Maddie's Amazing Venetian Carnevale Launch Party

Welcome, one and all, to the fabulous, amazing, fantastical Timely Taffeta Masquerade Launch Party!

The Maddie Hatter Adventures welcomed to our launch party another Tyche Books new release, Dying on Second, the fourth in the Marie Jenner mysteries by Edmonton author (and temporarily dead second-base narrator) EC Bell.

The thrilling choral performance by Double Treble Ensemble transported us to a Venetian palazzo!

Members of the Ensemble picking up their copies of

 MADDIE HATTER AND THE TIMELY TAFFETA

Many launch guests arrived in costumes worthy of the most extravagant Venetian Carnevale!

Solo Piratical Woman

Dashing Mother-Daughter Duo down from Edmonton for the event

This mother-daughter team came dressed as Emmy Gat and Cat Cheshire from
MADDIE HATTER AND THE TIMELY TAFFETA

Moaning Myrtle made an appearance

A whole-family affair!

Altogether, there were four juniors in costume

The super Owls Nest staff threw themselves into the spirit of Carnevale

This man with the fabulous wrist-brace is using his sundial-wristwatch to find his way through the twisting tale.

The night's most elegant masquerader shone in gold and white satin against the blue dusk beyond the windows

The man who inspired Oberon O'Reilly attended with his charming lady-love

Calgary author and impressario Neil Enoch took home the coveted Timely Taffeta coffee mug.

Maddie's Fourth Adventure is officially afloat! Available at Owls Nest Books in Calgary and everywhere online that fine fantasy novels are sold.

Find out more about the book at this link

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Join us on Instagram @je_barnard  

Maddie's Third Adventure Already!

It seems like barely yesterday I was dressing up in my black-and-purple Steampunk outfit for the launch of  MADDIE HATTER AND THE DEADLY DIAMOND, and wondering privately whether anyone besides family and Tyche Books staffers would show up to find out about this debut novel from a relative unknown.
Yet it was two years ago last week. 
 
How time... or in this case, taffeta... flies!

It hasn't happened in isolation. Although I write the stories, their production is truly a team effort. My heartfelt thanks go out to the following stalwart supporters of Maddie's adventures:  Steampunks of SASS and The Airship's Mess Deck; fellow writers from Sisters In Crime and Calgary Crime Writers; the dedicated production team at Tyche Books who keep on the hop getting everything together in time for launch day; Super-Fans Lex Robertson, Cindy Bedford, and Karen M. Owen; my agent and cheerleader Olga Filina of The Rights Agency; and of course Kevin, who handles a lot of daily life for months on end while I live in Maddie's world with Tweetle-D and the other talking clockworks.

From the Book Jacket: 

Maddie Hatter’s third Adventure finds her in Venice on an all-expenses-paid assignment: report on the season’s most extravagant Carnevale costumes. Determined to land an inside scoop, she enlists the help of her half-Venetian friend, Lady Serephene, to penetrate Madame Frangetti’s Costume Atelier in disguise.

Serephene is pursuing plots of her own: training in secret for a career that’s forbidden by her family, and flirting madly with a low-born Scottish inventor in his airship laboratory.  When the inventor’s fabulous new fabric is targeted by industrial spies, Serephene risks not only her family’s displeasure but her own safety to protect him and his work.

Pursued through the floating city’s legendary canals and squares, Maddie must draw on all her hard-won survival skills to keep herself and Serephene out of the spies’ clutches. With the help of unexpected allies among Venice’s underdogs, the daring young ladies just might reach Carnevale’s grand finale alive.

If you're in the Calgary area, you're very welcome to attend our LAUNCH PARTY on October 23rd at 7 p.m. at Owls Nest Books in Britannia Plaza (149th St & Elbow Drive SW). Costumes welcome but not mandatory. There will be prizes! Check out the details on Facebook.

Pre-orders of MADDIE HATTER AND THE TIMELY TAFFETA are now available at:

Barnes & Noble (Nook) https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/maddie-hatter-and-the-timely-taffeta-jayne-barnard/1127175003?ean=2940154941607

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07613F87Q

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07613F87Q

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/maddie-hatter-and-the-timely-taffeta/id1292381422

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/maddie-hatter-and-the-timely-taffeta

Rolling Through ThunderCon 2017

Thundercon 2017, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, was a whole lotta Star Trek fun for this speculative mystery writer. 

As a guest, I got to hang with other guests before and after: the amazing game-designer/narrator Ann Lemay, voice-of-Spock (and many other characters) Chuck Huber, Kevin Porter - YouTube's Batman and one of the kindest men alive - and more. 

I started the weekend with Robert Picardo of Star Trek Voyager (and latterly the Stargate franchise) fame and ended it watching Star Trek Discovery with a bunch of Klingons in party hats. 

Don't believe me? Check out the photos below.

 Okay, before the fandoms collide, I know this is not Star Trek right here. But R2D2 was cruising the con as much as I was. I challenged him to a drag race down the hallway, but he had already committed to break-dancing in the lobby.
 
 Neither are these Star Trek, but the one on the left is the ultra-competent captain of the Thundercon ship, chairwoman Heather Dickson (aka the fantasy author H. Leighton Dickson), and the other is not only Wonderwoman but Heather's daughter and right-hand woman, Brynne.

 Here we are: your first Klingon. Not the one in the party hat (yet). 

I asked for the photograph because our outfits' colour palettes matched so well. Hey - I write a fearless young fashion reporter; how could I not? 

Hi, Christina from Timmins! 

Someone out there has better photos of us but I didn't get his name and can't find his business card among the piles in my suitcase, and I wouldn't recognize him if I saw him without his Klingon face on.

Speaking of fashion, there were sufficient fabulous hats there to keep Maddie Hatter scribbling for a week!


In random order, feast your eyes....

 

 

From The Bunnydeer Hatbox

 

From The Bunnydeer Hatbox

 

  

The girl with the fascinator may have been holding the book - Brave New Girls: Stories of Girls Who Science and Scheme - but they were all bravely strutting their cosplay creations. 

 And one last hat: 

You can't say I didn't warn you.

Anyway, Thundercon was a blast and Maddie made some new fans. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

It's bookstores and libraries for this writer in the next couple of weeks, followed by Bouchercon 2017 - Passport to Murder (Toronto, October 12-15).

Whether you're home or away, be brave, be smart, and be responsible for your own safety. 

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