Can you imagine being arrested for a crime you had nothing to do with? A crime so horrible, you’re nauseated just thinking about? Can you imagine finding yourself in a courtroom, trusting that the system works, so it can’t possibly find you guilty…except it does? Can you imagine spending your life behind bars for a crime…
Read MoreTakeback Tuesday is Team LRK’s weekly vote of confidence in the future. After a week that’s seen a flood of Impossibilities, from Bannon to #MuslimBan, gush across the country, I begin to suspect the strategy is to dump so much on us that we go whimpering away. I don’t think that’s going to happen, and…
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A question writers are often asked is, “Where did that story / that character / that idea come from?” Usually the answer boils down to something small, some tiny piece of grit that lodges in the mind and accumulates ideas, images, snippets of dialogue like a pearl in an oyster. (Though admittedly, some pearls end…
Read MoreI like the program Sherlock. I tend not to read pastiches—stories about Sherlock Holmes written by someone other than Arthur Conan Doyle—for fear that some day I find myself writing that person’s character or scenes into my own Holmes. But with Sherlock, there’s little danger of incorporating its modern scenarios into the Russell stories. I…
Read MoreEver since November 8, 2016, Tuesdays have made me wince. Evil things seem to happen on Tuesdays. 9/11 was a Tuesday. The ’89 quake happened on a Tuesday. Tuesday is named after the god of war; in Japanese it’s associated with fire; the Greeks and Spanish regard it as unlucky; the Thais— Okay, I’m getting ridiculous.…
Read MoreIt is raining in California. Raining, pouring, pelting, pissing down in a way it hasn’t for years. Hillsides slump, culverts fountain, trees collapse. Feet mildew and children climb the walls. The cell phone has taken to blaring out really quite redundant flood warnings, to suggest to the oblivious or catatonic that the creeks may be rising. The last time…
Read MoreAs I write this, there is a new Occupant in the White House—my White House, the one I inherited when I was born a citizen, the place that my family and my ancestors have looked to and protected since the day Thomas Jefferson moved in in 1801. This Occupant is moving in because of a…
Read MoreIt’s been almost eerie how the wider events of this past week have found echoes in my own working life. On the dark side of things, it’s brought me face to face with the final scenes I had written for next year’s Lockdown. Not that the book has anything to do with politics (thank goodness),…
Read MoreThe Maryorama is finished, polished, and will be up soonon YouTube. But in the meantime–our Maryorama contest has its winners! The Grand Prize Winner—with a complete set of Russells coming her way—is a lovely depiction of Justice Hall with the rays of the sun falling on it, a subtle digital image by: Katie Olson First…
Read MoreAs a child, one of my favorite books was The King’s Stilts. Unlike Sam I Am or The Cat in the Hat, this may be a Seuss book you haven’t met (Indeed, Wikipedia says its initial sales were “a disappointment.” Perhaps in 1939, people did not welcome pointed lessons about the evil nibbling at their roots.) so…
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