To everything there is a season, the Good Book tells us, and this week has been my season for housekeeping. Consider: January to June, first draft and first rewrite. A month of touring and conferences, followed by two months of intensive rewrite. Finally in September handing THE ART OF DETECTION over to my editor (to…

26 September I seem to have had some problems getting Sunday’s posting to link to Left Coast Crime. If your link didn’t work, you can paste in www.leftcoastcrime2006.com. This is your chance to meet all those English writers you’ve admired from a distance for so many years. Cornwall seems a very long way from here.…

Just so you know how very cutting edge this whole blog thing is, I am currently writing this in the kitchen of Adrian Muller, who is sitting five feet away, reading the blogs I posted last night. Hi, Adrian! The Sunday newspapers are a great source of perverse amusement. Not so much the Kate Moss…

Yesterday in St Just I came across a small store called Just Cornwall that specializes, as one might imagine, in material from Cornwall. Tapes to learn the Cornish language, necklaces made by local craftsmen, pots and T-shirts and Cornish fudge and coffee cups with the Cornish flag and of course books galore. I am now…

Today we did the other half of the Heligan story, the Eden Project. I won’e2’80’99t bother to explain, since I’e2’80’99m sure they have a superb web site (which my guide book tells me is at www.edenproject.com), but I can only say that at the end of our time there, my daughter and I agreed that…

Back in 1997 or so I wrote a book called (in the UK) THE BIRTH OF A NEW MOON or (in the US) A DARKER PLACE. During the time I was putting it together, I happened to be at Barbara Peters’e2’80’99 Poisoned Pen Books in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Barbara handed me a copy of a…

I suggest you look at the web site for a place in Cornwall called Burgh Island to see where I spent Monday night. Strictly speaking, this is an island, if only at high tide, which today came conveniently toward evening as my daughter and I sat drinking our pints of Devon cider (12 percent alcohol)…

I am now launching off the map, and will post when my machine comes with range of a signal. Probably when I return to Heathrow on October 1, alas. I will, however, keep a journal of events, even if it can’e2’80’99t be posted regularly, so do not give up on me entirely. Before we start,…

My daughter tells me that it was Arsenal, not Manchester United, playing soccer football the other night. As I was just off a plane, it might have been the Forty Niners for all I could tell. Apologies to both teams. (But I still don’t know who Tun is.) Thursday in London, it rained. Not exactly…

Well, kids, as I figured, with Laurie in charge of it, my new laptop began to sulk and wouldn’e2’80’99t connect to the world its little tabs told me was out there. All those electronic waves, and nobody to link up with’e2’80’a6 When last I wrote, dear diary, I was flinging things in the direction of…