Exotic Settings

(Added note:for a few days, Dreaming Spies will be $2.99 on Nook and Kindle. in the US.) I always find it interesting to look back at a book I’ve written and reflect on what it turned out to be about, and how it fits into the rest of the series. While I’m actually writing the things,…

Read More

The Rewrite

Laurie King is not, as regular followers of this blog will know, a writer who outlines her books before she begins them.  Some people call this being a pantser (as in, by the seat of her…) but I refer to it as Organic, as opposed to the Organized outliner. (In our writing manual Crime and…

Read More

Hitting SEND

One of the most satisfying sounds of my earlier years was the rustle and thump of an envelope holding 300+ pages of manuscript as it dropped into the FedEx box.  Of course, now that contracts no longer specify paper copies, the physical thump has been replaced by a tap on an icon. But it’s still…

Read More

Tender is the Prose

As part of my general research on the next Russell & Holmes novel, I re-read the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel Tender is the Night. And frankly, I found it very hard going.  Meandering plot, puzzling metaphors, characters distorted to fit into the roles he needs for them. Start with his take on women.  The book…

Read More

Write and rewrite

[Sorry all, the rewrite workshop is the 29th, not the 22nd. Brain fever…] Today I hit the (theoretical) 2/3 mark in the new Russell & Holmes novel!  Not that 201 pages is a novel–even 301 pages isn’t–but there’s a rhythm to a book that I get to know, and 200 is a good, solid mark.…

Read More

Halfway to a Russell…

The last couple years of my writing life have been a bit like having my laptop set up in front of one of those machines that spits balls down the length of a cage at a person holding a bat. It’s not impossible, to dodge, hit, or field the missiles and toss them back while…

Read More

Beginnings: a Kate Martinelli story

Only five weeks after I’d hoped to finish it, I now have this: Beginnings A Kate Martinelli story by Laurie R. King Please note: story, not novel.  See the thickness of that stack of pages? This is a 115 page novella, not a full-sized book. I don’t have a pub date for it yet. But…

Read More

Writing retreat

So, day one of a very brief writing retreat: the good is that it’s gray and cool enough that I’m interested in staying indoors summoning words, at least until the sun comes out this afternoon. The bad is that the house doesn’t seem to have a coffeemaker.

Read More

A writer’s hideaway

I need to write. I have two short pieces and a lot of thinking to do, and it’s hard to put words on the screen or thoughts in order when life is its usual chaotic self. So I’ve come to the coast for a few days, to write, here: I’ll let you know how it…

Read More

Lockdown & New Guinea

One of the earliest sections written in what eventually became Lockdown was a story set in Papua New Guinea. I spent some months there in late 1970s, on my honeymoon (because yes, what else do academics do for a honeymoon than go visit a Stone Age community?) which makes for one of those illustrations that a…

Read More