Laurie R. King

When I told my web lady that I had an extra box of Touchstone hardbacks, in case she wanted to do something with them, she jumped up and down (Vicki’s a bit excitable) and grabbed them all for a giveaway. Or rather, three giveaways: March 7, March 14, and (for UK addresses) March 21. The…

My friend Sue Smythe (“Trainer to the Stars!”) gave me an article that follows up to yesterday’s post on the WWI soldier’s letters home. For some reason, it had never penetrated my tiny brain that this country does not have a national WWI memorial. We have lots of small ones–my own tiny hamlet has a…

Harry Lamin was a 41 year-old lacemaker from Darbyshire when he was conscripted in the winter of 1917. His letters home are being posted, ninety years to the day after they were written, by his grandson. I haven’t had any luck with the subscription, which is a pity because having them arrive in the in-box…

Currently I’m reading my way through a large stack of printouts (many from Wikipedia, which is useless for real research but very helpful for the sort of general knowledge in which personal opinion is paramount.) I also have a stack of books from the library, with more arriving every day, which I’ll talk about later,…

“Mysterious California: Four Authors” is the film that explores how four California mystery writers build their fictional worlds around the physical and social landscape that is California. I’ve mentioned this film before, and the 40 minute dvd you can buy [http://calbook.org/bcb/mysterious.html ] in which Nadia Gordon, Nina Revoyr, Kirk Russell, and LRK talk about the…

Who knew that our Ms Russell reads the Guardian? Here’s the evidence: In his useful review of Jonathan Steele’s Defeat: Why They Lost Iraq (Review, February 16), Oliver Miles refers to Gertrude Bell as a pro-consul. Is this diplomatic-speak for spy? Bell was an archaeologist who worked for British intelligence in Baghdad from 1917 until…

I had a conversation with a writer friend recently (yes, an actual conversation, phoning her up and hearing a voice, not just letters appearing on a screen) with the usual mutual groans and moans of the published (covers, tours, deadlines) and sharing of titles we’d fallen in love with recently. Then she said something that…

I did one of the more interesting interviews of my writing career recently, a podcast episode with Shannon Clute for Black Mask. Where most interviews run over pretty similar ground, this one chewed over a lot of meaty material—politics, writing techniques, history—well, a lot of material. Let me know what you think.

As an alternative recognition of Valentine’s Day, I’m going to get sexist here. Some years ago I stopped going to male doctors. Nothing to do with male eyes and hands, you understand—ging through a couple of pregnancies tends to leave a woman with little bodily modesty—but it’s to do with what comes out of their…

Isabella Mori does a blog on psychotherapeutic issues such as PTSD called Change Therapy. I did an interview with her last month and missed when it was posted, but if you scuttle over there, it’s still up. Because she talks mostly about To Play the Fool, I don’t know that it counts as a part…