#Sharyn McCrumb

[dk-thrive]

There is a time in late September when the leaves are still green, and the days are still warm, but somehow you know that it is all about to end, as if summer was holding its breath, and when it let it out again, it would be autumn.

— Sharyn Mccrumb, King’s Mountain (Thomas Dunne Books, September 24, 2013

[withnailrules]

There is a time in late September when the leaves are still green, and the days are still warm, but somehow you know that it is all about to end, as if summer was holding its breath, and when it let it out again, it would be autumn.

—Sharyn McCrumb

[judgeitbyitscover]

Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb

Cover art by Jeff Easley

Windwalker / TSR, February 1987

Even before the unscheduled murder of the world's most detestable cult author, Rubicon was destined to go down in fen history as the most outrageous fantasy convention ever. The great chronicler of the fantasy adventures of the noble Viking warrior, Tratyn Runewind, was suddenly no more. Appin dungannon was dead - a bullet through his hear and a spilled bottle of scotch at his side. Who hated him enough to kill him? The answer: Practically everyone.

James Owens Mega, creator of that deathless tome, Bimbos of the Death Sun, dons the roll of Dungeon Master, and solves this uproarious whodunit in the ultimate role-playing game climax.

[fromthedust]

John Coughlin (American, 1885-1943, illustrator for pulp magazines beginning in 1913) - 1940

Rudolf Sieber-Lonati (Austrian, 1924-1990) - cover art for Macabros #4

Dirk Bouts (Netherlands, 1415-1475)

Hell (detail) - Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille, France - 1450

Edmund Dulac (French/British, 1882-1953) 

Bashtchelik - from Fairy Book - 1916

Harold W. McCauley (American, 1913-1977)

Priestess of the Floating Skull - Amazing Stories - May 1943

unknown illustrator - Arthur B. Reeve - Pandora - first edition dust cover - New York Harper and Brothers - 1926

unknown illustrator - Sharyn McCrumb - Zombies of the Gene Pool

unknown illustrator - Fredric Brown - The Dead Ringer

Edward Gorey (American, 1925-2000)

from THE DISRESPECTFUL SUMMONS - The Fantod Press - 1973

Roa - street artist in Oaxaca

Darrell K Sweet (American, 1934-2011) – cover for Inherit The Stars

[yaya-tchoum]

" There is a time in late September when the leaves are still green, and the days are still warm, but somehow you know that it is all about to end, as if summer was holding its breath, and when it let it out again, it would be autumn.”

~•Sharyn McCrumb•~

#Sharyn McCrumb ,King’s Mountain #photo Pamela Schmieder #Chasing the Sun

[popculturelib]

Haunted States of America: Virginia

Hampton's Haunted Houses & How to Feed A Ghost (1998) by Jane Keane Polonsky and Joan McFarland Drum

Hampton is a historic town on the eastern coast of Virginia and is one of the oldest European settlements in the United States. This short volume is part history, part ghost stories, and part recipes. Mixed in with tales of ghostly dentists, haunted hotels, and a visit by Blackbeard the pirate are recipes for dishes such as:

Heavenly Hash Candy for Ghost Hunting

Spoonbread

Chicken Salad and Sweet Potato Custard Pie (a favorite of a ghostly visitor at a building on Wine Street)

Spirit Punch, which comes with the notes: "Hearty consumption of the following spirit punch is certain to assist in raising the netherworld" and "Don't bother using quality liquor because it does not matter in this punch."

What do you like to eat and drink when you go hunting for ghosts?

Virginia is the second-most represented state in our collection, with 32 books about ghosts and hauntings. Take a look at these other books:

The Mystery of Ghostly Vera And Other Haunting Tales of Southwest Virginia (1993) by Charles Edwin Price; introduction by Sharyn McCrumb; cover art by David Dixon

Virginia's Ghosts: Haunted Historic House Tours (1995) by L.B. Taylor, Jr.

The Hauntings of Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown (1998) by Jackie Eileen Behrend

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

[teawitch]

do you know any fiction witchy books that shows witchcraft in a more down to earth way?

There is so much witchcraft fiction out there these days and most of it I haven't read.

Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax (his Disc World novels) is the most down-to-earth while living up in the mountains witch you'll ever find. It's rumored Terry studied with the British witches and there are some subtle (or not so subtle) digs on modern witchcraft in his books. Particularly the Tiffany Aching novels.

While not specifically witchcraft - Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels would be high on my list.

And for really down to earth, Sharyn McCrumbs Appalachian Ballad novels come to mind. They aren't witchcraft novels (and may possibly make you cry) but the character you're looking for is Nora Bonesteel. The character is based on a real person and is a strong example of the down to earth while living up in the mountains traditions.

[wormsdyke]

"The safest way to say it is Appalachia [Appa-latch-a] and I have to explain this to people because when I go off on book tours I find myself being appointed as cultural ambassador, and I will get somewhere west of the Mississippi and people will say Appalachia [Appa-lay-shuh]. I will correct them and they will say 'Well, that's how we say it around here.' So I finally had to come up with a story to explain to them why it's not optional. If you're in Ireland, in the north of Ireland, and you start out in Donegal, that city on the west coast, and you're headed for Belfast, it will take you most of a day to get all the way across Ireland and you'll be driving on the coast road where, if it's a clear day, you look off to your left and you'll see Scotland in the distance. Well, about halfway between Donegal and Belfast there's a walled city which is hundreds of years old. It was built by the Irish and they named it after the Irish word for oak tree, which is Derry. But a few hundred years ago the British conquered Ireland and they changed the name of that town to London Derry, so it is one town with two names. And so if you stop at a little store along the way and ask directions on how to get to the walled city, you can walk in and tell the man behind the counter that you want to go to Derry or you want to go to London Derry, and either way he will tell you how to get there. But you need to know that when you choose what you're going to call that city, you have told that man whether or not he can trust you. You have told him your politics, your religion, which side you're on, and how open he can be with you in one word. Because Derry is what the Irish call it, and London Derry means you sympathize with the British rule. [Appa-latch-uh] and [Appa-lay-shuh] work exactly the same way. [Appa-lay-shuh] is the pronunciation of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the pronunciation of people who do not want to be associated with the place. [Appa-latch-uh] means that you are on the side that we trust."

From Appalachian novelist Sharyn McCrumb. Here's a link to her explaining this in a 2009 PBS series on Appalachia.

[waterarks]

accumulated book list; (unowned) 𓇢𓆸

- [ ] the body where I was born by Guadalupe Nettel

- [ ] a personal matter by Kenzaburo Oe

- [ ] shame in the blood by Tetsuo Miura

- [ ] nw by Zadie Smith

- [ ] tender by Ariana Harwicz

- [ ] shantarm by Gregory David Roberts

- [ ] second place by Rachel Cus

- [ ] bluets by Maggie Nelson

- [ ] devotions by Mary Oliver

- [ ] black swans by Eve Babitz

- [ ] perfume by Patrick Suskind

- [ ] a certain hunger by Chelsea G. Summers

- [ l ] time is a mother by Ocean Vuong

- [ ] assembly by Natasha Brown

- [ ] butter by Asako Yuzuki

- [ ] carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

- [ ] boulder by Eva Baltasar

- [ ] permafrost by Eva Baltasar

- [ ] discipline and punishment by Michel Foucault

- [ ] black reconstruction by W.E.B Dubiou

- [ ] a poets notebook by Paul Valery

- [ ] die my love by Ariana Harwicz

- [ ] swimming in the dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

- [ ] timecode of a face by Ruth Ozeki

- [ ] into the wild by Jon Krakauer

- [ ] the wind up bird chronicle by Murakami

- [ ] theory of the lyric by Jonathan Culler

- [ ] orality and literacy by Walter J. Ong

- [ ] the soundscape by Murray Schafer

- [ ] listening and voice by Don Idhe

- [ ] the poetics of french verse by Clive Scott

- [ ] the poetics of space by Gaston Bacherlard

- [ ] housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson

- [ ] the white book by Han Kang

- [ ] americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

- [ ] poor deer by Claire Oshetsky

- [ ] pushout by Monique W. Morris

- [ ] agua viva by Clarice Lispector

- [ ] foggy mountain breakdown by Sharyn Mccrumb

- [ list two ] ☼

bought = b | loaned = l , read = x | reading = …

[kelcipher]

"The Dark: Ghost Stories" by Ellen Datlow, Jeffrey Ford, Tanith Lee, Terry Dowling, Mike O'Driscoll, Gahan Wilson, Jack Cady, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Gallagher, Daniel Abraham, Ramsey Campbell, Sharyn McCrumb, Charles L. Grant, Kathe Koja, Lucius Shepard, Kelly Link, Glen Hirshberg.

Start reading it for free: https://a.co/g6jQ4l6

[petermorwood]

Something else the editor mentioned - this may have changed now, our conversation was 20+ years ago - was that once a book got over a certain thickness (I'm pretty sure he said "thickness" not "page count"), its cover price shifted to the next bracket up.

This was OK for Stephen King, Tom Clancy etc., whose Thick Books would sell at that higher price anyway, but for less-guaranteed-sales authors, one way to keep their books in the lower price bracket was to use thinner paper.

There's a high quality thin paper, "Bible paper or "India paper", which is used for Bibles (surprise!) dictionaries and, memorably, the first deluxe single-volume "Lord of the Rings", which made it less than half as thick as the single-volume paperback.

That's not the kind of paper used for price-bracket control.

*****

Speaking of which, when DD mentioned "write the publisher a letter on paper", it's because (a) that's very unusual nowadays, and demonstrates a commitment to getting your views across in a more solid form than email.

Also (b) the reckoning used to be that for every letter received there were 50 people thinking the same who didn't send one, a reckoning figure which has - see (a) for why - probably more than doubled now.

Stay polite, and as DD say, more sorrowful than angry. "Unhappy about..." catches more wasps than "Bloody furious about..." no matter how satisfying the thought of squashing those wasps might be.

*****

Re. cover art: even best-selling writers often get hit with (TV Trope) "Covers Always Lie" - for instance, most of Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" covers show Harry Dresden wearing a fedora. There are 17 novels, and apparently Harry has never worn a hat in any of them...

*****

@scotchfairy mentioned that filk song "There's a Bimbo on the Cover of My Book". The springboard which got the protagonists of Sharyn McCrumb's murder mystery "Bimbos of the Death Sun" to the SF Con where the action unfolds is a cover (and matching title) Just Like That.

As for the filk, its lyrics are under the cut, sung - preferably with friends so you can do harmony on the last line of each verse - to the tune of "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain".

There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book She is blonde and she is sexy She is nowhere in the text, she Is the bimbo on the cover of my book

There’s black leather on the bimbo on my book There’s black leather on the bimbo on my book While I’m sure she’s lots of fun My heroine’s a nun Who wears black leather on the cover of my book

There’s a white male on the cover of my book There’s a white male on the cover of my book Though the heroine is black With art that cuts no slack So there’s a white male on the cover of my book

There’s a dragon on the cover of my book There’s a dragon on the cover of my book He is long and green and scaly But he’s nowhere in the tale, he Is the dragon on the cover of my book

There’s a rocket on the cover of my book There’s a rocket on the cover of my book It’s a phallic and a stout one Though the story is without one There’s a rocket on the cover of my book

There’s a castle on the cover of my book There’s a castle on the cover of my book Every knight is fit for battle But the action’s in Seattle There’s a castle on the cover of my book

There’s a monster on the cover of my book There’s a monster on the cover of my book He is mean and he is hairy Though the stories aren’t that scary There’s a monster on the cover of my book

There are death rays on the cover of my book There are death rays on the cover of my book It’s a philosophical story But the cover must be gory There are death rays on the cover of my book

There are spaceships on the cover of my book There are spaceships on the cover of my book The connection’s rather iffy But if the story’s “sci-fi” * There’ll be spaceships on the cover of my book

(* Pronounced "skiffy" for rhyme and extra scorn.)

There’s a blurb on the backside of the book There’s a blurb on the backside of the book There’s one story on the cover Inside the book’s another There’s a blurb on the backside of the book

My name is on the cover of my book My name is on the cover of my book Although I hate to tell it The publisher misspelled it But my name is on the cover of my book

They reviewed my book in Locus magazine. They reviewed my book in Locus magazine. The way Mark Kelly synopsized it, I barely recognized it, But they reviewed my book in Locus magazine.

Well, my book won the Nebula award. Yes, my book won the Nebula award. Still it ended in remainders, Ripped and torn by perfect strangers, But my book won the Nebula award.

So put that bimbo on the cover of my book. Put a bimbo on the cover of my book. I don’t care what gets drawn If you’ll just leave the cover on. (DON’T REMAINDER ME!) So put that bimbo, dragon, castle, rocket, Vampire, elf, or magic locket- Please put a bimbo on the cover of my book!

I just received a copy of a book I've been very much looking forward to by a favorite author, but the quality of the book itself is... not great. Cheap paper, weak binding, even a weird illustration of the main character on the cover that I'm having trouble believing the author approved. Obviously, I don't want to leave a bad review on Amazon or GoodReads or anywhere, as I'm 100% certain the content is as excellent as her other work. But how can I best let the publisher (Baen) know I'm disappointed without threatening to never buy her books again? Because, well, if this is the only option, I'm gonna keep buying them even in my disappointment.

Well, the first thing I thought when I read this was "Wow, I'm really glad I don't have anything in print from Baen at the moment except a couple of anthologized short stories." :)

As for the rest of it, let's take it point by point.

Adding a cut here, because this will run a bit long. Caution: contains auctorial bitching and moaning, painful illustrations of cases in point, and brief advice on how to complain most effectively. (Also links to paintings of cats.)

Cheap paper: This has been an accurate complaint since well before COVID—and it's often been worse since, with supply chain issues also being involved. That said: one way publishers routinely save money on printing books, especially the bigger ones, is by going for thinner/cheaper paper. I remember one of our UK editors going on at great length and with huge annoyance—during one of those late-night convention-bar bitch sessions—over how the only way they could get some really good books published (because Upstairs insisted on reducing the per-copy production costs) was by reducing the paper quality to the point where you could nearly read through it. Sacrificing decent text size(s) also became part of this. Nobody in editorial was happy about the result: but there wasn't much they could do.

Bad bindings: Similar problem. Sewn bindings used to be a thing in paperbacks... but not any more: not for a good while, now. These days, it's all glue. Even hardcovers are showing up glued rather than sewn. Don't get me started. :/ (This is why I so treasure some of the oldest paperbacks I've acquired, which are actually sewn.)

Crap covers: I've had my share of these—though my share of some really good ones, too. And one of the endless frustrations of traditional publishing is that the writer routinely has little or even no influence over what the cover will look like... let alone how much will be spent on it, or (an often-related issue) how good the execution will be.

There are of course exceptions. If you're working at the, well, @neil-gaiman level or similar in publishing, a lot more attention is going to be paid to your thoughts. You may even be able to get "cover veto" written into your contracts, so that if you disapprove, changes will get made. But without actual contractual stipulations, the writer has zero legal recourse or way to withhold approval. (And I bet even Neil has some horror stories.)

The normal workflow looks like this. After a book's purchased, its editor and the art director discuss what it's about and what the cover should look like. The art director then hires an artist and tells them what to do. After that, the artist executes their vision and gets paid. It is incredibly rare for a writer to have any significant input into this process. And as to whether or not they approve of the final result, well... the publisher mostly just shrugs and goes back to eyeing the bottom line, muttering "Who told them they get a vote?"

Now, I've been seriously lucky to occasionally be an exception in this regard. In particular, my editors at Harcourt (when Jane Yolen and Michael Stearns were editing Harcourt's Magic Carpet YA imprint) would ask me what I thought would be a good idea for the next Young Wizards cover, and I'd think about it a bit and send them back a paragraph or so about some core scene. They'd then talk to their art director, and after that send their notes and mine to Cliff Nielsen (who started doing the covers for the hardcover and mass-market paperback editions of the series in the mid-90s) or to Greg Swearingen (who was the artist on the digest-format editions). And the results, by and large, were pretty good. ...I also think affectionately of the UK artist Mick Posen, who insisted on seeing pictures of our cats before painting the covers for the Hodder editions of The Book of Night with Moon and On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service (the UK title for To Visit The Queen).

But this kind of treatment is a courtesy—not even vaguely suggested in the books' contracts, and very much the exception to the rule. And for every writer who's midlist, there are times when the luck runs out. For example: one time I wrote a book that was an AU-Earth-near-future fantasy police procedural, thematically pretty dark—dealing with issues of abuse of megacorporate power, institutionalized bigotry, and (explicitly) attempted genocide. And the cover, done by an artist who's a good friend and some of whose fabulous art hangs in our house, came out looking like this. It was... let's just say "not ideally representative."

So I was glad, when my local workflow allowed it, to recover the current, revised version of the book with something at least a little more apropos. But the original cover's not the artist's fault. He did what the art director told him... as a cover artist must do to get paid, and (ideally) to get hired again. At present, that's how the system works.

...So. You've got a badly-built and -presented book on your hands. How best to make your feelings known in some way that might make a difference down the line? (As you make it plain that you'll keep buying this author's books this way if you must.)

First of all: when (as part of my psych nursing training) we were taught how to complain most effectively, we were told that the first and most basic rule of the art is this:

Only Complain To Someone Who Can Actually Do Something About Your Problem

So I salute your desire not to waste your time taking the issue to the reviews on Amazon, or the pages of Goodreads... because they can't do anything. The odds that anyone from production at Baen is reading the comments there strike me as... well, not infinitesimally small, not being hit-by-a-meteorite-while-in-the-shopping-center-parking-lot small... but really low.

So: write to corporate.

In your place I would go online and rummage around a bit to find out who's on record as the publisher at Baen. I would then write them a letter on paper. And I would lay out the problem pretty much as you laid it out up at the top.

The tone I think I'd choose would be the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger approach. I'd say, "I write to comment about your recently published book by [X Writer], whose work I love. I have to say, though, that I don't think the cover on [X Book] is terribly representative of the quality of the prose inside. And also, the construction and production quality of the book itself was a disappointment to me because [here spell out why].

"I'd really like to see [X. Writer's] books succeed with you, and I'd like to buy more of them without wondering whether I was going to be disappointed again. But if this is typical of how they're being produced, I'd also be concerned that the state of these books is setting up a situation in which the author's sales will be damaged, and you would stop publishing them... which would really be a shame. Whereas on the other hand, better production quality could keep previous purchasers coming back and buying, not only more books by this author, but books by others whom you publish."

This phrasing, as you'll have seen, walks a bit wide around the issue of your further purchases, while directing attention toward the bottom line... which will routinely be what the publisher's looking at from day to day. And—being, one has to hope, in possession of the wider picture as regards what's going on with their production costs—maybe they can actually do something about it.

Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained, yeah? It's worth a try. All you can do is hope for the best.

And finally: please know that I admire your commitment to the author: whoever she is, she's lucky to have you. It's a terrific thing to have readers who'll willing to spend the time to hunt you down, and who're willing not to judge a book by its cover. :)

[gojurt]

i started reading bimbos of the death sun by sharyn mccrumb to clown on it but was tricked by the covers into thinking it would be a lot funnier than it actually is when apparently its just a mystery novel that "satirizes" science fiction nerd and cosplayers. so what the fuck was up with these

[nightkitchentarot]

I'll bet somebody could get a short story out of this idea. Not I, but somebody. I'm pretty sure this is how Isaac Asimov's mind worked. -- Sharyn McCrumb

[the-final-sentence]

Bonnenburger stopped listening, and went back to his book.

Sharyn McCrumb, from Bimbos of the Death Sun

[harrypotterhousequotes]

RAVENCLAW: "Trying to act normal is the most unnatural behavior of all." –Sharyn McCrumb (Lovely in Her Bones)

[brandonraykirk]

Tom Dula: Ferguson, NC (2020)

Tom Dula: Ferguson, NC (2020) #TomDooley #BrandonKirk #Ferguson #NC #Appalachia #history #crime #Appalachianhistory #photos

Reading Sharyn McCrumb’s masterpiece “The Ballad of Tom Dooley” sent us down to find historical sites in Ferguson, Wilkes County, NC. 7 January 2020. Most anyone will remember this 1958 mega-hit by the Kingston Trio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhXuO4Gz3Wo

Tom Dula (1845-1868), a Confederate veteran and fiddler, lived in the vicinity when it was known as Elkville. Few sites remain from his…