BoucherCon is always a somewhat otherworldly experience, with a couple thousand mystery fans tripping over each other for four days and continually coming around the corner and seeing a familiar face, a thing that happens about once every ten years in the rural area where I live. This year’e2’80’99s conference was odder than usual, because…

I won’t have a laptop at Bouchercon, mostly because my laptop is so venerable it laughs pityingly at the idea of wireless connections and even Ethernet is but a dream in its little electronic mind. So I’m going to be dependent on the hotel computers, a notoriously difficult state of affairs. Even the Library Hotel…

The talented and winsome Sarah Weinman posed a question recently, Why go to Bouchercon? And because my poor battered brain is finding it so hard to squeeze out the words, I thought I’d steal my response to her and post it here, too. But do go look at what others have to say on the…

Finished. 478 typescript pages concerning THE ART OF DETECTION, going down to the photocopier’e2’80’99s tomorrow so I don’e2’80’99t have to nurse the printer for hours and hours, into the FedEx box on Monday, onto my editor’e2’80’99s desk on Tuesday. While I’e2’80’99m away in England, the thing will come back to me, its right-hand side at…

I love living in Santa Cruz, the PC capital of the Western world. I love knowing that racism here is not just wrong, but wicked, that the city is a Nuclear Free Zone, and that so long as you don’e2’80’99t frighten the horses (the Humane Society is active here) you can get away with pretty…

THE ART OF DETECTION, a Kate Martinelli mystery (with Sherlock Holmes) will be published early next June. (I could have given names to an entire nursery full of infants with less effort than this one book.) And if you’re going to BoucherCon the end of next week, you can bid to be a character in…

I had an interesting reaction to the last newsletter I sent out, in which I was talking about touring and how, along with the hard-working booksellers and the comrades-in-adversity escorts, I loved being in touch with readers– “The intelligence of the people who read my books never fails to humble me, their grasp of all…

If your name is Ivan, and you live in Salt Lake, UT, could you maybe check your email, friend? We’ve been trying to give you an audio book. *** The PostIts are gone, replaced by a tasteful vertical bouquet of little yellow plastic flags along the side of the latest draft, each marking a note…

I just had a comment from Pen saying it sounded like I didn’t enjoy writing the new Martinelli book at all. What’s not to like? Working eleven hour days trying to make sure all the plot lines follow through, all the suspects are followed beginning to end, each clue is dealt with, every cited fact…

Last week my editor and I had The Talk. You know, the one where you sit and converse in lowered voices and not meeting the other’s eyes, and go over those things that will determine your future, your health, and your worth as a human being. It had nothing to do with sleeping with men,…