Of White Snakes and Misshaped Owls by Debra Hyde Fun Facts, Excerpt, Giveaway, and Playlist

The Charlotte Olmes Mystery Series

Of White Snakes and Misshaped Owls

Riverdale Avenue Books

Lesbian, F/F, Historical, Detective

A dead body in a back alley means little to the rough streets of 1880s New York City—until Charlotte Olmes woman detective steps onto the scene. Crime-solving on behalf of her female clients, Olmes eschews decorum and ventures into places forbidden to the fairer sex, sleuthing after clues hidden, elusive, and often distasteful. When the exotic Miss Tam pleads with Charlotte to find the man to whom she's secretly married, Charlotte ventures into the dark and dangerous crannies of the city with her partner and passionate lover Joanna Wilson at her side. Soon, what appeared to be the random misfortune born of Chinatown's opium dens reveals itself as a vicious gang-related murder—and Olmes and Wilson find themselves wedged between the ethnic and political forces that collide where Chinatown borders the Bowery. Penned by Lambda Literary Award winner Debra Hyde, Of White Snakes and Misshaped Owls recasts the classic eccentric detective genius in ways never before seen. Passions both criminal and carnal come alive in vivid and exacting detail in what promises to become the hallmark of the Charlotte Olmes Mystery Series.

AMAZON / SMASHWORDS / GOODREADS

My Playlist, You Say?

I must admit, coming up with a playlist wasn't the easiest assignment for me. You see, I had a lot of musical training as a teenager and young adult, which gave me a broad appreciation for music—and leaves me easily distracted by what I hear. And I've been a music collector through all of my adult life, accumulating close to 50 full Ikea CD boxes and almost 2 terabytes of music—and leaves me with too much to choose from.

Because of my training, I can't listen to classical or jazz music because I start analyzing it like a musician looking at sheet music the first time. And I can't listen to any English-language vocal music because other people's words interfere with mine.

What do I listen to? World music. And the more exotic, the better. I'm partial to music from the middle east (my parents lived there while I was in college), South Asian, and the Far East. Ambient world music that blends several cultures with a touch of electronica or new age is OK, too.

So here's a selection of albums and several artists that's introduce you to my workplace atmosphere. Try plugging them into your favorite Internet radio service like Pandora and see what you get!

And, of course, enjoy! ~ Debra Hyde

Albums

Six Degrees of Ambient India

Badawi: Clones and False Prophets

Hong Ting: Chinese Traditional Music

Arabia: A Musical Journey

New World Dub 1&2

Artists

DJ Cheb I Sabbah

Desert Dwellers

Genetic Drugs

Jef Stott

Karsh Kale

MIDIval Punditz

Muslimguaze

Oojami

Excerpt:

I was not surprised that I had slept through the morning sun and birdsong of the fine spring morning on which this exceptional adventure had started, but how I escaped the sounds of Madison Square Park and the nearby Sixth Avenue El, I still do not know. Coming to our table for breakfast, I found Charlotte's nose buried deep in the day's penny press. Without fail, she started and ended each day perusing Manhattan's most dreadful news accounts, paying close attention to the brawls between swells, what dead bodies were pulled from the nooks and crannies of the city, and things even more violent and horrid. I prayed she would tell me nothing gruesome this morning. I preferred my first cup of tea without word of the city's more morbid distractions.


Guest Post:

Why the Novella

When I was casting about for the idea that became The Charlotte Olmes Mystery Series, I first thought along the lines of a 10,000 word short story. But once Charlotte stepped into my head, those parameters took a sudden turn. Charlotte demanded more than a short story—she demanded a novella.

I had just finished writing a novella entitled Provenance, a piece of interactive erotica that belonged to the larger choose-your-own-story project, Revealed. Provenance was part contemporary tale, part historical, switching its erotic stories between present-day Manhattan and 1930s Berlin, Germany. It was a novella that celebrated our erotic privileges of today, allowing its lesbian protagonists to fall in love and lust while its past-era protagonists—lesbians, too—lost their community and world to the rise of the Nazi regime. And when I'd finished it, the distinct a taste for history remained on my writer's tongue.

So did a sense of story length.

In the past, I had either written full-length novels or short stories. Provenance was my second novella and by then I had discovered I really liked the form. With the novella, I can tell a story far meatier than the short story, and I don't have to worry about all the large-length problems inherent in novel writing. The novella lends itself to a certain succinctness and its momentum i's easy to maintain.

Add to that, the novella has seen a real resurgence in the last decade, thanks entirely to the ebook platform. Before then, the novella was the forgotten child of fiction. Despite a long history as a form of fiction—think Jack London's The Call of the Wild, Orwell's Animal Farm, even H. G. Wells' The Time Machine—the novella had fallen into a commercial black hole during the second half of the twentieth century. It had become too long for magazines, especially as pulp fiction magazines died off, and it was far too short for book publishers. All because of paper and print.

But ebooks? That's different. Technology blew wide open the door for the novella's return, and it's far easier for publishers to support the novella today.

However, modern technology wasn't the only reason I gravitated to the novella form for Charlotte's tale. I had history to think about. I had to consider the cannon of her predecessor, Sherlock Holmes.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the first Sherlock Holmes tale, he chose the novel form. A Study in Scarlet was the result, one of what would become four Holmes novels. But the novel wasn't an immediate hit and Doyle wouldn't hit the mark with popular readership until he turned to the short story and The Strand Magazine, the British publication that would usher most of the fifty-plus Holmes tales into print.

When I think of Sherlock, I think of the short story—but when I read Doyle's tales, I see how the form often fell short. Granted, I read them in an age of not only CBS' Elementary and BBC's Sherlock, but also with memories of watching Basil Rathbone's performances from the 1930s and 1940s. And, most superlative, Jeremy Brett's performances from the 1980s and 1990s—still the best story adaptations and character portrayals ever as far as I'm concerned.

So between the shortcomings of Doyle's short stories, the dynamics of television and movie adaptations, and my own penchant for the novella, I had to give Charlotte full rein. I wanted to give her the meatiness of a novella, something the reader could better sink one's teeth into. I knew I could flesh out the historical setting, prolong the case-solving, and bring a fuller Charlotte and Joanna to readers through the novella. A purist could argue that the novella veers from the cannon, but I'd counter only somewhat. Doyle's A Study in Scarlet is roughly 43,000 words—only 4,000 words beyond the high end of a novella and hardly worth the semantic argument.

What really matters is the story and, while I feel the novella pays closer homage to the many Holmes short stories than novels, it is ultimately the tale itself that matters. And the game, of course, when it is afoot.

  
Debra Hyde writes erotic fiction for everyone, across the gender & orientation spectra. Her lesbian BDSM novel, Story of L, won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian erotica. A modern retelling of the classic Story of O, it updates the original tale to reflect the contemporary lesbian leather world and the women in it. Romantic Times BOOK Reviews magazine named it and her heterosexual novel, Blind Seduction, to its Fifty Hot Reads beyond 50 Shades of Grey, calling Blind Seduction “a story about what happens after the BDSM seduction.” She is a contributing author to the ground-breaking and critically-acclaimed Entwined erotica series, penning two lesbian novellas for it, Hers and Provenance. Now she turns her attentions to her new erotic Charlotte Olmes Mystery Series, recasting the classic eccentric detective genius in ways never before seen — in passions both criminal and carnal!

Visit Debra Hyde at her website: http://debrahyde.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/debra.hyde

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/debrahyde

Fun Facts: Charlottes Olmes' NYC in 1880 edition

The Statue of Liberty sits unassembled throughout the city and parts of New Jersey. Its torch sits in Madison Square Park, near Charlotte Holmes three-story brownstone.

The word “skyscraper” does not yet exist. It will be coined in 1883 during what's then called the “high-building craze.” The tallest buildings in New York City skyline in 1880? Churches.

Chinese restaurants do not yet exist in New York City.

Thanks to horse-drawn transportation, some 100,000 to 200,000 horses live in New York City, with each horse depositing an average of 24 pounds of manure and several quarts of urine a day. Don't do the math.

Central Park was only seven years old and, until the Great Depression, sheep graze in its Sheep Meadow. The famous Dakota building sees the start of its construction in 1880 and will sit alone, overlooking the park upon its completion.

Thomas Edison establishes his Edison Illuminating Company in December 1880, basing it in New York City.

The city sees its first street lights along Broadway between Union Square and Madison Square, thanks to Brush arc lamps. But Thomas Edison does not provide the illumination—the Brush Electric Company does.

A massive man-made reservoir occupies the area where today's New York Public Library sits, suppling the city with its drinking water. Its granite walls holds up to 20 million gallons and are wide enough to serve as public promenades for the strolling populace.

Cleopatra's Needle, the Egyptian Obelisk that sits in Central Park, arrives in July aboard the SS Dessoug at Staten Island. It will take another six months to move and install it in Central Park.

Bestselling books in 1880's America: Uncle Remus, Joel Chandler Harris; Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Margaret Sidney; Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace; and Nana, Emile Zola.