RIP Barbara Mertz, aka Elizabeth Peters

Publishers William Morrow are reporting the death of Barbara Mertz, better known to readers as Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels.

Mertz, who held a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago, turned to writing Gothic romances in the late 1960s under the name of Barbara Michaels to earn some extra cash. She found aspects of the genre ludicrous, however, and after a few books, started adding jokes to her Barbara Michaels' books, before creating a second pseudonym, Elizabeth Peters, for books that poked fun at the genre. In one such book, the heroine triumphantly announces at the end of the book that she is not going to marry either of the heroes since that only happens in silly books. Instead she is going to blackmail her way into an academic job. It just gets better from there.

One of these parodies is Crocodile on the Sandbank, which features a Mummy -- sorta -- and a heroine who loves pyramids and hits the hero over the head with her umbrella. Miss Amelia Peabody, soon to be Mrs. Amelia Peabody Emerson (Peabody!) and her assorted gang of characters, including some historical personages, were to feature in a long, very popular series of books of varying quality. I liked the Vicky Bliss series, featuring an art historian and a not very courageous thief, much more, and some of her standalone books (Devil-May-Care, with several very eager if mostly unhelpful cats and dogs, and Summer of the Dragon) are also hilarious, books I turn to when needing a comforting reread.

Thanks for all the laughs, Dr. Mertz.

Various things that do not exactly make a post:

1. Apparently, I did forget to make an official announcement about this, so here goes the official announcement: I will be at Lone Star Con in San Antonio, August 29-September 2, 2013. Apart from definitely owing Cat Rambo and a few others some drinks, I have no official schedule, so if you are there, feel free to come by and wave; I'll be the small blonde woman rolling around in a wheelchair.

2. Some time ago, a few people said some very evil words on Twitter: "Superhero" and "limerick."

Most of you know me well enough by now to know that I can't resist that sort of evil. So, after multiple assurances that this was supposed to be for an anthology of bad superhero poetry, emphasis on bad, I wrote a very very bad limerick and shot it over.

To my joy, the limerick was pretty much immediately accepted for the anthology. To my horror, when I got a copy of anthology a few weeks later, I realized that several poets had entirely forgotten the word "bad" and instead gone for "excellent."

What this means is that my terrible, terrible little limerick is surrounded by some very good and when not very good, hilariously bad superhero poems in Flying Higher: An Anthology of Superhero Poetry, available in multiple formats for free over at Smashwords.

In fact my limerick is so terrible that I was halfway tempted not to link to this at all, but some of the other poems in here are hilarious and will completely make your day: check out Alex Bledsoe's O Captain, America's Captain; Amy McNally's little untitled haiku; A.C. Wise's little limerick which unlike my contribution is actually funny; Matthew Kuchka's The Wolverine; and...oh, just go read it already. There's even a villanelle.

My advice is, go get the book, and when you reach my poem, for the sake of your own brain, skip it, and go on to the better stuff. And if my limerick harms your eyeballs by accident, I can only say, I was told that these were supposed to be BAD poems, not good ones!

3. And the latest Tor.com post, about Mary Norton's Are All the Giants Dead just popped up, which means that we are only a couple posts off from a reread you've all been waiting for.