Continuing my indiscriminate reporting on books

To get the context for this post's title, see GalleyCat from yesterday. I'm very amused by it all. Ah well. The author's comments aside, my Booklist review of Bluebird (linked from the sidebar) still stands, obviously, and I'd already planned to talk it up at the HNS conference in two weeks.

One good thing about the GalleyCat post, besides alerting me to the NBCC interview and to Shirley Dent's well-reasoned piece from the Guardian on the blogger/print critic divide, was that I learned about novelist Michelle Moran's blog, History Buff (cute graphic). Michelle's been interviewing current historical novelists about women's roles in history. She'll be speaking at the conference, too.

I'll be giving a workshop about the appeal of historical fiction at the Western Mass. Library System on June 5th. It looks like registration has closed already.

The gallery of reusable cover art has been updated. For the Rap Sheet: I'll see your two long-skirted women and raise you two more. (Check the Rap Sheet link for more examples of this type, mostly from crime fiction.)

But without further ado, some new Publishers Marketplace deals.

Kathleen Kent's debut novel THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER, about one family's courage and defiance during the Salem Witch Trials, based on the author's own family history and the story of her grandmother nine generations back who was hung for being a witch, to Reagan Arthur at Little, Brown, at auction, by Julie Barer at Barer Literary (NA).

"Hanged," please, not "hung." Of course, maybe "hung" is acceptable now in this context - that, "orientate," and "irregardless" always get me, especially when I see them in historical fiction.

DL Armstrong's THE LAST TROUBADOUR, set against the flames of a rising medieval Inquisition, a heretic, an atheist and a pagan are the last hope to save the holiest Christian relic from a sainted King and crusading pope, based on true events, plus THE LAST QUEST and THE LAST STAND, to James McKinnon for Kunati, in a good deal (world English).

Publisher website here.

And Journalist Sherry Jones's debut historical novel A'ISHA, BELOVED OF MUHAMMAD, set in seventh-century Arabia, the story of the favorite wife of the Prophet Muhammad, recreating her marriage at the age of nine, her struggle for personal freedom in a society where women had few rights, and her dedication to The Prophet's vision of a true faith, to Judy Sternlight for Ballantine, in a pre-empt, for two books, by Natasha Kern of the Natasha Kern Literary Agency.

I'm home today, attempting to catch up on email, getting HNR tearsheets out, and general housecleaning. I leave for my big conference trip a week from today - I'm not sure if I'm ready.