Hallooooo! Gosh, it feels like I have been gone a long while. I hope you are doing well, and enjoying your summers. I've been hearing from some of you about your trips to Cornwall and Jersey. Seeing the photos makes me very happy.
What I've been doing
I have been as busy as ever. My son graduated from university in mid-June, and we took a side trip to Los Angeles while we were at it. The Paramount Pictures studio tour was a highlight.
I'm not much interested in clothes but I pulled out the stops for the graduation ceremony. I felt like Annabelle in Witches at the Wedding!
My friend Lisa with whom I did a podcast took me shopping and helped with my outfit. It was perfect for a warm SoCal day. Took a lot of time though, but Lisa told me that *if I did it all the time* I would have a system and it would be a piece of cake to pull a look together.
I can't imagine paying that much attention to clothes and such. I am very much a uniform sort of person (yoga pants and a T-shirt.) But I was very happy with how I looked and especially my virtually free, left-over-at-the-end-of-the-jumble-sale jewelry that, had they not been left over, would not have caught my eye. Even I could see that they pulled the outfit together.
Something that won't scare you to death
Last weekend, I went to see Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, the most recent movie adaptation of the 1958 novel Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico. Fun, light, heartwarming. I definitely recommend it.
Status: Inspector Graham
Annabelle Audio
A big piece of news concerns the Annabelle series which is where a lot of my attention has been going in recent weeks.
Five years ago, I was approached by a narrator and had the books in the series recorded in audio. After I wrote the next book, I found the narrator had stopped narrating so chose not to produce audio versions of the remaining books. I waited until the series was finished and have hired a new narrator. Not wanting to switch narrators mid-series, we will start over from the beginning.
As we get nearer recording and release, I'll let you know more about it, but preparation for the process has had me reading all the Annabelle books again. It's been fun to visit stories I wrote years ago and to see Annabelle's development over the series. She has a way of burning into one's psyche. I had to make a tricky decision a few days ago and even found myself asking, “What would Annabelle do?”
The entire series will be recorded in September and should be out shortly after that.
Chaos
While we are working on the audio books, we are also planning to record Chaos in Cambridge which is the exclusive free short story that is comes with a subscription to my newsletter. It is the story of Annabelle's early years and gives insight into her character and background. If you are not a newsletter subscriber, you can sign up here: https://www.alisongolden.com
I wrote Chaos in Cambridge in the spring of 2020, early pandemic, when we thought the idea of staying at home for four months was an eternity and wondered how on earth we would manage. (How little did we know.)
Chaos in Cambridge is set in, um, Cambridge where my grandparents lived and I reference many of the places that I am familiar with from my time spent with them as a young child. Rereading it was a lovely trip down memory lane.
I had to cancel a big trip to the UK because of the pandemic and haven't been there for three years. I'm looking forward to visiting soon and have big plans! Anyhow, if you haven't already, sign up here and enjoy a short, light read. The weather's perfect for it.
A word from Star. . .
It does what it says on the tin, apparently.
