DEADLY Pub Day!

Deadly Anniversaries comes out today! (And congratulations, Ellen, Richard, and Pat—you’ve won the hardback!) When the Great War began, in August of 1914, the British Army had about 250,000 regulars.  It took time to train new troops, and in the Kaiser’s first push, the Brits would have been hard put to hold fast, but within…

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Riviera Gold galley stage

Riviera Gold …comes a step closer to your hands: (The ARCs are here! The ARCs are here!) That’s right, the bound galleys of Riviera Gold dropped into my life while I was down in San Diego, and they’re really pretty. And have a lot of words in them, too! These copies are for my own…

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Sherlock Holmes, Charley Pankhurst, and Kamala Harris

On February 24, 2004, President George W. Bush told the country that he supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, warning that such unions threatened the most fundamental institution of civilization and defied millennia of human experience. On March 11, the California Supreme Court ordered San Francisco to stop issuing the licenses. On August, some…

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Happy Anniversary, Russell & Holmes

On this day 99 years ago, two friends of ours were wed. February 17, 1921 Marriage, to Sherlock Holmes?  He was the least marriageable man I knew.  On the other hand, we were already partners.  And having that piece of paper—that otherwise meaningless piece of paper—would undoubtedly ease such matters as border crossings, hotel rooms,…

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Sherlock Holmes and the Singer

Fifteen years ago, from Feb 12 to March 11, 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom opened the doors of City Hall to men and women who wanted to marry a person of their own sex. An everyday thing, marriage, and these were celebrated with an upsurge of joy and disbelief—yet the courts closed it down,…

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The Past in the Present

The threads running from past to the present have fascinated me since I was a grad student. Back then, my academic interest was on certain themes that could be traced from the pre-Israelite cultures and through the Hebrew Bible into the New Testament and beyond. Of course, now I write fiction, and there’s only so…

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You, Too, Can Become a Beekeeper’s Apprentice!

The next Russell & Holmes book (Riviera Gold) will be out June 9, five months from today!  So to mark the occasion, today the Community of the Like-Minded Reader is branching out into a new Facebook group we’re calling The Beekeeper’s Apprentices: It’ll be a free-ranging group, discussing and posting and gossiping about, well, pretty much…

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A Great Detective’s Birthday

Today is the generally accepted birth date of Sherlock Holmes. And I have no argument there–but the year? Was it 1854? That’s what most of the scholars assume.  Mystery Scene is hosting a virtual birthday party for Holmes’ 166th anniversary.  Well, not to argue with the experts (including my friend, the eminent Leslie S. Klinger) but…

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Write and rewrite

[Sorry all, the rewrite workshop is the 29th, not the 22nd. Brain fever…] Today I hit the (theoretical) 2/3 mark in the new Russell & Holmes novel!  Not that 201 pages is a novel–even 301 pages isn’t–but there’s a rhythm to a book that I get to know, and 200 is a good, solid mark.…

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Giving away Sherlock

My friend Les Klinger and I have edited (i.e., dragged many of our friends into writing stories for) four anthologies “inspired by the Sherlock Holmes canon.”  The stories have won awards, been nominated for others, and mostly have entertained a lot of people. The giveaway of these four volumes ends midnight, June 1, so make sure…

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