Fun Stuff
Jigsaw Venice
To mark the three-month countdown to Island of the Mad, and to give away a few of the bound galleys my publisher sent me– –we’re running a contest admirably suited to a book set in Venice: a jigsaw puzzle. Venice is a tightly-fitted set of pieces literally built up in the marshy lagoon over many…
Read MoreTakeback Tuesday: Lifting a glass to PPH
Pour you a beer? I’ll be working this great event along with Jonathan Franzen, Karen Joy Fowler, and Elizabeth McKenzie, raising money to support our local Planned Parenthood. But since this is a fundraiser, and you might live somewhat outside the driving area, you could just make a donation (…and we’ll owe you a beer.)…
Read MoreMy Bookstore
The gorgeous collection of songs to the glory of bookstores has come out in paperback! Eighty-one of the country’s top writers wrote essays, stories, and words of praise for their favorite shops, which were then illustrated with charming drawings, in My Bookstore. I talk about my local, Bookshop Santa Cruz, and how a damaged town…
Read MoreTravels & Travails
[A letter, to those of you who don’t see my News.] I’m not sure if you, my dear Friends and Readers, have all just been super busy with the new academic year, or too swept up in the election to focus on anything but else, but the deadline is fast approaching for a contest that…
Read MoreMiss Russell’s Brilliant Friends
Many and many a year ago, in a (LR)Kingdom by the sea, we started celebrating various events (new books, Library Week, St. Swithun’s Day) by running contests. Some of these involved art, others words. We did crossword puzzles, pirate haiku, Russellscapes, “My Dream Library”—you name it, we’ve done it (next up: videos.) When we moved…
Read MoreLaurie King, poet: slightly above the others
The kind of books I write are always a compromise. If I did the kind of research I feel they deserve, a novel would take me three, four, six years and stretch to eight hundred pages. This invariably leaves me with a dozen areas where I’m spreading a small amount of research very thin, and…
Read MoreLaurie emerges from her cave
Neck deep as I am in a first draft, nonetheless I’m due to extricate myself this week from the blizzard of paper scraps that is my study to appear in public, face scrubbed and carrying on normal conversation (as opposed to muttering vague bits of dialogue under my breath.) Thursday night I’ll be in San…
Read MoreA Tactile Tey
So, what’s a book to you? Electronic ink on a screen? Or paper, black ink, and the texture of the cover against your fingers? The words are the same, right? Sure—but the experience isn’t. For just under 70 years, the Folio Society has made “editions of the world’s great literature, in a format worthy of…
Read MoreDressing the part of Murder
One of my favorite times on the recent tour for Murder of Mary Russell was the launch, when friends near and far gathered to celebrate the publication–and to admire the amazing donning of Victorian garb by Caroline Bellios, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Fashion and assistant director of the Fashion Resource Center at SAIC. I got in…
Read MoreHappy Birthday, Bill!
Today (or yes, maybe Tuesday…) is the birthday for the man who changed the English language, William Shakespeare. There’s a fascinating article over on the New York Post about the near-disappearance of all that genius (thanks to The Passive Guy for the link), where only the determination (and financial commitment) of two friends led to…
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