Laurie R. King

Patience is not one of the stronger characteristics of the Internet universe. After all, aren’t blogs and web sites the very definition of ephemeral?

So I have to thank you all for your patience with this remarkably slow process of getting a book club underway.

The official announcement is coming out soon, certainly before the end of the month, but I will say that on the first of June we will open the Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club, for your pleasure and entertainment. And perhaps every a smidgen of enlightenment, but we won’t count on that quite yet.

The VBC had its beginnings in my awareness that I was not going to be on the road this year with a new book. And being the good Puritain that some of my forefathers would have expected, I couldn’t very well just stand back and enjoy the freedom, I had to be DOING something.

Hence the book club. I’m not doing it all myself, don’t fear–the woman running it knows what she’s doing. And I’m not going to be watching over what people say and posting corrections, because it’s going to be a forum for readers, to meet online, to toss out opinions and see what others think, to play with ideas and run with them and see where things end up. Just like any book club, the book itself is only a part of what goes on.

However, as with a real-life book club, this virtual version will begin with the book itself, a different King title every month, with the occasional outside novel or non-fiction book tossed in to save everyone from a surfeit of Kingliness. We’ll be doing a lot of fun stuff other than just book discussion, too, with giveaways and contests and recipes and maybe the odd cat photo here and there. Some of you are already involved with independent forums, and I hope you’ll just add the VBC to your list.

But the appreciation for your patience extends beyond the book club. A few days ago Terri posted the comment: So, I followed the link under “What’s New” that says “Laurie has been named Artist of the Year in Santa Cruz for 2006. To mark the occasion, she did a Writer’s Improv. Follow her progress here.” and the beginning of the haunted house story was fascinating, but “follow her progress” kind of sets you up to expect multiple installments, instead of a single story fragment dated May 20, 2006. It felt so frustrating that the page ended with “To be continued…”, and here it is nearly a year after the workshop at which it was written, and it still hasn’t been continued. Is it ever going to be?? Maybe at the anniversary of the workshop at which it was born? Here’s hoping.

Please don’t take this as criticism. I wouldn’t be so frustrated if I didn’t find the story intriguing.

I’d also be very interested in knowing what the submitted “prompts” that spawned the story were. Maybe that could be added to the introduction at the top of the page?

A: What happened, basically, was that my husband spent much of last year dying, only to change his mind about it–and he’s doing quite well now, thanks. But this meant that TOUCHSTONE took twice as long to write as it should have, and that many, many projects ground along in low gear and still remain unfinished. One of those was the proposed book club. Another was the short story I began last year at the Artist of the Year event, a live improvisational writing exercise that was meant to be finished by the end of summer… by another Laurie King whose husband didn’t have a stroke followed by cancer surgery.

However, it may please you to know that just this past weekend (before my computer catastrophe, sigh) I resumed work on it, and should have it finished soon.

I had intended the story as a demonstration of craft, namely, the rewrite process. On the site you see the rough first draft—produced with no editing, sitting at my laptop, in a two-hour block of writing. Eventually you will see the finished draft, with a commentary about how the story began, the “prompts” I used to shape it, and how from those beginnings the story felt its way to completion. Interestingly enough, on rereading what I have, and thinking about what I need to finish it, the 2800 words I put down may actually need very little tweaking. Which rather undermines the purpose of the exercise, but never mind.

So “The House” will come.

And the newsletter will come, with details about the Virtual Book Club, and the VBC itself will bloom in glory, when the time is fulfilled.

In the meantime, I’d suggest that you dig out your copy of A Grave Talent, or trot out and buy one (if you want one inscribed by yours truly, my local store is listed on the home page of the web site, www.LaurieRKing.com ) because the LRK Virtual Book Club is about to open for business.

If we’re all very patient….