Tonight I’m Scottsdale having an onstage conversation with Diana Gabaldon, about the story that pairs her up with Steve Berry–and her Jamie Fraser with his Cotton Malone. Time travel enters into it… The story is in Match Up, edited by Lee Child, and the event isn’t at the bookstore, so check the store’s page for details,…
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Lockdown (June 13!) is set in a middle school’s Career Day, when a spectrum of professionals are coming to talk about their work. The school’s entrance archway is a mural of tiles and splintered objects that make for a history of the school, and there’s a brief scene where the principal stands looking at it,…
Read MoreLockdown is a novel built on a foundation of six short stories that were published between 2001 (“Paleta Man”) and 2008 (“The House.”) Some of them appear almost unchanged in the novel, while others were divided, transmuted, changed in stress and mood. Two stories disappeared almost entirely, with mere vestiges in character. What I found…
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Last year a Chicago gent by the name of Fidencio Sanchez made the news by selling frozen juice bars—paletas—from his hand-pushed cart at the age of 89. His story, and the story of the Wisconsin restaurateur who thought Sr. Sanchez ought to be enjoying his retirement, is here. In the late nineties, my friend Lia…
Read MoreAs public libraries are in a city’s streets or the Guardian or New York Times are in paper, so is your local PBS station in the air, broadcasting enlightenment, entertainment, and even wisdom. In that spirit, tonight I will be joining the fundraising night of my own local PBS station, KQED in San Francisco, to collect pledges. If you…
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Some of the characters that come to life on the page just beg to return. One of those was Brother Erasmus, the enigmatic hero of the second Kate Martinelli novel, To Play the Fool. I couldn’t resist bringing Brother Erasmus back—and, briefly, Kate herself—in a 2008 short story for Mike Connelly (The Blue Religion) called…
Read MoreHey there friends! If ANY of you are in the neighborhood of Berkeley this weekend, you really ought to come down to the Book Fest–because I get to interview Walter Mosley!! Last year’s Grand Master award from MWA is just one of the jewels in this man’s crown, and I am so looking forward to talking…
Read MoreTakeback Tuesdays are my small way of speaking out for what I perceive as sanity in the current political state of affairs. But in recent months, I’ve been struck time and again by how my life as a writer and my life as a person walk the same path. When I wrote Lockdown, I had…
Read More(Pre-order at Bookshop Santa Cruz (signed), Poisoned Pen (signed), your local Indie, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.)
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Some years ago, I started writing a series of short stories that appeared in various anthologies. There was no apparent connection between them. They are set in New Guinea or in coastal California, in the 1980s and modern times. The characters are a young missionary confronting an enigmatic Brit; a man who sold ice creams…
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