Rembrandt’s Angel…
I have fun writing…and that goes far beyond making money at it (which I don’t). I also have fun reading. By the time I finished junior high (7th and 8th grade in California, part of middle school in the Northeast), I’d read all the sci-fi, mystery, and adventure novels in our public library (for the most part, “adventure novels” later became “thrillers”). But I soon had an immodest epiphany: I could write this stuff too, which would be doubly entertaining (“immodest” because a lot of people determine the quality of a novel by how well it sells—I don’t; I’ve read many excellent and entertaining books that don’t sell well, and find many of them better than what the Big Five, B&N book barns, and the NY Times have to offer).
Thus began a lifetime of collecting story ideas, possible settings, themes to weave in and around plots, and character descriptions. Anyone reading this post has ample evidence of that. I’ve never had writer’s block, all my ideas are original ones, and still find writing a great deal of fun.
My most recent novel, Rembrandt’s Angel, to be released this spring by Penmore Press, isn’t just the next book, though. So far it’s the one where I’ve had the most fun writing it. Before I go into why, let me describe the book a bit more. (Note: You won’t find a pre-release excerpt in the corresponding blog category; that’s up to Penmore Press. But I want to tell you a bit of confidential stuff about the book. You’ll only see it here.)
Some of you have met the main characters, Arts and Antiquities Scotland Yard Inspector Esther Brookstone and Interpol Agent Bastiann van Coevorden. Esther made her debut in The Collector. Bastiann first appeared in Aristocrats and Assassins and played a more prominent role in Gaia and the Goliaths. They were clamoring for roles in their own major novel. So were my muses.
While that sounds a wee bit crazy, it’s happened before. DHS Agent Ashley Scott appeared in several novels in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” too. She got her starring role in The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, a novel that is really a transition between the detective series and the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” The characters speak, my muses listen, and both make my life difficult. Sometimes my only solution is to kill them off—the characters, not the banshee-muses, who are indestructible. In Aristocrats and Assassins (on sale now during the month of May at Smashwords—see below), I did that with one character, and received a bit of criticism from one reviewer (he still liked the book a lot).
But back to Rembrandt’s Angel. I mentioned my junior high fiction reading. One favorite author was Agatha Christie—I think I read every novel of hers, but I could be mistaken (I thought that about P. D. James, and I was wrong). Somewhere in that process, I asked myself, “Why didn’t she team up Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot in one novel?” They are both great sleuths, and it would be fun if they joined up to solve a mystery. When I spoke to one sister-in-law about this, she admitted that she’d asked herself the same question.
Of course, Brookstone and van Coevorden aren’t Marple and Poirot. In the first place, they live in different times. Brookstone has an on-again-off-again relationship with the younger van Coevorden—she’s a bit like what we Americans call a cougar—she’s been married three times already. But she’s also a great sleuth and hell bent on bringing all art thieves to justice. The novel talks about several cases, but the main one is involved with recovering the lost painting by Rembrandt from the title, stolen by Nazis during World War Two. She also drives a Jag, and her favorite husband was an Italian count. She’s a bit ambivalent about van Coevorden, though, as well as about retiring from Scotland Yard.
The Interpol agent actually looks a bit like the actor who famously portrayed Poirot. A character in Gaia and the Goliaths comments on that. He’s just as cerebral as Poirot, but is a man of action too. As the younger person in the relationship, he’s ambivalent about Brookstone, especially because he doesn’t know if she’s serious about the relationship and whether their job commitments are compatible. Said relationship develops during the course of the novel and tackles the question: can romance bloom and become stable in older couples?
The story is very much a modern mystery/thriller/suspense story, though. Because these two characters gave me so much grief, I put them in many dangerous situations. I’ll have to admit that a good time was had by all.
You might have picked up on why Rembrandt’s Angel was so much fun for me to write. I’m not getting any younger. Like many baby boomers, I delight in stories that old folks can still go at it—sixty is the new forty. I also delight in stories about strong women—Esther Brookstone isn’t a female Rambo, but she can hold her own and prod her paramour Bastiann van Coevorden to do more than he could have imagined. Their hunt for the painting leads them into an international conspiracy that takes them all over Great Britain and Europe, to South America, and back.
I had great fun writing it, and it shows—it’s my longest novel to date. I even have a cameo in it. And I’ve met some great people at Penmore Press in the process. When an author is having this much fun writing, why stop?
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Aristocrats and Assassins. In #4 of the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” Castilblanco and his wife are on vacation in Europe when a terrorist starts kidnapping members of European royal families. Castilblanco and eventually Chen work with authorities to discover the terrorist’s agenda. This fast-moving mystery/thriller/suspense novel is on sale now at Smashwords in all ebook formats; use coupon code VN74R.
And look for this new mystery/thriller/suspense story coming this spring from Penmore Press: Rembrandt’s Angel pairs Scotland Yard’s Arts and Antiquities Inspector Esther Brookstone with Interpol Agent Bastiann van Coevorden, as their search for dealers in stolen artwork leads to exposing an international conspiracy. This new team of sleuths discovers that pursuing stolen artwork can become surprisingly dangerous.
In libris libertas!
