Miss 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 More

The Pirate flag flies!

I’ve been in my new house since August, with workmen crawling on the roof and under the floor most of that time, and I’ve had little to actually SHOW for it all since it’s mostly little things like strengthening the deck rail and making sure the toilet flushes.  Important, yes, but not much fun involved.…

Read More

New UK covers!

Pretty new covers from my UK publishers, for the paperbacks available the end of June.  (And thanks to all my friends at Facebook who tried to help me with converting to jpeg: it takes a village to raise a blog post!)

Read More

Laurie’s busy year: an annual report

2011 has been a busy year.  A ridiculously busy year.  A year so nuts, it has forced me to declare 2012 The Year of No.  Meaning that if you’re about to ask me to write a short story, participate in a seminar, or show up at your festival, I can only say that if you’re…

Read More

Pirate…Queens?

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day! For fear of giving away a spoiler to Pirate King, I will not go into details of where in the story talk turns to Pirate Queen.  (Which is not to be confused with the Broadway musical of that name.)  However, it is a tantalizing mention, and I thought…

Read More

St Louis, Denver, & New York (Times)

Since Thursday, I’ve been in St Louis for BoucherCon, the World Mystery Conference, along with 1600 or so other writers, editors, publicists, future writers, and just plain fans.  BoucherCon is a mixed conference, as much for fans as for people looking to learn something about the craft and the industry, and it’s often the only…

Read More

Lucky Number Seven

Thank you for everyone who bought a copy of Pirate King this week, and put it at #8 on the 9/15 IndieBound bestseller list and #7 on the 9/25 New York Times bestseller list.  I am walking on clouds.

Read More

Parrot King Winners

We had so many gorgeous submissions for the Parrot King contest that I couldn’t possibly choose just one. So without further ado, the co-winners are: Jenny Parks and… Shirley Bomgaars. Both will get a signed copy of Pirate King as their prize, and the two designs will be found on merchandise in the LRK Cafepress…

Read More

Pirate King: the illustrated edition

 Excerpts from Pirate King, with illustrations: Arabic architecture turns its back on the world, to create a cool and cloistered universe inside each set of walls.  I was standing in a tiled garden. The house rose on three sides, layers of galleried passages that gave both a sense of intimacy and a plenitude of fresh…

Read More