Gary is home

I'm back home from the US tour.  I had a wonderful time, but it's unbelievably good to see my womenfolk again, and to sit in my own comfy little office, writing blog posts and books.

I tried to break the jet lag in one go, which meant staying awake throughout the day.  When I couldn't stay awake any longer, at 9pm, when I'd been awake for 45 hours, I collapsed and slept for 10 hours.  It seems to have worked though because I feel more or less normal.

I nominate these awards from the trip:

Best public transport system while on tour:  the Seattle buses.  Especially the cool way they turn into electric trams in the tunnels underneath the city.  Why doesn't every US city have these?

Best intercity trip:  the Amtrack from Ann Arbor to Chicago.  Comfortable, cost-effective, and incredibly convenient.

Best Airline:  Frontier Airlines.  Flew with them from San Diego to Detroit.  They have real people at real check-ins!  No machine replacements for people!  Staff who seemed genuinely happy to be there!  Totally crushed both United and American. Well done, guys.

Best coffee and muffin:  Bakery, (that's its name) in San Diego.

Best non-private-friend place to stay: Inn at Michigan League in Ann Arbor.

Career highlight: the ancient mystery panel at Bouchercon.

Weirdest moment: every time I walked into a store and saw my book on display.  A huge thank you to "M" is for Mystery, the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Mysterious Galaxy, Aunt Agatha's, and Centuries and Sleuths.

Gary travels home: be back online in a few days

There's a lot to catch up on -- the event at Aunt Agatha's in Ann Arbor, the event last night at Centuries and Sleuths, Gary's plan to save America with fast trains -- but the last few days have been too hectic for a proper blog post, and in the next hour I leave the US for another year.  So it'll all have to wait until I get home.  I have an afternoon flight from Chicago to LA (about 4 hours), a layover of 4 hours during which I have to get through security for the second time that day, then a 15 hour flight home and at least another 2 hours after that.  Estimated total awake time: 33 hours.  Not that I'm whining or anything...

 So I'll leave you for now with two lovely and very kind posts from my friends:

Anthony Pacheco's funny blog post on why can't that Corby character write faster; and

Stephanie Thornton's review of The Pericles Commission.

In the acknowledgements for book 2 (which I've already written) I said right at the start that I don't feel like an author so much as the point man for Team Gary.  So many people have helped me, out of the goodness of their hearts, both in the past and during this tour.  It's simply incredible.  Thank you all!
 

Mysterious Galaxy

I owe Maryelizabeth Hart a big thank you, because she arranged for me to appear at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.

So I walk in the door and the first thing I see is:

That's Ben, who helps run the store, and oh, there are some books on the wall.

Mysterious Galaxy has an interesting event system. They invite two authors at a time to do a joint talk-cum-Q&A. My partner in crime was PL Gaus, who writes murder mysteries set among the Amish community. Not a hotbed of homicidal maniacs, one might think, but it's a fascinating vehicle to explore the culture. We discovered two things in common: we're both published in Australia by Penguin, and we both come from science backgrounds with nary an English qualification between us. Other than that we couldn't be more different. Mr Gaus wears immaculate suits and speaks very deliberately. I wear the leather jacket and my speech is anything but deliberate. The audience was small but interested, including a couple who wandered into the store halfway through and stayed to listen.

One couple had come because they'd read the review of Pericles Commission. Afterwards they bought a copy. It's an interesting reflection on the power of reviews. Review sections seem to be disappearing from newspapers, but it seems to me there's a real desire for informed reviews.

These two below are the best tour guides any debut author could have. In the middle is our very own LT Host. Her avatar usually shows her kissing a giraffe, but a only few weeks ago she upgraded to a husband. That's Scott on the left. LT wins particular credit for getting us to the book talk in time, in the face of horrendous traffic.

The book stack is what they had left after preorders and books sold on the night. I think they might be down to ten now.

Garos / Garum: the ketchup of the ancient world

During our Bouchercon panel, Lindsey Davis referred to a popular ancient fish sauce called garum, and I quickly pointed out it was invented by the Greeks, who called it garos. I've been asked about it so many times since that I thought I'd repost a slightly edited version of an article I wrote in November 2008.

The Greeks had a salty fish sauce called garos (γαροσ). It was incredibly popular in both Greece and (much later) Rome, where people would add it to almost anything. It was, in effect, the ketchup of the ancient world. (Nico's favorite food is eel in garos sauce.)

Since there was a fish called garos, or garon, in Greek, it's a fair bet the sauce was made mostly from that. I've been unable to discover what fish garos actually was. Not to worry, I can fudge it in my stories (but don't let Keith and Kathleen know that...I'll tell them I'm using the Greek word for authentic atmosphere).

The earliest references of which I'm aware are some lines in Aeschylus (fragments of the lost play Proteus) and Sophocles (fragments of the lost play Triptolemos), both of which refer to garos as stinking. Not a great advertisement, but the sauce was obviously popular enough that writers were referring to it and expecting everyone to understand. Since they were writing at the same time Nicolaos and Diotima are solving murders, I know I'm on solid ground using the sauce.

The stink is understandable. Although later Roman garum was made from carefully chosen gourmet fish, the original Greek version was made from leftover entrails.

Gary's theory, for what it's worth, is this: over-population was chronic in classical Greece, and children, especially small girls who were last in the feeding line, regularly went to bed hungry. Nothing that was even remotely edible was ever wasted. So when fishwives gutted the morning catch, they would have discarded the entrails into the large vats where some extra seawater would have been added, and the whole goopy mess allowed to ferment in the sun over weeks or months into garos. If this theory is correct then garos-the-fish is going to be whatever the main catch was.

When the Romans picked up the sauce from the Greeks, the ingredients and the name changed slightly. Garum isn't Latin. It's latinized Greek. Garum was made from whole fish, not only the offal. The Romans got very precious about the whole thing and would debate which species made the best sauce. Martial even talks about making it from, "mackerel still breathing its last." Later on, humble garum split into a range of gourmet sauces, each with their own names. Liquamen appears to be the original garum, and there was also allec, muria, and a pile of others. I haven't chased down any of these because by then, my characters are all shades in Hades.

Under Roman law it was illegal to make garum at home, the stench was that bad, so they had garum factories by the coast. The Greeks had no such rule, but practicality indicates garos would not have been made in Athens anyway, but Piraeus, the port town down the road, where the fisherman brought in their catch and the fishwives processed the fish. The garos would have been transported up to Athens in amphorae and sold in the Agora.

Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Such a cool place. Seattle Mystery Bookshop is run by JB and Fran, but I have a feeling Amber, who's only been there for two months, is the one in charge. She made sure I signed every book the right way: some with signatures, some signatures + dates, some signatures + dates + special messages. The link on the shop name goes to a blog entry I wrote for them on the day.

Something wonderful happened at Seattle Mystery Bookshop. Actually, several wonderful things happened, but let me start with this:

From left to right: Roger Scrafford, Gary Corby, Anthony Pacheco and Susanna Fraser. Writers all. As Susanna later commented, it was the first time she'd been in a group of writers where the ladies were outnumbered. These kind people gave up their lunch times to come say hi. My reaction: we meet at last! They're the first of my net friends I've ever met, outside of Bouchercon, which doesn't count (sort of) because Bouchercon is full of people by definition. These nice souls actually volunteered to meet me. What we talked about was, inevitably, writing.

If you stand in the street outside the store at the moment, this is what you see:

The first time I've seen my book in a store window. OMG, I'm in the same display as Don Winslow and Steven Saylor. Inside on the shelves, Pericles Commission keeps further impressive company:

By sheer coincidence, a TV crew arrived that afternoon to do an item in the store. They were impressed a real live author was there. I was impressed a real live TV crew was there. Lowell Deo is the presenter for CityStream on Seattle Channel 21. He's an incredibly nice guy, which I would have said even if he hadn't chosen to open and close the segment with Pericles Commission. He opened with a shot of him reading it, and he closed by buying it from Fran.

The pictures below: Camera Guy (I'm embarrassed to admit I don't recall his name...please forgive me if you're reading this) shoots Fran and JB in the store. Then Lowell and Cam Guy, when I asked if I could take a picture of them:

As I said, really nice guys. I think the segment will be on 7pm Thursday next week, but I'm not sure. Then apparently it'll be online. More news as it comes to hand on that.

When the day was over, Fran and her partner absolutely insisted on driving me to my hotel for the night before I flew out. On the way, they absolutely insisted on taking me out to dinner. I couldn't describe the evening better than Fran herself in her blog Fran's ramblings, except she is being far too kind to me. A huge thank you to Lillian and Fran for their kindness. The bright pink backpack Fran mentions is real, btw; it belongs to my daughter Catriona but it's the largest we have and I desperately needed it on the trip to carry books.

I've noticed my blog posts at the moment are totally book-centered and have nothing to do with history. That's because in the middle of a book tour there's no time to think about anything else. How anyone manages to write and tour at the same time is beyond me. What you're getting is a beginner's reaction to stores selling a first book. Normal programming will resume in a few weeks, after I've got home and recovered from the nervous breakdown.