One of the great pleasures I have in researching books—okay, I admit, it’s not quite as much fun as the travel side of research…but a pleasure nonetheless—is getting to know some of the true-life characters of the time and place the book is to be set. Take Sara and Gerald Murphy. I knew of them,…
Read MoreWhen I opened up the fundraiser for Bookshop Santa Cruz’s Keep Kids Reading project, I promised to read the Jabberwocky, and I did. Then we hit $250 and, having promised the Owl and the Pussycat, I not only read the poem—with illustrations—I tossed in an Illustrated/Annotated “Owl and the Pussycat” for your printing pleasure. And now……
Read MoreThe “Mrs Hudson’s Case” Illustrations Contest closes on May 5. This story about Sherlock Holmes’ landlady-turned-housekeeper needs pictures—and to encourage you, I have 15 shiny new ARCs of Riviera Gold that I’ll give in a random drawing to those who entered the contest—and, the winners whose pictures end up in the Illustrated Edition will also…
Read MorePrizes–you ALL get prizes! Well, not keys to a new car-type prizes, but me on your screen. And honestly, isn’t that every bit as exciting as a new car? As a reminder, we’re raising funds for the Bookshop Santa Cruz Keep Kids Reading program, to hand books to low-income kids at their school lunch program drive-by…
Read MoreMy beloved local Bookshop Santa Cruz has a program to keep kids reading during the pandemic: giving away books to kids K-12 at the school lunch program drive-by pickups. Help a great bookshop, help kids—and help their parents, to keep kids reading. So I’m running a fundraiser for them. By way of reward, I’ll keep…
Read MoreDeadly Anniversaries comes out today! (And congratulations, Ellen, Richard, and Pat—you’ve won the hardback!) When the Great War began, in August of 1914, the British Army had about 250,000 regulars. It took time to train new troops, and in the Kaiser’s first push, the Brits would have been hard put to hold fast, but within…
Read MoreThe 2020 “Mrs. Hudson’s Case” Illustration Contest My US publisher has managed to stick an extra carton of the galleys for Rivera Gold onto a truck for me, which means I can give them away–yay! So let’s do this: 15 copies of the Riviera Gold ARC In a random drawing for those who enter the…
Read MoreRemember travel? Remember getting in the car and going to the airport and walking onto a plane and sitting down SHOULDER TO SHOULDER WITH STRANGERS and breathing their air for hours and blithely drinking things you took from the ungloved hands of the flight attendants and— (Okay, calm down, breathe now, just maybe pull up…
Read MoreI love Nature, really I do. There’s a reason I live in a house with nothing but trees as far as a stone can throw, with neighbors who have wings or wattles or sometimes large teeth. But in my last house, we had a half-barrel pond near the front door, with plants and lilies. The…
Read MoreThe streets of the world are still, other than the occasional idiot who decides that the chance of driving 95 mph down the center of New York is just too good to pass up. Citizens look out their windows, astonished, as distant hills come into view, the waters of Venice and Paris are looking weirdly…
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