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Search, and Re-search
Maybe the problem is, I need to embrace my inner A. S. Byatt. Her 2009 Booker Prize shortlisted novel Children’s Story is, in addition to being a gorgeously written book, a huge information dump of Life Among the Fabians at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Fairy tale publishing, politics, sexual mores, pedagogy, the chemistry…
Read MoreThe romance of research
An academic’s love letter to the stacks, to mark National Library Week. Now, I’m as appreciative as the next obsessive-compulsive recovering-academic of the vast riches of material becoming available online, thanks to all those Google scanners crouched in the basements of libraries around the world, madly feeding books through their machines. I download obscure tomes…
Read MoreTech is your friend
Okay, sometimes we just have fun playing with this stuff:
Read MoreTalking oneself into heroics
A study at Columbia and Harvard, reported in TIME, suggests that acting powerful makes a person powerful in fact. When tested before and after spending fifteen minutes in aggressive, macho, top-dog postures (the two on the left)— —the (male) reporter’s testosterone level doubled. Doubled! I can believe this. I am by nature an introverted, even…
Read MoreSorrow
Sad news out of Houston, where Murder by the Book, Busted Flush press, and the world’s crime fiction family have all lost a close friend and eternally creative advocate. David Thompson died yesterday at age 38. We mourn with his wife McKenna, and with his family and friends.
Read MoreTall ships, taller tales
For sheer happiness, there’s nothing like being out on the water. One of my brightest memories is of a catamaran trip taken years ago in Maui where, when we turned for home, the crew put on a song popular at the time: Alanis Morrisette singing “What if God Was One of Us?” It’s a song…
Read MoreEnd of the (US) Buzz
We’ve finished up with the 2010 online madness, Twenty Weeks of Buzz, with our grand finale at Poisoned Pen books in Scottsdale on Wednesday night. I have one final event, next Tuesday at Bookshop Santa Cruz, and then it’s clear sailing until July and the UK. I can write an entire book in seven weeks,…
Read MoreMonday Mutterings, week 7 of 20
Week seven of the Twenty Weeks of Buzz finds a new puzzle, deciphering a burst of free verse! And, if you send in your answers by the 14th you’ll be entered for next week’s drawing of a “Venomous Death” mini-broadside OR a genuine LRK t-shirt. Either will look fabulous on your wall. * Something I’m…
Read MoreWeek five of twenty
These “Twenty Weeks of Buzz” make for an interesting exploration of the Brave New World of Internet outreach. In some ways it feels as if I’m running my own corporation here: producing the product (ie, a book) then packaging and promoting it. In part, this sensation of do-it-yourself is because publishing houses run in seasons…
Read MoreLaurie R. King, BSI
To my utter astonishment and honor, I was invested into the Baker Street Irregulars tonight. Since the honor was accompanied by volumes of wine, champagne, and sundry unidentifiable liquids, and it is now one thirty in the morning, I may perhaps be forgiven in not offering a complete explanation of the above, other than to…
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