough we are fast approaching its 25th anniversary. Perhaps now is the time to reveal that John's mother was a cave girl.

Let me explain. Back in the mid-eighties there was an explosion of indie comic books. Creators took advantage of easy distribution to sell their comics in the thousands of comic book specialty stores in the United States and Canada. Most indie comics were printed in black and white with two color covers and had nothing to do with superheros. Well, except for a few like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a satire of the superhero genre which became more or less the very thing it had been intended to mock.

A friend of mine was scraping out a living publishing comics and he asked me to script a title he'd come up with -- Kiwanni Daughter of the Dawn. He didn't have a story in mind, just something about a cave girl living in a world with dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. Notwithstanding that my favorite comic strip as a kid was Alley Oop, we both knew that humans did not coexist with dinosaurs but the artist he had in mind drew animals brilliantly and could pencil one mean T-Rex.

I enjoyed my venture into scripting and subsequently tried to sell some new ones, based on my own ideas, to other small press publishers. One proposal was a superhero historical. Not long after the fall of Rome, when the surviving Eastern Empire has become a bastion of Christianity, a slave comes across a magic ring, once the property of Julian, the last pagan emperor. The ring gives the bearer super powers, of a sort, depending on which god happens to show up when summoned by the ring, and what kind of mood he or she is in, taking into account that the Roman gods were an unreliable and unpredictable lot.

Publishers weren't interested and my career in comics fizzled out. Then one day in the early nineties Mike Ashley contacted my wife Mary and wondered if we could produce an historical mystery for an anthology he was editing, He needed the story quickly.

"Historical" and "quickly" are words that tend not to go together, considering how much research is necessary before writing can even begin. I immediately thought of placing a mystery in the early Byzantine era because I already knew something about sixth century Constantinople. I had done enough research for the comic book script to prop up a 2,000 word story.

And so we hurriedly co-wrote the first tale featuring as detective John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian. A Byzantine Mystery appeared in 1993 in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits. After starring in more short stories in anthologies and Ellery Queen Mystery magazine, John moved on to twelve novels from Poisoned Pen Press. I'm sure Kiwanni would be busting her buttons with pride, if animal skins had buttons.

Sidney the Snake: A Moral Tale

by Mary

History records the proverbial description of someone who is hard of hearing as being as deaf as a snake, which have no ears. However, I am reliably informed they have similar inner ear arrangements to ours but connected to their jawbones, enabling them to "hear" through sensing vibrations.

It seems their range of vibrational awareness makes their hearing less than a human's, which is just as well given the loud excited exclamation that floated upstairs when Eric recently went into the kitchen and saw a snake disappearing behind the fridge -- and my sudden equally noisy utterance when I spotted it lurking under our sideboard an hour or so later.

When I was in my teens, a young courtesy cousin once stayed with my family for a bit of holiday. One evening I went up to bed and on turning back the covers saw a snake. It was small and yellow and so obviously a toy I did not shriek and run downstairs in a panic, much to his disgust. Years later, when the Zoo Lady visited the elementary school where I helped, she brought with her a large snake. While showing it to the class to my surprise she draped it around my neck. I am here to tell you snakes do not feel slimy but rather cool to the touch. Having held one, my chief impression was they resemble elongated kippers in that they seem all spine. So I can still look a feather boa in the eye. It's just...different...if you don't know where the reptile in question is lurking. Fortunately research informed me Sidney was most likely a rat snake and so not venomous. Those of a nervous disposition are advised not to go looking for a photo.

Sidney the Snake has not been seen since that morning. He didn't look too well at the time so we've speculated either he found his way outside or conked out somewhere under the house, I say crossing my fingers and glancing over my shoulder. The problem is until we started looking around we had no idea how many places a snake could hide. The average dwelling is full of them -- take a glance around the room in which you are reading!

Anyhow, it's occurred to me a story could be written for children instructing them on their behaviour, a genre particularly popular during the Victorian era. Naturally its title would be Sidney the Snake: A Moral Tale and it would relate how a naughty young snake took no notice of his mother's constant warnings not to go into houses for if he did he would certainly come to a terrible end. Weep no more, tender-hearted readers. The close of the tale would reveal despite Sidney's disobedience in doing just what he was told not to do he managed to escape and got home to his mother. Who bent his (non-existent) ears no end as to his willful foolishness and then sent him to bed without any supper.