Laurie R. King

Award-winning, bestselling, thought-provoking mysteries

LAURIE'S NEWSLETTER

BoucherCon rocks.

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Albany is a very odd town, with nice buildings and handsome streets, but strangely lacking in population–so much so there are rumors that this is the initial site of the apocalypse. But despite an equally odd venue, the people are as fab as ever

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and they feed me chocolate

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in various forms, some of them made by my very cool readers and carried across many state lines to reach a gathering of LRKers:

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(Please note the bones, and the Eiffel Tower, and if your screen is very good, my name Laurie Roi.) Oh yes, there are panels, some of which have me and some not, and there are thousands of books and tens of thousands of book discussions, and many glasses of substances washed down in many bars, and then BoucherCon will be over for another year.
And we all will be happy, full of chocolate and beer, and dragging suitcases stuffed full of new books.
Next year: Long Beach!

Malic-ious Laurie!

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Malice Domestic is an annual conference held in Bethesda, MD, dedicated to the traditional mystery, gentle on its surface but roiling with deadly currents beneath.  And guess who’s just been named next year’s guest of honor?

jan burke
laura lippman
aaron elkins
Guest of Honor:
Laurie R. King
Toastmaster:
Laura Lippman
Lifetime Achievement:
Aaron Elkins
[space[
dick francis
peter robinson
cindy silberblatt
Malice Remembers:
Dick Francis
International Guest of Honor:
Peter Robinson
Fan Guest of Honor:
Cindy Silberblatt

And just look at the list of former GOHs Malice has had in its 25 years, here.  Wow!

This is a fan conference, which means it’s set up for having a good time, and for being able to schmooze around with your favorite authors. Of course, it’s also about writing, and books, and…mysteries.

May 3 next year.  Be there or miss a really great time.

Life in Baker Street

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I’m in New York, for the annual festivities of the Baker Street Irregulars, that wild-and-crazy bunch of Sherlockians (it began as a drinking society, after all) that inexplicably welcomed me to its (mostly) manly bosom a couple of years ago.

Tonight begins with a distinguished speaker’s lecture, to get things off in the properly academic mood. Before which people have a drink, and after which everyone rushes off to dinner reservations with friends. Friday begins bright and early with the Gillette luncheon(drinks beforehand) run by ASH, the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, which is dubbed the “distaff”side of the Holmes world. Frankly, I’ve always wanted to be an adventuress…

Then Friday night, the yearly bean feast that is the BSI dinner, in black tie (No, I do not wear an evening gown: writers are granted the Bohemian exemption.) which makes for an impressive group photo (another annual rite.)

(A thought: perhaps my refusal to don a gown relates to my lack of Adventuress status? One must admit, Adventuresses and kid evening gloves seem to go {ahem} hand in hand…)

Saturday, if you are about in Manhattan and have some dollars in your pocket, you could come to the Roosevelt Hotel (45 E 45th) from 9 to noon and buy a copy of A Study in Sherlock, having it signed by me, Les Klinger, Sj Rozan, Jan Burke, and Neil Gaiman. Also copies of The Grand Game (Les & Laurie) and various other books.

Then we BSI wander off for–you guessed it–a final drinks party.
I may need a few days at a spa, when this is over, sipping wheatgrass tea.

St Louis, Denver, & New York (Times)

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Since Thursday, I’ve been in St Louis for BoucherCon, the World Mystery Conference, along with 1600 or so other writers, editors, publicists, future writers, and just plain fans.  BoucherCon is a mixed conference, as much for fans as for people looking to learn something about the craft and the industry, and it’s often the only time of the year I see those friends that I met at…yes, BoucherCon.

This means that any thought I may have had of catching up on the sleep lost during the book tour went down the tubes the first night, when a party kept me awake until nearly midnight and a breakfast got me up before 6.  And so it goes.

But it’s worth it, every minute.  I’ve had a chance to catch up with a bunch of friends, had a very productive conversation with my editor and Les Klinger about A Study in Sherlock—and about a second volume for 2012, Another Study in Sherlock.  I also had a one-on-one breakfast conversation with said editor about everything under the publishing sun, from sick puppies (okay, that was a little peripheral to the publishing world) to ebooks to my unusually strong (considering the market, which is generally down dramatically from 2010) hardback numbers.  Sometime between coffee and the last crumbs, she came up with an entirely new project she thought would be good for me to do, which I promised to think about—after I get home!

And I got to meet new people.  Colin Cotterill, with whom I’ve worked over the past year since he’s in the anthology, and who is a funny and thoughtful panelist.  I met a quartet of authors over dinner: Carla Buckley, Chevy Stevens, Stephanie Pintoff, and Amanda Kyle Williams, a new writer whom I was glad to chat with a second time in the bar last night.  Good people, all.  Another new author, Taylor Stevens (no relation to Chevy, I don’t think) who wrote a thriller called The Informationist that’s getting a whole lot of buzz here, and which I’ve ordered already from my bookstore.  Then, dinner with Les, two good Sherlockian friends, and writers SJ Rozan, Dana Cameron, and Harley Jane Kozak.  I bought champagne for all, to celebrate being

#7 on the NYT list,

and Dana went on to win the short story Anthony award at today’s awards banquet, so a good time was had by all.

I’m up in my room at the moment, but I’ll return to the lobby in a while to participate in the gauntlet of leaving authors.  I don’t leave until the morning, so this afternoon I plan on spending with the manuscript of the next book, half of which I dutifully brought with me, and haven’t so much as glanced at it.

Or maybe I’ll have a long nap…

Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and to celebrate I’ll be at Denver’s Tattered Cover.  If you live in that part of the world, please dust off your three-corner hat and swashbuckle yourself down to the bookstore to join the party—I’ll be drawing a name for the Grand Prize, someone who has donated to the 826 Valencia page and who will be allowed to name a character (human, canine, or feline) in the next book.  If you haven’t donated yet, or if you’d like to increase your chances of winning (there are thirty other prizes, too!) the page is here.  Good luck—and tomorrow, change your Facebook language to “pirate”, give a parrot a biscuit, and don’t forget to Arrrgh!

The conference as tool

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Wednesdays here on Mutterings are about the writing process, from nouns to e-readers.  Today, since I’m in Santa Fe for Left Coast Crime, I thought I’d talk about the conference as part of a writer’s life.

We’re a solitary species, we writers.  Except for a few of us who work in tandem, and for those writers of television scripts who have evolved as a many-headed creature, most of us spend unnaturally long portions of our year occupying our own heads, blinking like moles at any interruptions from small dependent children or hose-wielding fire men.

The occasional conference helps to keep a balance.  At a conference, we solitary writers assume an entirely different plumage, and form a community: cries of friendship when we spot people we haven’t seen since the last conference, bonhomie in the bar until all hours, the sensation that this is a ship and we’re all pulling together, not one small and leaky rowboat on an open sea.

And we learn things.  One of the joys of a conference such as Left Coast Crime or BoucherCon (the two I try to make most years) is that the addition of actual ideas into a mix of friendly relaxation can ignite the most unexpected inspiration.  I might hear a thriller writer talk about character, and suddenly realize that this is precisely the problem I’ve been having with the work in progress.  I chat with a writer friend over coffee, and learn of a new (to me) method of research.  I listen to a panel of fresh new writers reflecting on the excitement of writing, and begin to feel excited myself.

But most of all I step back.  I am currently 70 pages into the next book, a point at which I invariably begin to wonder what the hell the book is about.  Going off to Santa Fe to eat many chili-based food products and schmooze with other writers is a frustration—I’d really rather be home tearing through 3000 words a day, as I did over the weekend; coming away like this makes me worry that I’m going to lose it all—but an enforced break can also be very useful, precisely because it makes me lose it all.  I’ll get back to work Tuesday and have to read everything I’d written to that point, but rather than despair because I’ve forgotten what I was going to do next, I’ll still be bubbling with the stimulation from the conference, and see all kinds of things I hadn’t known was there.

So think of me here in Santa Fe, and think, too, about joining the fun at BoucherCon, in St. Louis.  Buy me a beer and we’ll talk writing!

BoucherCon 2010 (4)

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I always begin BoucherCon with the best of intentions when it comes to panels.  I search the schedule before I make lunch dates and appointments, because I really do enjoy listening to my fellow writers speak, and after 23 years of writing, I still have a lot to learn.  So I go through the preliminary schedule and circle a bunch based either on the panelists or the topic.  And then I make my own appointments.  And then the Con begins, and any plans I had go out the window.

This year was worse than most, of course, since I had guest of honor things on top of seeing editors and agents and what-have-you.  But still, I managed to get to a few panels and interviews, and I enjoyed them.

Mostly, however, BoucherCon turns into 3 hour lunches in which projects suddenly come to existence, or conversations in elevators that open a door, or, well, this:

Because in the end, BoucherCon is all about the people.

BoucherCon 2010 (3)

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It takes a village to put on a BoucherCon.

One of the early conversations we had about BoucherCon concerned coffee, specifically, the need for copious quantities of good coffee.  And tea.  Since two of the three author guests of honor are published by Random House, that house generously stepped up and offered to sponsor the hospitality room.  Big expense, and a huge difference to the cheerfulness of the attendees.  And really—when you’re reading about Jack Reacher, Kate Martinelli, or Mary Russell, isn’t it all about the coffee?

Then Random House went a step further, and surprised me with official Laurie King napkins for people to rest their banana bread and chocolate chip cookies on and dab their lips with:

My very own napkin.

And speaking of tea: artist Heather Neill, a long-time Friend here (she did Russellscape #3,) generously offered to let us use one of her gorgeous images to decorate the hospitality room.  Heather does an entire series around the theme of a teacup, and it was only appropriate that her fabulous “Writer’s Blocks” welcomed hungry and thirsty attendees to the hospitality room:

The hospitality room was staffed by Sisters in Crime (the NorCal branch)—an organization that everyone should join if only to support their superbly informative and thoughtful blog.  They brought the food (cinnamon-raisin soft pretzels: best thing ever, although we could’ve used a basin for hand-washing afterwards…) and kept everyone at the Con well caffeinated, well met, and well refreshed.  Like this:

(Thanks to Alice, Gigi, and Zoe for the photos—one thing a GoH rarely manages to do is take photographs of everything she wants to capture.  Yet another example of it taking a village, to keep a crime writer together.)

BoucherCon 2010 (2)

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It takes a village to run a BoucherCon.

Rae Helmsworth, blessed be her name, asked me (back when BCon-San Francisco was but a twinkle in her mischief-filled eye) if I would consider being the US guest of honor.  I had to think about it, for about a thousandth of a second, before I said yes.  YES!

I’m a third generation native of the area, and a number of my books are set in and around San Francisco.  So it seemed appropriate to do something to welcome 1500 people to “my” city.  What about a tour of some kind, built around the books?

Out of such innocence was the LRK/SF tour born.

Fortunately, I have a personal assistant who is not only extremely clever and imaginative, but works for a pittance.  (That she happens to be my daughter helps explain the latter.)  She forced herself to re-read all the Martinellis, Locked Rooms, and Califia’s Daughters, then took a pair of electronic scissors to the books.

There are a lot of quotes.  Those went to shape the Really Complete LRK Tour, here.

Recorded Books, who does the audio versions of all my novels, generously agreed to let us snip portions of their recordings for the voices of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, so I only had to read Kate Martinelli’s stories.

Cable Car Tours–

helped us pare the tour down to something in the neighborhood of two hours (sorry, those of you who were still out at the Cliff House at noon!) so that people could set off into one of those fabulous San Francisco autumnal days (photos by “Strawberry Curls”–can you guess which she is?) :

And sometime soon, we’ll have that recording on the web site, so you, too, can take a LRK tour of San Francisco.

(Although I can’t do anything about the company you’re in when you take it, or the weather outside your virtual tour bus…)

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BoucherCon is underway! We started with a meeting over coffee and fruit with a dozen or so Friends of Laurie, went on to a quick round of handshakes at the newbies’ breakfast (those new to BoucherCon’, not new to LRK) and then got waylaid by the popping up of friends–Val McDermid and Meg Gardiner and Hank Ryan and Rhys Bowen and and and…
And so it continues, until Sunday night.
Birth of a Green Man is still up and free, here, all the days of BoucherCon!

https://laurierking.com/2010/10/5624/

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