Janis Susan May

What's New!

LURE OF THE MUMMY- Now available at Carina Press

Bert Carmody can’t catch a break. As a hieroglyphs translator he’s actually quite good – however, being pudgy, bald and awkward, he’s always in the shadow of his young, charismatic coworkers.

Disillusioned and bitter, Bert spends his free time scouring the markets of Cairo hoping to find an unrecognized genuine artifact for the pittance a scholar could afford. His latest discovery is another piece of rubbish, just another animal mummy – one of literally millions of votive offerings from the ancients to one god or another.

Or is it?

Suddenly, things start looking up for Bert. But as he starts to get the recognition he deserves, there are deadly consequences for his coworkers. Will Bert finally be set for life, or will the lure of the mummy ruin him forever?

Read Except here

HOLLOW HOUSE- Coming November 14,2011 from Carina Press

The year is 1919, the place is Denver. The Great War has ended and the Influenza Epidemic is over. All should be good, but when a murder occurs in her employer’s home, Geraldine Brunton knows she must solve the crime to hide the fact that she herself is a killer.

Read Except here

News from Janis Susan May

October, 2011

At last it seems fall has arrived here in Texas – that means the temperature has dropped below 100F, which means Christmas can’t be that far away! It’s still dry, though – the lakes are so very far down and there are all kinds of water restrictions. Old native trees are dying from heat stress as much as lack of water. Keeping my 40 year old lavender tree alive has been a job in itself.

I don’t know the farmers and animals are surviving. It’s heartbreaking. On our back patio we have a small ornamental fountain and as it takes a gallon of water a day to keep it at level I thought about just turning it off, but then I noticed how many wild creatures came for water. We’re in the middle of a huge city, the fountain is under a pergola and less than two feet from the house wall, yet there were wild birds and raccoons and possums and squirrels coming for a drink – and those were just the creatures I saw! Needless to say, the fountain has stayed on and full.

I am proud to announce that I sold another book to Carina Press. This makes four so far this year, and I am just bustin’ my buttons! This one is another horror novella entitled TIMELESS INNOCENT. It’s about a young lawyer who must take over her father’s cases when he is nearly fatally injured and the administration of his best friend’s estate. At first she thinks the estate is just a bother; she is much more interesting in staying away from a controlling, abusive boyfriend. The more she digs into the estate though, she realizes that she is responsible for a collection of tiny figurines which might not be what they appear to be. Then one writes her a note and people start to disappear…

It was a lot of fun to write.

Even if I did have to sleep with the lights on until The Husband came back home.

I long to get back to writing. I’m frustrated because I can’t write. I’ve been too busy doing revisions. Since the middle of June I’ve been slammed with revisions on three books – THE HOLLOW HOUSE, TIMELESS INNOCENT and DARK SUN – one right after the other and occasionally with overlapping deadlines. As each book goes through at least two revision processes, it gets complicated. Thank goodness both my editors are wonderful and understanding women and as all the books were for Carina we were able to schedule things so I could work on one at a time. Even if they are my stories, I get confused sometimes.

LURE OF THE MUMMY released in August to very good reviews. I’m delighted, because that was always a special story to me. Of course, all my stories are special to me.

Now that the revision cycle is pretty much over (I hope, I hope) I’m going to take a couple of days off and see to things I’ve been neglecting – like laundry, and weeding…. Then it’s back to work, hopefully to finish another traditional Gothic called (for the moment) THE CURSE OF THE EXILE. It’s set in Scotland in the 1850s and concerns a female librarian, an ancient curse, a murder, a ghostly revenant and lots of other fun things. Of course there is a dishy, suave hero – two of them, in fact – and a proud strong heroine. There’s an assortment of villains, too, each with their own axe to grind. Most of the action takes place in a crumbling Highland castle, which is physically based on a lovely old place I was fortunate enough to visit some years ago. Just the layout, though – this place was inhabited by a lovely family and not a ghost in sight!

Now I must get on with my chores. Hope your autumn is simply splendid!

July, 2011

I confess.

I have done it again. Sometimes time just slips away, especially when you’re busy and things have been happening, and other things – like writing a column for the website – just slip away.

And have things been happening!

Most exciting, I have made two trips to Europe in the last six months. Now I know that some of you get to travel a lot and that’s not such a big thing, but I haven’t even been on a vacation in the last five years, so it’s a really big thing to me.

Last summer The Husband was called back to active duty and sent to Germany. I wasn’t particularly happy about his being called up again, but as his two deployments before that were to Iraq, I wasn’t going to complain. At least they weren’t shooting at him in Germany!

I went over late in December so we could spend Christmas and New Year’s together – arriving right in the middle of the ‘hundred year storm’ that closed Frankfurt Airport for a day! Germany was a snowy fairyland and felt almost like being in a Christmas card. Then, as we had our tenth wedding anniversary in April, he decided to celebrate by taking me to Paris. We spent a magical six days in the City of Light and another five days in Germany, seeing some of the things we missed earlier because of the snow.

As magical as these trips were, though, they weren’t the only wonderful things that happened. In December I got a call from Angela James at Carina Press wanting to buy my books. Yes, that’s right – books. Two of ‘em. That’s pretty remarkable in itself, but what makes it truly astounding is that I submitted two books of two different lengths (novella and novel) in two different genres (horror and cozy historical mystery) under two different names (Janis Susan May and Janis Patterson) in two different months (August and September) – and both were bought in the same call. If that isn’t some kind of record, I’ll be surprised.

LURE OF THE MUMMY, the horror story set in my beloved Cairo, is about a man who gets trapped in the spell of a cat mummy that may be more than just an ancient votive offering. Sometimes you just can’t trust your mummy. It comes out 29 August.

THE HOLLOW HOUSE is set in Denver in 1919. It’s a cozy murder mystery. The teaser pretty much says it all – When a murder is committed in her employer’s home, Geraldine Brunton knows she must solve the crime to hide that she herself is a killer. HOLLOW HOUSE will be released on 14 November.

Plus, I received another piece of good news after returning from Paris – Carina accepted a third book! DARK SUN (a working title that will be changed) is a traditional Gothic romance – an hommage to the style of classic Gothic mistresses Phyllis A Whitney and Victoria Holt. It’s the story of a young woman who must not only deal with the ghosts of her own past, she must discover whether the mystical world her late father created in his books is truly imaginary.

Well, that’s pretty much caught you up with what I’ve been doing. I’m still working on the non-fiction A FIELD GUIDE TO TEXAS MUSEUMS and have just submitted another horror novella to Carina with the working title of TIMELESS INNOCENT. It is one of the few things I have written in my life that has scared me into having to sleep with the lights on! And I’m a grown-up – in years, at least.

I promise I’ll be better about posting here. Hope all is well in your world!

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