Posts by Laurie King
Interfering with Nature
Hummingbirds are not supposed to stick around when the weather gets cold enough to freeze them out of the trees at night. Really not. But when there’s an endless source of high-calorie goo, they stay in the neighborhood, leaving the idiot who put the hanger up with the hard realization that the thing now…
Read MoreLaurie talks!
When I was in the Pacific Northwest last month for the fabulous Sherlock Seattle I sat down and talked with Bill Kenower with Author about, well, Sherlock Holmes–and also about Mary Russell, the temerity of an innocent, writer’s block, and what writing has taught me:
Read MoreLetting in the day
In the Dick Francis novel Decider, the protagonist is an architect with many sons and a difficult marriage. At one point he reflects on the unlikely things that make people buy one house over another—in his case, a large tree that he can envision his boys climbing. I bought a house last year. My decider…
Read MoreThink big, shop small!
Small Business Saturday is coming! For those of us who love local, who shudder at the thought of Target at 5:00 am the day after Thanksgiving, who believe in our bones that Thanksgiving shopping is a sign of the End Times, there’s Small Business Saturday. Shop local on the day after the day after Thanksgiving,…
Read MoreMy Thesis Being…
Many and many a year ago, Laurie King spent her life (parts of it, anyway) in realms academical. About half the novels I’ve written have some touch of my previous life in them: Brother Erasmus from To Play the Fool, the tutoring of Margery Childe in Monstrous Regiment, Anne Waverley in Darker Place/Birth of the…
Read MoreRemembrance
Mary Russell is posting Tweets all day for Remembrance Day, from the diary of Gabriel Hughenfort. Russell, Holmes, and Mrs Hudson paused for silence at 11 am their time, in Sussex. Follow her here. (War photographer Helen Johns Kirtland in the trenches.)
Read MoreThe passing of friends
Funny, how things come together. This week, I’ve been working my way through my MA thesis, concerning the feminine aspects of Yahweh, trying to get it into shape for e-publication. At the same time I’ve been writing an essay for Sisters in Crime on the topic, “Belonging.” Which means I’ve had two things on my…
Read MoreHappy Hallowe’en!
So, Laurie’s been posting a lot of weird stuff this week: now that it’s Hallowe’en, is she going to get truly disgusting? Fear not, the creep factor in today’s post is along the theoretical and long-term lines. The story “Hellbender” contains elements of genetic manipulation, in which DNA of one species is blended with that…
Read MoreNightmares, in fiction
As a crime writer, I entertain with the stuff of nightmares. Murder and mayhem, kidnapping and political manipulation, all the things nobody wants, but everyone secretly desires to have faced. But every so often, I’ll slip a real nightmare into my fictional creations. Just a handful of times, something personal make the trip from my…
Read MoreMore All Hallow’s
(Now! With fewer disgusting pictures!) So, you read yesterday’s post on taxidermy and you think you’d like to try it yourself? Great! You, too, can be a forensic anthropologist. All you need is something that’s died, and a handful of these: (From here.) (You can get a beetle kit, or other taxidermy supplies, online. Of…
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