The Charlotte Olmes Mystery Series
Of White Snakes and Misshaped Owls
Riverdale Avenue Books
Lesbian, F/F, Historical, Detective
Fun Facts ala Debra Hyde
(or Is it any wonder I'm a writer, given
these stories!)
I was born in Wimpole Park, Cambridgeshire
England, one of hundreds of babies born to USAF servicemen deployed there as
part of NATO. The base
hospital sat in a corner of the Wimpole Hall manor
property near town. Which means I was born on land as grand as Downtown Abbey!
Even better? Its last owner was the daughter of Ruyard Kipling.
My parents settled in the small English
town of Yaxley near Eye. Their summertime neighbor was Sir Frederick Aston,
director of the Royal Ballet. My father used to help him prune his pear tree!
We then lived in Las Vegas at Nellis AFB.
It was at the height of the cold war while the mob ruled the city. Monster and
Science Fiction movies ruled off-hours television. And a meteor that flew over
our house caused a two-day UFO flap in the newspaper.
At age 7, I moved with my family to
Connecticut and discovered tomboy-hood. I wasn't a sports tomboy but an
outdoors girl, catching frogs and snakes and always outside. Sure was a big
change from desert life!
On our trek east, I read my first novel,
Black Beauty, in the car. I wouldn't quite finish it en route, but did that
spring during a rainy week. It still remains a most memorable book to me.
Horse fever anyone? I started nagging my
parents for a pony at the age of 3 and did give up until 11. By my teens, I
owned a Hackney pony and a Morgan/Quarter Horse Cross. Did a lot of trail
riding along the Connecticut River.
I spent my freshman year of college in a
music conservatory, thinking I wanted to be a professional musician. I was
wrong. But it did teach me that I wanted to lead a creative life.
I'm learning to play the ukelele! Dirty
novelty songs, here I come!
Own well over 3,000 books. Half of that
collection is erotica-based, spanning works dating back to the 1860s. Starting
this spring, we'll start downsizing our collections via monthly book tag sales!
In 1983, author Stephen King flirted with
me. It's a long story. If you ever meet me, remind me I mentioned it here and
I'll tell you about it.
A dead body in a back alley means little to the rough streets of 1880s New York City—until Charlotte Olmes woman detective steps onto the scene. Crime-solving on behalf of her female clients, Olmes eschews decorum and ventures into places forbidden to the fairer sex, sleuthing after clues hidden, elusive, and often distasteful.
When the exotic Miss Tam pleads with Charlotte to find the man to whom she's secretly married, Charlotte ventures into the dark and dangerous crannies of the city with her partner and passionate lover Joanna Wilson at her side. Soon, what appeared to be the random misfortune born of Chinatown's opium dens reveals itself as a vicious gang-related murder—and Olmes and Wilson find themselves wedged between the ethnic and political forces that collide where Chinatown borders the Bowery.
Penned
by Lambda Literary Award winner Debra Hyde, Of White Snakes and Misshaped Owls
recasts the classic eccentric detective genius in ways never before seen.
Passions both criminal and carnal come alive in vivid and exacting detail in
what promises to become the hallmark of the Charlotte Olmes Mystery Series.
I was not surprised that I had slept through the morning sun and
birdsong of the fine spring morning on which this exceptional adventure had
started, but how I escaped the sounds of Madison Square Park and the nearby
Sixth Avenue El, I still do not know. Coming to our table for breakfast, I
found Charlotte's nose buried deep in the day's penny press. Without fail, she
started and ended each day perusing Manhattan's most dreadful news accounts,
paying close attention to the brawls between swells, what dead bodies were
pulled from the nooks and crannies of the city, and things even more violent
and horrid. I prayed she would tell me nothing gruesome this morning.
I preferred my first cup of tea without word of the city's more
morbid distractions.
“Good morning, my dear Miss Wilson,”
Charlotte said, her eyes still glued to her paper.
“Good morning, Miss Olms,” I
countered. However formal our salutations, they were first and foremost an
affectionate routine, an irreverent jest aimed at how society expected us to
act and not a reflection of how we really felt about each other.
And, daring to remind Charlotte just how I preferred our
interactions, I leaned over and placed a kiss upon her cheek, one soft enough
to suggest I'd welcome more. It earned a chuckle from her and a quick, sly
glance of promise.
A bustle from the kitchen told me that Mr. East had heard me, and
our man's man who preferred serving women came laden with a full meal of eggs,
bacon, and toast. Joining that bounty, a libation of some strange concoction—no
doubt, another of Charlotte's attempts to fortify the temples that were our
bodies with the fruits of exotic flora from God only knew where.
While I should have rued the presence of the strange beverage, it
was the larger meal that caught my true attention. A big meal meant one of two
things: We either had something physical to do that morning or a case to
investigate.
Seated, I sipped my tea and tried to ignore the message inherent in
my breakfast.
Halfway through my meal—the eggs scrambled to perfection, made
better with a splash of maple syrup, the drink concoction decidedly not so—I
caught Charlotte snapping her crisp newspaper and swiftly folding it with a
flourish so dramatic it rivaled the sweep of a magician's hand. I shook my
head, thinking of our poor butler, Mr. East, always having to iron the paper to
Charlotte's perfection.
Charlotte caught my reaction from the corner of her eye. Without
taking her gaze from the small corner of the paper she now consumed, she
remarked, “He had no compunction about ironing my newspapers when we
interviewed Mr. East for the position, Joanna. A crisp paper makes for a
precise read, my dear.”
With Charlotte Olms, precision was paramount.
My eggs and bacon gone, I mopped my plate of syrup with my toast.
“Dare I ask what this morning brings?” I hoped she would let me finish a third
cup of tea and have a proper pinning of my hair before dashing us out the door.
“Training, dear Joanna, training.”
I suddenly felt overfull. Physical exercise and a full stomach were
not well paired for me, no matter how frequently I tried to dissuade Charlotte
of that fact. I set down my toast.
“Pick it up and eat,” she
half-scolded. “We're not doing it—we're teaching it.”
“Teaching what?”
“Parasol defense.”
Charlotte's obsession with self-defense, especially as it applied to
women, had long been a great passion of hers. I resumed devouring my toast,
sipping away its dryness with tea and noting how very well the taste of India
Black tasted with the sparse left-overs of maple syrup. Perhaps I would suggest
Charlotte make a concoction based on those two ingredients. Maybe she would
come up with something actually tolerable.
Another time, I thought. “And who are we training today?” I asked.
“Mrs. Philomena Pelton has asked me
to introduce several of her peers and their lady's maids to the practice,”
Charlotte answered.
I pulled up from my teacup. We were teaching a lady's maids?
“However did you finagle that?” The
upper crust were not exactly sensitive about the betterment of their help.
Charlotte finally set her paper aside, slapping it onto the table,
and leaned towards me, elbows planted firmly akimbo on a fine Italian cutwork
tablecloth. Mannish behavior, of course, reflecting a competency that she could
not innately express in any sort of feminine way.
“I told them that no matter how
well-versed they themselves became in the art of parasol self-defense, they
would remain at risk if their help did not become adept as well.”
“Really, Charlotte.”
“No, no, it's true,” Charlotte
claimed. “Mrs. Pelton herself was accosted just last week on the Ladies Mile.
Her lady servant was of, shall we say, limited assistance.”
“The Ladies Mile? So now even
shopping puts one at risk. Of course you do this entirely for the benefit of
the well-off,” I facetiously declared. I swatted at her elbows, smacking hard
enough to sting.
Charlotte grinned. She heeded me, removing her elbows from the
table. She might forget her manners from time to time, but she always enjoyed
my corrections, minor or severe.
We both knew she believed that all women should be skilled in
self-defense, regardless of class and station. And I knew that if Charlotte
would ever deign to imagine a utopian society, men would be far too civilized
to even think to accost the fairer sex. Not that we would carry that dainty an
appellation in Charlotte's utopia.
“Do I have time for Phoebe to pin
and lacquer my hair?”
Charlotte waved me off. “Yes, yes, but we should depart in twenty
minutes.”
“Twenty minutes, then,” I said.
I rose and made my way across the room, only to stop and turn.
“Charlotte?” I said.
“Hmmm?” Her nose was in that paper
again.
“Should we not invite Phoebe to join
us?”
Charlotte pulled up from her reading, glaring at me. The devil that
I should put her high horse on the spot! But one look at me and she knew that I
teased said horse with both warm regard and hard truth.
“I shall tutor her myself,” she
declared, flicking her newspaper dismissively.
Exactly
what I wanted. What was good for the geese of Manhattan's elite was good for
the gander in our own home.
Debra Hyde writes erotic fiction for everyone, across the gender & orientation spectra. Her lesbian BDSM novel, Story of L, won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian erotica. A modern retelling of the classic Story of O, it updates the original tale to reflect the contemporary lesbian leather world and the women in it.
Romantic Times BOOK Reviews magazine named it and her heterosexual novel, Blind Seduction, to its Fifty Hot Reads beyond 50 Shades of Grey, calling Blind Seduction “a story about what happens after the BDSM seduction.” She is a contributing author to the ground-breaking and critically-acclaimed Entwined erotica series, penning two lesbian novellas for it, Hers and Provenance.
Now she turns her attentions to her new erotic Charlotte Olmes Mystery Series, recasting the classic eccentric detective genius in ways never before seen — in passions both criminal and carnal
Visit Debra Hyde at her website: http://debrahyde.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/debra.hyde
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/debrahyde
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