To celebrate the publication of my new book, The Shaker Murders, which is coming out in February, I am giving away copies of the book that comes before it. In the Devil’s Cold Dish, Rees and his family are targeted by someone who wants to destroy them. Rees is accused of murder and then Lydia is accused of witchcraft. As Rees’s hometown turns against them, mobs of angry men descend on his farm to capture Lydia and hang her. He spirits his family to safety and then returns to Dugard. On the run, he attempts to identify the person behind the harassment.
Author Archives: Eleanor Kuhns
Flying
I just heard this morning that new guidelines are being set for seats. Good. Although the flight to St. Petersburg was not long, the seat was so uncomfortable I spent the few hours twisting and turning.
Okay, flying itself is no longer fun. I love seeing other parts of the country but getting there – not fun.
I don’t have much trouble with security; they seem to have worked out the kinks. (Although my right ankle always rings. Why? I don’t know. I think the equipment gives a lot of wrong positives. The last flight, both my husband and I got tagged on the right ankle. Weird.)
But I digress.
The thing I really find annoying and strange is this. If there is a stopover at Newark or Dulles, the plan lands on the extreme opposite of the airport. To get to the other side, passengers have to walk to a door and go outside to a vehicle that looks like a subway car on wheels. At Newark passengers go down this tiny cement stairwell that is one person wide. At the bottom, an employee checks your boarding pass (because – sarcasm alert – we all know you can wander around the terminals without being checked in by security) before he allows you on the bus. Then the passengers are driven to the other side of the terminal and dropped off.
This doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot of walking at both arms of the terminals either. So an extra 20 – 30 minutes have to be added to the layover time just to cross the terminal. And then the passengers still have to reach their gates. On our way back from Florida weather delayed our plane by almost an hour. We were running!
I couldn’t help wondering what happens to a disabled person or someone who can’t run.
And flying is not so quick either. With all the stopovers and delays, the flight took almost 12 hours. This is why I drive whenever possible.
Bouchercon and more
I haven’t blogged for awhile. Quite awhile. We moved and moving absorbs all of your energy, psychic as well as physical. Now we are unpacking which is almost as bad.
The week, yes, one week after moving, we left for Bouchercon in Florida. This was another wonderful conference. St. Pete’s was actually cooler than New York! And a wonderful breeze off the water kept the air pleasant. The Vinoy hotel was magnificent. I love this chandelier in the Grand Ballroom. It was huge. It looks like glass snakes, doesn’t it?
I attended several great panels. And, of course, I sat on a panel of my own. Jonathan Putnam (Lincoln and Speedwell mysteries) Christopher Huang ( a new author who writes about the 1920’s) Laura Anderson ( who writes about the Tudor Period). The panel was moderated by James Ziskin who writes the Elly Stone mysteries.
I also had the opportunity to talk to several authors I admire besides those on my panel. I greatly enjoyed meeting R. J. Koreto who writes the Alice Roosevelt and Lady Frances Folks mysteries set in Edwardian times.
As usual, I came away with a long list of authors that I now have to read!
Of coroners and constables
The positions of coroners and constables both came to the United States from Britain. Corner, the root of which comes from the same root as crown – think coronet – was set up in 1134 to certify the death of an individual within a jurisdiction. The position of constable was also an import but the word is much older. The stable part of constable is from the Latin for, you guessed it, stable so the word actually means the count of the stable.
The United States still uses ‘coroner’. Think Patricia Cornwall’s Kay Scarpetta. But the office, and the requirements for, vary widely by state even now. Some require a forensics speciality, some just a physician. Some are appointed, some are elected. I suspect the results and the opportunities for abuse also vary from state to state.
Anyone who watches British TV knows about constables and all the ranks within the generic title. But even in the United States the early constables had the duties and privileges of a low level law enforcement officer – they have the power to arrest for example. In the era of my character Will Rees, constables (and the watch) were the agents of the law. The constables were under a Sheriff but in Colonial and early Federalist times there were few of those. In the District of Maine (Maine was not a separate state then but was a part of Massachusetts) there was only one Sheriff.
There are still constables in the U.S. but the duties vary widely. What happened? Well, in 1829, when the British Metropolitan Police were established, the states in the U.S. gradually adopted the model of a police force. And police officers took over the duties formerly assigned to the constable.
The Shaker Murders
Very excited to post the cover for the next Will Rees. Although it will be published in Great Britain this fall, it will come out here in the States next spring.
The Shaker Murders
After the events in A Devil’s Cold Dish, Rees and family return to the Shaker community of Zion seeking refuge. But Rees barely arrives when the body of a murdered Shaker Brother is found in the washtub. More murders quickly follow. Surely no Shaker could be the murderer!
I am happy to announce this sixth Will Rees mystery will be published by Severn House, coming out in the United States next spring (2019.) I just finished the edits on the ms and sent it off. The seventh book, working title Simply Dead, will be published the following spring (2020).
I am hard at work on the eighth.
When I have a finalized cover, I will post it.
New Will Rees books coming!
I am excited and very happy to announce that two new Will Rees books have been accepted for publication. “The Shaker Murders”, Rees number 6, will be coming out next spring. Number 7, working title “Simply Dead” (Not crazy about it), will be after that.
I am working on the next Will Rees; “A Circle of Dead Girls” which is set against the beginnings of the circus in the new United States.
Snakes and serpents, oh my
The iconic statuettes from Bronze Age Crete are of women (priestesses probably although some scholars claim they are the Goddess) with snakes twining up their arms and around their waists. Snakes were sacred in this Bronze Age religion.
Snake Goddess describes a number of figurines of a woman holding a serpent in each hand found during excavation of Minoan archaeological sites in Crete dating from approximately 1600 BCE. By implication, the term ‘goddess’ also describes the deity depicted; although little more is known about her identity apart from that gained from the figurines. The ‘Snake Goddess’ figure first discovered was found by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1903. The figurine found by Arthur Evans uses the faience technique, for glazing earthenware and other ceramic vessels by using a quartz paste. After firing this produces bright colors and a lustrous sheen. The figurine is today exibited at the Herakleion Archeological Museum in Crete. The snake’s close connection with the Minoan house is believed to indicate that the goddesses shown in these figures are Household Goddesses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Goddess
The shedding of their skins was a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. One of the resources I read said that the snakes were allowed to live in the houses. (I am not sure how she knows that.) If so, I’m sure that the presence of the snakes kept down the mice.
Currently Crete does not have native venomous snakes and it is thought that there no venomous snakes in Crete during the Bronze either. So, of course I had to wonder if the asp was ever imported from Egypt.
(I think everyone knows that Cleopatra is supposed to have committed suicide with an asp. According to my research, however, it was a mixture of poisons including opium and wolfsbane. But I digress.)
The asp’s bite is very venomous. The victim dies in about four minutes.
Nor’easters
As those of us in the northeast face the fourth storm in less than three weeks, I am reflecting on first and second. My neighborhood lost power for a week or more. And when we got it back, the Internet remained out. A tree had come down just a mile or so from the house, blocking the main road.
My husband and I were pretty lucky. We have town water and sewer so no running around filling jugs with water. We have a gas stove so I could cook on the top burners. And we have a generator that we used to run the freezer, refrigerator and one outlet where we powered our devices.
Our power came back about two hours before the next storm hit. Although it went out again the following day, it was only out for a few hours.
On the following Saturday we drove around the area. The local Stop and Shop was the only store open in the mall and it was dim. All the freezers were covered with plastic. We were just about the only people there. The streets were empty. And no wonder: the gas stations were closed, the CVS was closed. Our gym was closed for almost 8 days. It was like walking through a zombie movie.
Now, my question is why don’t the power companies gradually bury the lines? Most of the lines around here were put up in the fifties and sixties. That is 60+ years ago. These storms happen every few years . They fix whatever broke and now that they have put bandaids on the punctured artery move on. I realize it would be too expensive to do it all at once, but why not gradually? It seems like a bad business plan to me.
I was discussing this with one of my younger colleagues. His take: That this is the fault of the baby boomer generation on down. We’ve allowed this to happen. We’ve allowed the CEOS to get huge salaries and basically ignore the infrastructure of the companies they run. I can’t say I disagree. Because I know that we will have more wild storms and everyone will lost power again.
The Magnificent Horse Part 2
he new God-centered religion and the status of women intersected.
Patriarchy went with these mounted warriors and the status of women took a nosedive. This culture worshipped male Gods and was stratified with warriors at the top, priests next, and craftsmen below. Warriors were buried with their weapons and sometimes their horses.
Take the Mycenaeans, for example. The Acheans were one of the first waves to hit Greece. In my previous blogs about Helen of Troy, I talked about her status. She was a princess, semi-divine, wealthy and the heir to the throne. Not her brothers – her. So the transformation of a women’s status was gradual. However, she could not choose her husband and her life was marked by rape and violence. At least the Mycenaeans were influenced by the earlier Bronze Age culture. As successive, and more warlike, waves of invaders came down eventually even Crete was breached and its cities sacked and burned.
We all know that the Jews are credited with the first monotheistic faith. Not so fast. According to Elinor W. Gadon, the very early Jews also worshipped a Goddess – the Queen of Heaven. In Jeremiah the prophet speaks out against her, saying that the Hebrews were exiled from Judea because of their neglect of Yahweh. (When they were exiled they went to Babylon which was at that time transitioning from Goddess worship to God worship. (Maria Gimbutas – The Living Goddesses.) But I digress, Anyway, according to the Bible, the people retorted that Judea fell because the rituals to the Goddess had been neglected after they’d been forbidden by the Deuteronomic reforms. (Jeremiah 44: 15-19).
By the time of the Classical Greeks and Romans, the status of women was in the cellar. Women were no longer permitted to leave the courtyards of father or husband except on certain religious festival days. In Greece homosexuality and pederasty were institutionalized. It makes a sort of sense if women were so devalued, their only value that of producing heirs, how could they possibly deserve love? In Rome women had no names but that of, first their fathers, and then their husbands.
The situation certainly did not improve with the advent of Christianity. Augustinian uses urine and feces to describe childbirth and refers to women as all that is vile, lowly and corruptible. We know one result of such passionate misogyny: the witch trials of the 1600s. According to Gabon (The Once and Future Goddess) thousands and thousands of women were burned at the stake. Estimates range from 100,000 to 9,000,000 (including women who died in prison). In some villages there were no women left alive.
Because patriarchy has lasted so long we now think of it as ‘normal’. But gradually everything is changing. I started my research with Arthur Evans, the archaeologist who first excavated Knossos. As I read through his writings I found his prejudices on open display. One example: despite all the frescos featuring women, he insisted they must all be of Goddesses. (And a lot of them are.) But his rationale was that there had to be a king, women could not possibly hold the power and the importance demonstrated by the art. And that is why the Bronze Age Civilization has been called the Minoan civilization, after Minos the King referred to in the Theseus myth. (This is not even historically accurate. If there were such a king, he would have probably been a Mycaenaen.)
The agrarian societies were pretty peaceful. That certainly has not been true of all that has come after, up to and including today. War and conquest has continued pretty much unabated for millennia.
Well, I have gone pretty far afield from my study of horses. Would patriarchy have conquered all without the nomadic horde? Maybe. Maybe not. After all, many of the American Indian tribes still take counsel from their ‘Grandmothers’. But I think it is pretty clear that the domestication of horses changed everything.