We are very excited to announce that you may now walk into just about any bookstore in the country and pick up a copy of a book with our work in it!

You may recall Rebecca’s post from November of last year, in which she described the feeling of reading Laurie R. King’s work, and how much of an impact it had on her. Well, now it’s my turn.

I’ll begin by saying that Laurie King is a New York Times Bestselling Author and has written 19 novels, the most recent of which was released on April 28th. It’s called The Language of Bees, and is the 9th in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series.

Sherlock Holmes is very dear to my heart. You could even say I grew up with him – my mother always had a copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes in a prominent place on one of her many, many bookshelves. I wore her copy out when I was a teenager and then bought my own when I moved out. It’s a huge thing, thick and black and well-loved.

I’ve even watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) the old black and white Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson.

With all of this said, I hope it’s clear that I hold Sherlock Holmes to a high standard, and did not believe that any modern writer could do him justice. Gladly, I was utterly mistaken. Laurie King’s Holmes is just how I remembered him. A little older, a little more worn, but still sharp and just as unable to suffer fools as he always was. And even better than getting Holmes just right, she’s invented Mary Russell, who narrates the stories, solves plenty of crime on her own merit, and does something that Arthur Conan Doyle never really could: humanize Holmes. Laurie King (through Mary Russell) gives him life and vitality and subtlety in addition to the clockwork deduction that I recall. It’s really a fairly amazing feat to accomplish.

The photo that Laurie King chose as her jacket portrait is posted below, along with another of her favorites from that shoot back in October. We are very happy with how it turned out, ecstatic to see it in print, and thankful that it’s attached to such a high quality work of art.

I also feel compelled to point out that there’s a special tie-in with this new book. If you order a copy of the book through the LRK Amazon store, a percentage of the purchase price goes to Heifer International’s Beehive Project, which helps poor families supplement their income through beekeeping.

I’ve purchased both a print version and an electronic version of the Language of Bees (for my new Kindle 2), and it’s a fantastic read. Highly recommended, and with the Official Red Bat Seal of Approval!

Norah Vincent has gone undercover twice in order to gather material to write a book: once as a man, in the investigative project that generated her book Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man, and once as a mental health care facility patient, as part of the research for her book Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin. Therefore, it seemed entirely appropriate that I was going undercover as a reader of her books, in order to take her picture at Bookshop Santa Cruz.

I’m glad I didn’t read Norah Vincent’s books first, because this event had an emotional resonance that it wouldn’t have had if I’d already formed opinions about her. I can’t tell you yet what I think of her writing until I finish Self-Made Man, but I can say a few things about her presence. Norah Vincent was kind, gentle, and respectful of her audience. She faced us with a direct, serious gaze only broken occasionally by a grin. She was humble and likeable.

She told us that the intense passage she’d chosen to read from her book was not one she’d feel comfortable reading to just any audience, a remark that was sure to please the Santa Cruzans who’d gathered to hear her speak, definitely a group that considers itself open-minded. But it was when she started weaving together strands of philosophy with spiritual ideas, and relating them to her own thoughts and experiences, that she made friends of us all. I don’t know how to describe the effect she had, other than to say Norah Vincent was very much our cup of tea, and we would’ve gone on for hours listening to her and asking her questions if there had been time. And this was almost entirely due to her presence, her energy. Here in Santa Cruz, we really respond to good energy.