It’s about at this point in a first draft that the voices are getting hard to ignore. Not the voices of the characters—although yes, some of those are more real than the voices of my actual family—but the voices reminding me of all the things this manuscript doesn’t do. There’s no real sense of the…

Just a reminder, that we’re doing a second drawing tonight: signed copies of Touchstone to readers, and to libraries. If you think your favorite library could use a (or, another) copy of Touchstone, please nominate them by emailing their name and address to info@laurierking.com with the subject Touchstone for Libraries. And if you’re not signed…

Ruth Jurdan asked me to write a BoucherCon memory for the BoucherCon blog today. This year, the annual mystery conference (named after writer and critic Anthony Boucher, that’s bow-cher) is in Baltimore, and the town is just Charmed to Death to welcome us all in. There’s been talk about organizing a LRK meet-up during the…

The first draft of The Language of Bees is drawing to a close, with all the main characters and events converging on a (more or less literal) race to the finish line. As I wrote Touchstone, I found it very tough to write past a gap. That is, as I was writing, or even rewriting,…

When I told my web lady that I had an extra box of Touchstone hardbacks, in case she wanted to do something with them, she jumped up and down (Vicki’s a bit excitable) and grabbed them all for a giveaway. Or rather, three giveaways: March 7, March 14, and (for UK addresses) March 21. The…

My friend Sue Smythe (“Trainer to the Stars!”) gave me an article that follows up to yesterday’s post on the WWI soldier’s letters home. For some reason, it had never penetrated my tiny brain that this country does not have a national WWI memorial. We have lots of small ones–my own tiny hamlet has a…

Harry Lamin was a 41 year-old lacemaker from Darbyshire when he was conscripted in the winter of 1917. His letters home are being posted, ninety years to the day after they were written, by his grandson. I haven’t had any luck with the subscription, which is a pity because having them arrive in the in-box…

Currently I’m reading my way through a large stack of printouts (many from Wikipedia, which is useless for real research but very helpful for the sort of general knowledge in which personal opinion is paramount.) I also have a stack of books from the library, with more arriving every day, which I’ll talk about later,…

“Mysterious California: Four Authors” is the film that explores how four California mystery writers build their fictional worlds around the physical and social landscape that is California. I’ve mentioned this film before, and the 40 minute dvd you can buy [http://calbook.org/bcb/mysterious.html ] in which Nadia Gordon, Nina Revoyr, Kirk Russell, and LRK talk about the…

Who knew that our Ms Russell reads the Guardian? Here’s the evidence: In his useful review of Jonathan Steele’s Defeat: Why They Lost Iraq (Review, February 16), Oliver Miles refers to Gertrude Bell as a pro-consul. Is this diplomatic-speak for spy? Bell was an archaeologist who worked for British intelligence in Baghdad from 1917 until…