Books of the Week: NO TIME FOR GOODBYE by Linwood Barclay; CLAIMED BY A SHADOW by Karen Chance

This has been a good reading week. I had the chance to read an ARC of an upcoming Linwood Barclay book, NO TIME FOR GOODBYE, and it was just sensational. Barclay, a Canadian mystery writer who is also a newspaper columnist, has really taken a career giant step with this stand-alone thriller. It won’t be available until September, so I don’t want to say too much about it, but put it on your “buy in the future” list.

I also just finished Karen Chance’s CLAIMED BY SHADOW. I really enjoyed the first book in this series, TOUCH THE DARK. I enjoyed SHADOW, too, but I was hopelessly confused at first. I highly recommend you brush up on the first book before you plunge into the second, especially if you read a lot. So many books have intervened that I had a hard time figuring out who was who all over again. I think Chance needed a little more backstory. SHADOW is nonstop action, and a lot of fun.

I noticed recently on Amazon that Tanya Huff’s vampire books are being re-released in two-book volumes since the TV series taken from her work (“Blood Ties”) is being aired in Canada and America (in America, Sunday nights on Lifetime). If any of you haven’t read Tanya, this is a great time to start. Her books are solid, scary, and inventive.

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When Alan Ball’s representative first approached my agent to ask about rights to the Sookie books, I was pleased as punch, but skeptical. I’d had other options taken on my works, which came to nothing or very little. And Alan’s was only one of three offers on the table (when it rains, it pours). I confess to a frisson of excitement, because I had a lot of admiration for him.

As the deal progressed with glacial slowness, though my agent assured me this was lickety-split in Hollywood terms, I adopted a wait-and-see attitude. I’ve seen options come to nothing, I’ve read about whole series being abandoned or put on the back burner, and I expected something of the sort to happen. I made an effort to be realistic about the whole process. When other people would burble about the prospect, I reminded them that there was a lot that could happen between signing the contract and starting the shooting.

Alan has been excellent about emailing me from time to time to keep me informed about his progress, and in the course of that time I’ve become impressed with his attention to detail and his determination to get things exactly right.

When Anna Paquin (Sookie), Ryan Kwanten (Jason), and Sam Trammell (Sam) joined the cast, I began to feel cautiously optimistic. This week, with the addition of Stephen Moyer (Bill) and Brook Kerr (Tara), the casting took a big leap forward. Shooting is scheduled to start June 1. Who’s excited now? Reluctantly, anxiously, I am.

I know that a television series is a different art form from a printed book. I know there will changes to accommodate the visual requirements of a visual medium. I know there will be plot changes necessary to move the plot along in hour increments. So in a sense, this will be Alan Ball’s baby, not mine. I hope you all are as willing as I am to enjoy these changes. It’s not like the television series will be violating my books; it’ll be something completely different. Enjoy this completely different creation with me, next January – as we say here, “God willing and the creek don’t rise.”

--Charlaine Harris