A while ago (on May 13th, if you want to dig it out of the archives) I wrote about the hormone ocytocin, which stimulates the response of attachment, whether it’e2’80’99s between mothers and newborns, between mates, or one’e2’80’99s pet Rottweiler. Now they’e2’80’99ve found another use for it–and I’e2’80’99m waiting to see who grabs it first…

Somehow or other I’e2’80’99ve managed to get myself involved in two conferences in the next few weeks, added to an already full schedule of rewrite and tour. For some writers this wouldn’e2’80’99t be a problem, because they could just pull a folder containing a syllabus out of their files and work off of that, but…

The new MOMA in New York is an interesting place, although the building itself had less of a personality than I had anticipated, and I don’e2’80’99t know that the light is as perfect as I would ask for, were I one of the painters hung there. Monet’e2’80’99s lilies looked pretty muddy to me. Still, one…

Ahem. The New and Improved Laurie King site is now up, including two new pages: Mary Russell’s World, on which can be found All Things Russell, and a press page, still in progress but with two pretty cool documents related to LOCKED ROOMS Please let me know how you like the changes.

A theological musing to start your day. Are human beings ephemeral works of art? Installations, shall we say, along the lines of an Andy Goldsworthy daisy-chain of leaves drifting in a stream? Or is our soul the equivalent of a bronze sculpture, guaranteed to be around until the earth falls into the sun? One argument…

A recent temporary lapse in the demands of my time, due to sending a first draft off to my editor and having to wait for a reply, drove me to my shelves. Not to read, but to see if I could do something about the double waist-high stack of books waiting to be shelved, about…

I should have known you guys would get it right. Yes, the inserted material in THE BEEKEEPER’e2’80’99S APPRENTICE was the section where the senator’e2’80’99s daughter is kidnapped in Wales. The book, from the beginning, was unavoidably episodic, a series of linked short stories. How else to do a book about a young woman learning a…

There’e2’80’99s an interesting discussion over at a blog called Crime Fiction Dossier that is somewhat related to the last post here, and in fact, I was a little surprised that no one brought its topic up in a comment. Maybe my readers all think I’e2’80’99m so perfect that they don’e2’80’99t even think of me in…

You would think that after, God, is it sixteen novels? the seventeenth would go pretty much like the others. First draft in three or four months, a sort of expanded outline (since I am constitutionally incapable of doing an outline beforehand) that tells me what the book is supposed to look like; giving it to…

The San Francisco Chronicle recently informed me that the blood of autistic kids (autism being a diagnosis currently skyrocketing around the Bay Area) tends to show an inadequate level of immunity. The article I read made no philosophical reflection on that fact, made no attempt to point out a psychological parallel of the autistic person’e2’80’99s…