The first time I passed through New York—well, actually just the airport—was on my way to India back in the Seventies. My chief impression was amazement, that people actually talked like dat. Twenty years later, I had a book published by St Martin’s Press. It did okay, well enough that they wanted another book, and…

So, why New York? Not an existential question, although indeed when I’m standing on a street corner in the rain jostled by humanity and competing with twenty other black-clad women (all of them in shoes that I could not even stand in, much less leap for a cab door in) for one paltry taxi with…

As some of you may have picked up over the years, SJ Rozan is one of the friends I’ve made in this odd business, where colleagues tend to be spread very, very thinly around the world. But since her home base is New York, and since I go to NY once a year and we…

The Edgars award winners for 2008 are at http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html I had a grand time at the Edgars banquet, especially since I wasn’t a nominee so there was no nerves and quivers, just hanging with friends and catching up on publishing life with people in the business. But I’m tired and it’s after midnight, and I…

Shannon Byrne has posted some pics of Tuesday night’s launch party for The Blue Religion at Mysterious Books, some of which include LRK, at http://picasaweb.google.com/ByrneMediaGroup/BlueReligionBookParty (thanks to Sarah Weinman for the head’s up!) Wednesday was lunch with SJ Rozan, a meeting about a MWA project I may be getting involved with, and the annual Agents…

Wheee—it’s Edgars Week!   Up at 2:00 and on the road by 3:15 for a 6 am flight, doesn’t that sound like fun? Well, when it’s in the cause of MWA’s Edgars week, yes, it’s fun. The rest of the plane seemed to think so as well, although I don’t believe all of them were…

I was saddened to read of the death of an unmet friend, a reader who wrote to me several times from the House of Lords, first in praise, then in an exchange of methods of decanting ancient port and a discussion of snooker versus billiards. This is one of the interesting aspects of being a…

For some reason, it often takes people by surprise to find that I am an amusing public speaker. Deliberately amusing, that is, not laughable. But I’ve been speaking to groups for a long time, since long before I became a writer, and I am very comfortable manipulating the attention of fifty or five hundred people.…

Fifteen libraries are soon getting sets of the first four Russell novels, from Picador Press. Thank you, everyone who sent us the names of their favorite library—we’ll drop your library a note, to let them know they’re loved, and we’ll leave their names in the electronic pool for another drawing soon. Alameda County Library System,…

Wednesday was a double-header here at the Everyone’s Reading The Beekeeper’s Apprentice library tour—after a lunch out-of-doors with Connie Silver, the librarian who was instrumental in the choice of Beekeeper’s Apprentice for the two counties, and a visit to the gorgeously renovated Bloomfield Township library, we invaded the nearby Doyle Center (great name, no?) for…