Laurie R. King

There’s a deft little thread woven into Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night where one of the academics is perpetually working on the final draft of her definitive book and keeps taking it back to do what modern publishers call “tweak” it. A footnote here, the incorporation of a newly published paper there—her colleagues in the end…

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, we had a wedding in the family recently. And it was just absurdly gorgeous, from the warm autumnal sun slanting through the trees to the beatific happiness that transformed all the faces. It was a Jewish ceremony, with chuppah (the canopy,) the broken wine-glass (said to…

I returned last night from a whole two days away, deciding that a houseful of visiting Kings might e sufficient to keep catastrophe at bay. Two entire days, driving down to Big Sur and talking to the redwoods. And although I didn’t take my laptop or a writing pad, and only took a cell phone…

Sorry for the delay on this promised conclusion of Jamie You’ll’s remarks. Over 36 hours this weekend I flew to LA and spoke with a couple hundred librarians, flew home and fed 60 guests, and attended the world’s most perfect wedding. Since then I have realized that my brain is going through a period of…

My soldier son is home, a civilian at last after 40 months in uniform. He survived Iraq, Afghanistan, Ranger training school, more jumps out of airplanes than a mother wants to know about, and the Army’s idiocy. His only scars are the invisible kind treated best by a full refrigerator, many paperback novels, and plans…

Last spring I received the proposed cover art for Touchstone (which I would post here if anyone could teach me how to do that, but since no one has figured it out on this machine all I can do is link to it. Sigh.) The cover was flat-out gorgeous, eye-catching and evocative. That cover was…

In the past month, since finishing Touchstone, I’ve worked on the house. I’ve had it power-washed and had the shingles stained and the trim paint touched up, ditto the deck. I had a new section of deck installed so there are no steps in a circuit of the house, necessary for someone dependent on a…

In the discussion about Doris Lessing’s Nobel for Literature, pundits have weighed in on various aspects of her life and career, including the furious declaration that here is a woman who wasted considerable talent on (gack, spit) genre fiction. Oh, woe. But there’s another thing that came up that I thought more interesting, and that…

Today’s post concludes an interview with Madeline Hopkins, who copyedited the manuscript for Touchstone. Madeline Hopkins first entered the publishing world over a decade ago as a temp at a weekly thoroughbred racing magazine and worked her way through most of the facets of magazine and book publishing at a variety of companies in several…