Back in 1997 or so I wrote a book called (in the UK) THE BIRTH OF A NEW MOON or (in the US) A DARKER PLACE. During the time I was putting it together, I happened to be at Barbara Peters’e2’80’99 Poisoned Pen Books in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Barbara handed me a copy of a…

I suggest you look at the web site for a place in Cornwall called Burgh Island to see where I spent Monday night. Strictly speaking, this is an island, if only at high tide, which today came conveniently toward evening as my daughter and I sat drinking our pints of Devon cider (12 percent alcohol)…

I am now launching off the map, and will post when my machine comes with range of a signal. Probably when I return to Heathrow on October 1, alas. I will, however, keep a journal of events, even if it can’e2’80’99t be posted regularly, so do not give up on me entirely. Before we start,…

My daughter tells me that it was Arsenal, not Manchester United, playing soccer football the other night. As I was just off a plane, it might have been the Forty Niners for all I could tell. Apologies to both teams. (But I still don’t know who Tun is.) Thursday in London, it rained. Not exactly…

Well, kids, as I figured, with Laurie in charge of it, my new laptop began to sulk and wouldn’e2’80’99t connect to the world its little tabs told me was out there. All those electronic waves, and nobody to link up with’e2’80’a6 When last I wrote, dear diary, I was flinging things in the direction of…

Of course, there’s a third third approach to the promotion game: If you don’t want to let your publisher do all the arranging and deciding, yet you don’t want to just go out and hawk the book all by yourself, you can hire someone to help you. Independent publicists can be especially effective for a…

The funny thing is, nobody really knows what works when it comes to selling a book. Because everything publicity-wise is done simultaneously with publication, when they do a NY Times ad or a New Yorker crossword puzzle or a country-wide flying banner, there’e2’80’99s no discernible bump in the numbers to show the result of that…

Back before the Flood (sounds like a joke; isn’e2’80’99t, not really) there was BoucherCon, with me and 1,999 other denizens of the mystery world scurrying through the halls of the Chicago Sheraton listening to, or participating in, panels and talks on more subjects than you can shake a laptop at. Remember BoucherCon? No? If you…

One reader of this blog objected to my use of the word ‘e2’80’9crefugee’e2’80’9d in the last post. I did not use the less loaded term ‘e2’80’9cevacuee’e2’80’9d precisely because I wanted the emotional punch of the word. It is a shameful thing, to have tens of thousands of homeless and abandoned citizens at loose in the…

Two blogs mention book-related relief for our US refugees: MJRose’s blog on September 7th, and Susan McBride in the Lipstick Chronicles, also on September 7. Because of the unfortunate possibility of scams–white collar looting–I can’t suggest where to send your money. But if you have a group of refugees in your town, take them a…