Laurie R. King

 What I love about England, or travel in general, is the unexpected. Just when you think all the world is the same, everyone eats McDonald’s burgers and drinks Starbuck’s lattes, you find that McDonald’s sells beanburgers in rational countries and that Italy, the home of the espresso machine, regards lattes after breakfast as rather…

Sorry, the Tana French book is In the Woods, not Into. And good as it is, it didn’t keep me from sleep for long last night. I don’t do jet lag, but there’s no denying that when one spends a night on the plane and then has the better part of a day to get…

The British Airways plane to London seemed to be fighting for every inch of progress against a head wind that tossed and played with the big jet, so that sleeping in the First Class Pod (you always suspected that LRK was a pod person, didn’t you?) was a bit like sharing a bed with a…

I take off today for 21 days in England and Scotland, where I have eight signings, a three-day conference, and research at opposite ends of the country (the top and bottom ends, not side-to-side.) Because I had a whole lot of miles accumulated (I use my British Airways credit card to pay for absolutely everything)…

My son was home, a civilian, for Memorial Day for the first time in years. His hair is now long enough to stand up when he gets out of bed—or rather, out of sleeping bag—and he no longer has to struggle to keep from modifying every noun with “fuckin’.” The annual Corralitos Padres Pancake Breakfast…

Friday the wind shifted so San Jose on the other side of the hill got our smoke, which was both a relief (we could breathe, and we could see where the smoke was coming from) and a curse (we could see where the smoke was coming from.) The smoke was coming from about a mile…

Still here, thanks for the good wishes. But a lesson reinforced: the news is after splash, not content. According to the television, my road is closed (much traffic for a closed road,) large parts of the population are evacuated (the fairgrounds Red Cross has twelve, although many horses,) and the flames are leaping at our…

Thursday 6:30—the first phone call, from tight-voiced friend passing on the freeway, saying there is smoke coming from smack on top of us. Take cup of tea outside, look around, assure her that it is fog, not smoke, where we are. 7:15—the spouse’s caregiver phones, to say there is smoke. Sigh, repeat the outside trip,…

Here’s what Laurie is doing today, friends–don’t you love the fire season? (My first rescue, after various two and four legged people? To make sure I have the current work on the memory stick in my purse….)

On May 23 we’re doing a TGIF giveaway of The Blue Religion, the new mystery anthology edited by Michael Connelly and published by the Mystery Writers of America. Included is “The Fool,” by yours truly, in which an old friend from the second Kate Martinelli novel makes his reappearance. We’ll give signed hardbacks to: A…