Book Feature with Darlene Cypser, author of The Crack in the Lens
Welcome back to Backseat Nightmares!
We are going to learn more about Darlene Cypser and her book The Crack in the Lens today. Let’s start with some information about the author:
Darlene A. Cypser was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but lived in Poughkeepsie, New York, during elementary school and high school before returning to Norman, Oklahoma for college and law school. In 1987 she moved to Boulder, Colorado where she practiced law until 1999 when she began producing and selling movies, and running other businesses. Darlene is currently producing a movie set in 18th century England based on Alfred Noyes poem The Highwayman.
Darlene became an avid follower of Sherlock Holmes when she was in high school and she attended some meetings of the Hudson Valley Sciontists in her teens. Since then she has corresponded with a number of Sherlockians around the world and been a member of a number of Sherlockian groups including Dr. Watson’s Neglected Patients and the Hounds of the Internet. Darlene’s first contact with the Baker Street Irregulars was an exchange of correspondence with Dr. Julian Wolff in the 1970s and she wrote two trifling monograms which were published by the Baker Street Journal in the mid-1980s when Philip Shreffler was the editor. She is writing a sequel trilogy which follows Sherlock Holmes through his years at the university and into his early career.
Darlene loves to chat with her readers. She can be found several places:
Website: http://www.thecrackinthelens.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CrackintheLens
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CrackintheLens
Now, let’s find out more about this very interesting book:
If someone had asked Sherlock Holmes later in the year, there is little doubt that he would have said his life began that spring day in 1871 when he met Violet Rushdale upon the moors and ended in the winter some months distant. His mother would have disputed the former claim, and many, both friend and foe, would come to deny the latter. Yet what happened that year nearly cost him his life and his sanity, and strongly influenced the man he was to become.
It is well known that the toughest steel that makes the sharpest swords must be plunged into the fire, then beaten and reshaped. So it is as well with the best and wisest of men.
Although this is Darlene’s first novel, she has been receiving rave reviews. Here is a link to some of the comments that have been made.
Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 1:
Chapter 1
A young man leaned against one of the piles of the pier and watched the passengers disembarking from a steamship. If someone had asked him later in the year, there is little doubt that this young man would have said his life began that spring day in 1871 and ended in the winter some months distant. But his mother would have disputed the former claim, and many, both friend and foe, would come to deny the latter. His true date of birth, by his mother’s reckoning, was some seventeen years behind him.
Right now he was wishing his brother Mycroft was here. It would be a grand spot for the game. Even Sherrinford would do. Sherrinford wasn’t very good at the game, but it was always fun to best him at it. But neither of his brothers was here and he was left to make his own observations and deductions.
The man coming down the gangplank now was a prosperous owner of coal mines, the young man surmised. Though he was well-dressed by the standards of the merchant class, but he never quite managed to entirely shake off the coal dust which still coated the soles of his shoes. Would an examination of his fingernails show it there as well?
The coal merchant was followed rapidly by a tall man with sharp eyes and a critical stare. His coat was of good material, but well-worn. The elbows had been patched, and the sleeves, especially the right sleeve, had been worn quite shiny. A wad of foolscap covered with pencil scribblings stuck out of his left pocket. He was a writer, an essayist, the young man concluded. The foolscap was undoubtedly some spontaneous critique of the shipping industry that had come to him on board.
If his brothers had been there one of them would have crept away and asked the men their occupation to confirm their speculations. If he could have managed it, he would have done it himself. But he was in sight of his parents, and his father had decided ideas about the behavior of seventeen-year-old soon-tobe- gentlemen. The young man knew that interrogating strangers was not among them. Even staring at the people coming down the plank was a stretch of what his father considered proper, but he could always claim to be admiring the ship. He knew his father would approve of that.
I think this book sounds outstanding! I’m encouraging you to run right out (or move to the Amazon site on your computer!) and get a copy!
Amazon paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0971855250/
Kindle:
http://amzn.to/hKbAZw
Nook:
http://bit.ly/ffqUs2