I adore librarians. I throw myself at their feet, I put myself in their hands, I embrace them fully, I adore librarians. Thank you, Andrea and Beth and Pat and Linda and Eva and Ann and all the others for choosing THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE for the 2006 Spokane is Reading project. Thank you for the…

Spokane is reading…Laurie King! Or at least, they’re all hunkering down to read THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE. If you live in eastern Washington state, I hope you know this already, and will come to one of the two October 19 events, sponsored by one great library system and Auntie’s Books (and no, yours truly did not…

For any of you in the SF Bay area who are looking for something truly thrilling to do next Tuesday night, October 17, come join Cara Black, Jim Calder, Nadia Gordon, David Corbett and yrs truly for a mystery seminar at the incomparable 826 Valencia writing project in San Francisco. You can sign up at…

I recently changed my villain’s name. Computers make this blessedly easy, although in one of my early books, back in the days before words were processed, I had to go through and stick that white paper tape in a hundred spots after I decided that the name was just wrong. Not, in those days, a…

Every so often, government takes the lead. This happened a few years ago when a law was passed requiring communities to curtail what went into their dumps and landfills, cutting back by so many percent over the next few years. By having the issue pushed down their throats, communities were forced to embrace recycling in…

The Sunday of BoucherCon is a tail-end kind of a time, with panels going on but a distinctly autumnal feeling in the air. I rudely invited myself into a car headed for the airport in Chicago at a more useful time than the one I had originally intended to share with Les Klinger, and heartlessly…

BoucherCon Saturday began with…a Farmer’s Market! That’s right, the entire Square around the capitol building was lined with stalls selling the most mouth-watering selection of fresh vegetables and fruits, cheese, honey, all sized bags of popcorn (“Oh yes,” one man told us, when we remarked on his 25 pound bag of popcorn, “this is the…

By Friday night at BoucherCon, Choices Must Be Made: Do I go for all the parties, all the time, and the hell with the morrow, or do I realize that if I don’t get to bed before midnight my Saturday attempts at coherence will be severely compromised? And since I have not only a panel…

Thursday I managed the only quiet period I’m going to get here in Madison, a couple of hours in the hotel reading my notes for the panels and ironing the shirts I dutifully pack in a no-iron packing thingie that always need ironing when I arrive. Which is what I get for not liking polyester,…

British prescriptions will often be labeled by the pharmacist, “The mixture, as before” and that is how travel has become. Whatever new variation on the mixture they come up with, it doesn’t effect the final result: Travel is a pain. The latest ridiculous variation is that they have two uniformed security people with gloves and…