Yesterday, day four of the LOCKED ROOMS tour, was for my home town store. Capitola BookCafe is owned and run by four women who by this time I count as friends, although when they hosted my very first event back in 1993, I had only met one of them, our husbands being colleagues at the…

Kepler’s in Menlo Park is a bookstore with a fifty year history of social activism. It began during the days of the civil rights movement, kept stirring the pot throughout Vietnam, and survived more than one arson attack in its determination that a bookstore is not just selling carrots, but ideas. These days, Kepler’s might…

There are successful launches, where the bottle thumps against the prow and the boat slips into the water, and then there is what we did Wednesday night, when the champagne flowed like a fountain (literally like a fountain, at one point) and the vessel pirouettes as it dives for the sea. We had fun. A…

I just want to say (since I know that in the maelstrom of a tour, good manners are the first thing to vanish) THANK YOU, everyone, for your demonstrated enthusiasm. It’s the one thing that makes it all worth while. That, and the book sales… I’ll try to post as I vote, early and often.…

I’e2’80’99ve never been able to understand writers who don’e2’80’99t read the reviews of their work. Sure, it can be painful, like having strangers tell you that your child really isn’e2’80’99t as attractive, or talented, or even as nice as you thought. Sometimes you are possessed by the rage-fueled urge to pick up a phone and…

The days before a book comes out are always an interesting time in a writer’e2’80’99s life. Interesting, you understand, in the Chinese-curse sense, which is accompanied by a vague sensation of fluttering panic and a specific awareness of panic because The Book’e2’80’94and last year’e2’80’99s book, at that–is going to overwhelm life for far too long…

What did I learn in Phoenix? Temperatures that would slay a wrestler if there was so much as a touch of moisture in the air are remarkably bearable in the desert, particularly when all one has to do is pass through the out-of-doors between one air conditioned space and another. Not sure I’e2’80’99d want to…

This post is early in the day even for me, I know, but I’e2’80’99m off to the Poisoned Pen conference in Phoenix, where it’e2’80’99s going to be 108 degrees’e2’80’94the mythic bird is surely aflame and ready to rise from the ashes. I’e2’80’99ll write Sunday and let you know what, in the end, I decided to…

The last posting generated a response from Jennifer, who wants to know about a day tour of the city before the San Francisco launch party for LOCKED ROOMS next week. What fun! (Now, if I can only remember what the book is about and where they went in it’e2’80’a6) Before you set off, you might…

The life of a writer is nothing if not varied. This weekend I’e2’80’99ve been cutting up pieces of paper one half inch by two and five-sixteenths. This is under the assumption, which may prove mistaken, that the little heavily-accented lady on the phone was telling me the size of the papers she needs, and not…