A recent temporary lapse in the demands of my time, due to sending a first draft off to my editor and having to wait for a reply, drove me to my shelves. Not to read, but to see if I could do something about the double waist-high stack of books waiting to be shelved, about…

I should have known you guys would get it right. Yes, the inserted material in THE BEEKEEPER’e2’80’99S APPRENTICE was the section where the senator’e2’80’99s daughter is kidnapped in Wales. The book, from the beginning, was unavoidably episodic, a series of linked short stories. How else to do a book about a young woman learning a…

There’e2’80’99s an interesting discussion over at a blog called Crime Fiction Dossier that is somewhat related to the last post here, and in fact, I was a little surprised that no one brought its topic up in a comment. Maybe my readers all think I’e2’80’99m so perfect that they don’e2’80’99t even think of me in…

You would think that after, God, is it sixteen novels? the seventeenth would go pretty much like the others. First draft in three or four months, a sort of expanded outline (since I am constitutionally incapable of doing an outline beforehand) that tells me what the book is supposed to look like; giving it to…

The San Francisco Chronicle recently informed me that the blood of autistic kids (autism being a diagnosis currently skyrocketing around the Bay Area) tends to show an inadequate level of immunity. The article I read made no philosophical reflection on that fact, made no attempt to point out a psychological parallel of the autistic person’e2’80’99s…

The site referred to in yesterday’s post should be found here, or so Sarah tells me. Sorry if I led you all astray.

This entry is in response to a discussion going on over in Sarah Weinman’e2’80’99s excellent Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, regarding the Edgars awards and privacy. Sarah’e2’80’99s remarks were sparked by a DorothyL posting from one of last year’e2’80’99s judges (Tony Fennelly) regarding her strong objections to the book that won, and that led to…

I am reading (or perhaps rereading, parts of it sound very familiar) Anne Fadiman’e2’80’99s EX LIBRIS (subtitled, Confessions of a Common Reader, although from page one it is clear that this reader is anything but common.) It is, obviously, about her passion for books, about such topics as the difference between a courtly book lover…

I love WIRED magazine. I don’e2’80’99t understand half the articles in it, they might as well be written in KiSwahili, but when they’re not about the latest development in Microwhizz software or the revolutionary twist in the Frimastan that allows bites to chew at an unprecedented 5000 chomps per second, they almost always have a…

I meant to say, I had a meeting Thursday morning with my editor and publicist (who is the p.’s assistant but the p. herself is off on maternity leave.) We had breakfast in the private dining rooms of Random House, which is rather like eating your friut bowl in the board room. Planning goes ahead…