Driving the point home

October 1, 2023 by Laurie King 18 Comments

When a person turns 70 in California, they need to show up at the DMV the next time their license comes up for renewal. They also need to take the handbook test. One of those is easier than the other. Not that you’d guess that from the DMV site:

I call bullshit on that. Apparently, 40 percent of people fail the first time. Including yours truly—and this was after I’d read through the handbook carefully, since sure, rules change and being an experienced driver doesn’t ensure that all the rules of the road stay in the mind. And if you fail three times, you have to reapply—at a cost of an additional $41. I wonder how many people driving without a license are doing so because they couldn’t afford the repeated testing?

Part of the failure rate is that the people who compile the tests just love to ask questions about specific distances, even though most of us couldn’t tell you just how many feet away that marker down the road is—

I took my test, received my failure, and went home to memorize the damned book. I read it aloud. I marked the kinds of things they were sure to ask, and read those sections aloud again.

And I will admit that I learned a few things. Such as—

And it was good to have a reminder that—

Although there were loads of things that, though they’re obvious to any responsible adult, it surprises me that they actually have a rule, such as—

Frankly, there were loads of things that could have been covered more succinctly by merely stating:

Do not drive like an idiot.

Some of the illustrations took a fair amount of puzzling over, even if you were familiar with driving through a roundabout or having bicycles on the road with you.

But other things, well, whoever wrote this section of the handbook is just plain wrong:

Turn on your lights 30 minutes AFTER sunset? And BEFORE sunrise? Wouldn’t that render most cars completely invisible until they’re right on top of you?

But it’s the plethora of precise punishments that I had to commit to memory—

And—

However, I noted what they said, tried to memorize the difference between the punishment for one crime and that for another (fine, bigger fine, fine plus jail, or man you’ve truly screwed up and you’re going to prison.)

Also, it occurred to me, somewhat belatedly, that there is a difference between 911, the DMV, and law enforcement. Which, yes, makes sense, and might even be obvious, but I don’t think it’s quite so apparent as the DMV appears to think. Perhaps they might have noted there, along with the other too-obvious-to-bother-saying notes, that reporting something to the police does not mean you have told the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The second time through, I passed. Rest safe, America, knowing that Laurie King is behind the wheel, and knows where she can, and cannot, do a U-turn.

Waves of glass

July 7, 2023 by Laurie King 6 Comments

Every October, my county hosts Open Studios, three weekends when selected artists in all manner of media open their doors and let people wander in and out, asking questions, buying things—and commissioning projects of their own.

I always set off with a list of artists I want to see, and I try to buy something from most of them. Last year, one of those was a woman who does stained glass and mosaics…and I fell in love. Haven Livingston’s Wavehaven studios incorporate glass and river stones in a way I’d never seen before. And since I was looking for something interesting to do around my fireplace….

Haven at work.

Small golden fish, swimming among the stones and currents.

Fabulous, no? And because there are streams of golden fish swimming through it, and they reflect the light, it changes throughout the day, always capturing a different pattern.

I’m already looking forward to October–and to weather that makes a fire like this appealing!

Rain gonna fall

April 13, 2023 by Laurie King 2 Comments

It’s April, here on the Central Coast, and in a normal year, we’d be pretty well finished with rain until October. Not that we can remember what a normal year looks like. This year we’re above our more-or-less average of 33 inches (the below are from the excellent Weathercat.net) –

Last year, on the other hand, looked like this –

And the year before was even worse –

They’re telling us that our La Niña weather pattern that’s dominated for the past few years is turning over to her brother, and that El Niño tends to bring disruptive, ie rainy, winters.

So…my hilltop home may soon be beachfront property?

…And a Year Later: Edgar!

February 16, 2023 by Laurie King 2 Comments

Part of February’s month-long celebration of A Grave Talent, my Edgar-winning first novel.

A year after A Grave Talent was published, my first venture into publishing took me to the annual Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards banquet, when it was nominated in the Best First Novel category. I went with my daughter (then 14) and my agent, Linda (whom I talked about here in a recent post)

I was somewhat stunned to be in the same room as so many REAL writers. I sat at my publisher’s table along with another nominee, this one for Best Novel, Minette Walters.

Reader, I won. (So did Minette. It was a good night for St Martins Press.) I think I only put the statue down when we were back in the hotel room and I had to phone my family in California.

And when I got home, I found that my local bookshop was happy too.

Since then, I’ve been nominated a number of times, and won other awards. I’ve been on several Edgar committees, too, which is great fun–working with writers you respect, knowing that at the end of the process will be a grin like the above.

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

The Author Photo: a work in progress

February 14, 2023 by Laurie King 4 Comments

Part of February’s celebration of A Grave Talent, the Edgar-winning first novel that started a writing career.

If you have ever tried to take a good picture of yourself—not just a grinning selfie with friends but the kind of photo that says “thoughtful, intelligent person with a trace of humor and wit”—well, all I can say is, it’s a lot cheaper to try it now than it was when every click of the camera cost money.

I had a friend who took nature photographs, and they were nice, so when St Martins Press asked me for my very first author photo, I thought, Well, she has a camera. So we took a few photos, and one of me at the blank wall of the house wasn’t completely awful, so there it went, onto the cover flap of A Grave Talent.

I didn’t quite realize that converting our color shot into black and white would make it look as if I was standing in a lineup, so for the next one, I asked the photographer who’d taken my daughter’s high school photos. And ended up with something that looked rather like a high school photo. (Don’t you love those 80s glasses?)

Next came a photographer who arranged to meet me in San Francisco for some location shots, and told me not to worry, he’d touch up the chin. I later discovered he told every one of his clients this, even the size 2 women. (Men with full beards maybe got out of it.)

At some point I graduated to color photos, and did a photo shoot with a crew of three—photographer, assistant, and makeup person—that took up a huge amount of the day, made a sore place on my cheek where the makeup brush had tried its hardest to get rid of a mole, and left me with a stiff face the rest of the day (and a lot of curious glances) when I had to rush off and pick up the kids from school with foundation and powder and mascara and the lot. This one I couldn’t find a copy of, but if you spot it in one of your books, stick it into the comments.

Then, my daughter had a friend who was setting up a photographic business, Red Bat, so she was next. I liked hers a lot.

(She took a few with the cat, as well, which I didn’t use because he didn’t look terribly happy with the entire-grab-and-clicking-lady routine…)

There have been others, but the one I use now, by Josh Edelson, still looks like me, just with different glasses. I’ll probably keep that one for a while.

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

A T-Shirt Promo

February 13, 2023 by Laurie King Leave a Comment

Once upon a time, children, publishers used to promote mid-list authors and build the careers of newbies.

That’s right, my publisher took out a quarter-page congratulatory ad in the New York Times back when Grave Talent won Best First and Minette Walters won Best Edgar.

My original publisher decided to pass on the paperbacks of the first two books (a decision they regretted afterward) and sold the rights to Bantam. And Bantam thought, hey, let’s do a big promo for three of our new authors, with a commissioned illustration by Edward Gorey on the book displays, free samplers, bookmarks—

and T-shirts!

That’s right, if you bought all three, they’d send you a t-shirt. Fabulous, no? And don’t you love that Gorey drawing? Shades of Masterpiece Mysteries!

Anyway, I’m mentioning that here because—

I HAVE ONE!

that I’m going to—

GIVE AWAY!

through the newsletter, which goes out on Wednesday. So watch for the Buzz dropping into your box (or sign up on the yellow button here ) and get a chance to win it. (I only have XL, so it might be your next nightie….)

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

The Business of Writing: Your Friend, The Agent

February 11, 2023 by Laurie King 9 Comments

Part of the 30-year anniversary celebration of A Grave Talent.

Like most first novelists, I had no clue about how to run my life as a business.

My vanity projects, e-book version.

In 1993, the only people who did self-publishing were the desperate souls who just HAD to have a volume to put in the hands of family and friends. The publishers who would do this for them were called “vanity” presses, which shows the scorn with which “real” published writers held them.

At the time, there were (as memory provides) only two actual, New York publishing houses that accepted manuscripts from the writer herself, rather than through an agent. These unsolicited manuscripts were called “over the transom” submissions, meaning that you had to (figuratively, at least) climb up and thrust your manuscript into the little window over their firmly shut door, listening to it thump down on the floor with a whole load of similar thick envelopes.

A transom.

A junior editor described to me the way publishers dealt with them (those houses that didn’t automatically stamp them with RETURN TO SENDER.) Every few months, on a Friday night, the editorial assistants (all of whom wanted to grow up and become real editors with the budget to buy actual books) would send out for pizza and beer and sit around the storage closet with piles of thick manila envelopes, and start to read. Some manuscripts got a fair try, and got passed on to The Editor. Others would either have a typo that irritated the baby editor, or was not to their taste, or would have the bad luck to show up towards the end of the evening. Those rejects would be thrust back for RETURN TO SENDER with a printed “Thanks-but-no-thanks” slip. (Or just be tossed, to save the cost of postage, and “Oops sorry I guess we lost it.”)

Very occasionally, like the girl in the soda fountain who became a star, the stars would align, and the envelope would make its was to an Editor, who nine times out of ten would write a personalized “Good job, not for us” rejection note.

Those that I sent in myself got rejected. Or “lost”…

…and THEN rejected. An agent was clearly the way to go. Agents held the key to that locked door. But how did I get one of them?

As I said in an interview a few years ago (2015)—

How did you get your first literary agent?

I looked in the back of Writer’s Market, back in 1987, and found five agencies in San Francisco. (I didn’t believe in New York. Still not too sure about it…) I wrote to each of them, sending a couple of chapters of the two books I’d finished. Agency one said their client list was full up. The second said they liked the one but not the other. Number three said they liked the other, but not the one. Number four said they’d be happy to read the books if I’d send them $385 for each. And the fifth was Linda Allen, who liked the books, thought they needed work, and ended up representing me until her retirement last year.

Or, as I put it in my Really Long Autobiography, Linda was—

The first professional to look at my work and see it as—well, my work.

She’s also been a friend all these years, although we didn’t really bond until she came to England for the 1995 Bouchercon in Nottingham, and stayed with us, visiting nearby Blenheim Palace

And venturing into cold, wet, windy Dartmoor, helping my two kids and me research The Moor.

Agent and author, hard at work.

(I nearly lost her in the fog, but fortunately, she heard me calling….)

She was a fairly new agency then herself, and the partnership went through some really great years, with this simple, small beginning.

She’s retired now, but I talked with her the other day, and she remembers how thrilled she was at the sale to St Martins Press.

A contract. An actual contract!

And how much did I get from that first book? Well, more than the £25 Arthur Conan Doyle got for his first story, but in modern terms, maybe about the same. But hey, I was in business!

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

When Intellectuals Read Crime

February 10, 2023 by Laurie King 2 Comments

Part of February’s month-long celebration of A Grave Talent.

A writer tosses books out into the world without much clue about where they will wash up or whose hands they will end up in. Naturally, this is especially true with a first book. What, people who don’t know me will read it? Wow.

(Personal note from the publisher. Common Knowledge was a new journal then, from Duke University, whose articles still “challenge the ways we think about scholarship and its relevance to humanity”.)

With A Grave Talent, one of those who picked up the book was a gentleman named Richard Rorty. A philosopher who taught at Princeton, Wellesley, and Stanford, won a MacArthur fellowship, wrote books with titles like Consequences of Pragmatism, Essays on Heidegger, and What’s the Use of Truth?, and developed the ideas of antirepresentationalism, Ironism, and Epistemological behaviorism (and no, I have no idea what any of those are)—this gent took time out of his Big Important Philosophical Ideas writing to send in a little review to Common Knowledge about my little book:

(Click on the image to read it.)

I particularly love the way he hedges his bets so thoroughly. Granted, there were other fictional Californian lesbian cops out there, but as fields go, that one is fairly small.

Still, thanks, RR!

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis,

or order a signed copy.

The Fans

February 6, 2023 by Laurie King 4 Comments

Part of the month-long celebration of A Grave Talent, the Edgar-winning first novel about SFPD Inspector Kate Martinelli that started my writing career.

In addition to actual, print reviews, my first book brought letters from people from all over who liked A Grave Talent enough to go to the trouble of writing me about it, buying a stamp, and finding an address that might reach me. Who knew?

They came in from all over, and not just the USofA.

They were written on embossed cards, postcards, scratch pads, or—high tech in 1993—faxes.

Most of them got the title right.

As for where to find me, well, that could be anywhere (though the publisher was a pretty sure bet.)

I got letters–FAN letters!– from actual booksellers!

Some letters were from people who seemed awfully…committed?

Nowadays, the vast majority of messages from readers comes electronically, in blog comments, social media posts, or just through the web site. But some still drop into my PO Box…and if you’ve written me there in the past couple of years, and I didn’t answer, I will, some day, I promise.

Especially if you get my titles right.

Read about A Grave Talent (with order links), see the other Martinellis, or

order a signed copy.

A Writer to Watch!

February 3, 2023 by Laurie King 2 Comments

Part of the month-long celebration of A Grave Talent, the Edgar-winning first novel about SFPD Inspector Kate Martinelli that started my writing career.

One of the surprises I found as a new author was that people not only read the book, but talked about it as if it mattered. Take reviews: who knew they were actually a thing that happened to…well, me? (You can click on these images to read them.)

Library Journal

A necessary purchase? A writer to watch–me?

Or from Booklist–comparing me to Ruth Rendell and P. D. James?

Booklist

Dame Phyllis also appears in a review from one of the reviewing gods in the ’90s crime field, Robin Winks–I kept him reading deep into the night! He found my story cause for rejoicing!–

Boston Globe

Of course, some were puzzling. Me, hard boiled?

San Francisco Chronicle

But I find this list truly fascinating, the other writers of my generation. Who knew I would first meet friends through a list in American Bookseller?

American Bookseller

Read about A Grave Talent (with excerpt, reading guide, and order links),

see the other Martinellis, or

order a signed copy.