Diana Chambers Leaving Daisy to guard the home fires and Marco Polo to read my latest manuscript I set off to Raleigh, North Carolina for Bouchercon. “Go for the books, return for the love,” as blogger extraordinaire Kathy Boone Reel says. After a year of hard writing, I’m ready! Bouchercon is an annual convention of writers and … Read more
At our last book club, a friend mentioned the feral kitty she’d trapped, a little orange fellow about three months old. Two days later, he had moved in to our house. Thus ensued the Great Name Debate. We liked Mango for the color and associations with India and our favorite fruit. Then the Daughter decided … Read more
Way back when, an editor read one of my early efforts at international intrigue, and called me a young Helen MacInnes. By young, I now realize he was being kind for I resembled her only in an aspirational way. Over the years, I remained curious, but never got around to her work. When MWA-NorCal President … Read more
One of the first school assignments this time of year is “What I Did This Summer.” As a mom and sub, I’ve seen many of these essays and always enjoy them. So, motivated by the touch of fall in the air, I’ll try it too. A high point was Flower Piano held in San Francisco’s … Read more
Yesterday, we went to Flower Piano at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, a two-week event created and produced by Mauro ffortissimo and Dean Mermell of Sunset Piano http://sunsetpiano.com. 12 Pianos for 12 Days is brilliant performance art, gorgeous, fun, and accessible to all. Each piano is tucked in a different regional landscape of the Garden, available … Read more
Cherilyn Parsons is a visionary, pure and simple. The founder/director of the Bay Area Book Festival, she also knows how to execute. I offered to help a bit as a liaison to the mystery/crime fiction community, assisting noted author Cara Black. Later Cara asked me to moderate a panel. This would be a rather public and … Read more
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning— “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” These words move me deeply … Read more
There has been a meme going around Facebook, and I got tagged. You are supposed to share seven things about your writing life. At the time, I was actually too busy writing to think about it, but then I got curious. So this is what I came up with, pretty much on the fly. 1. … Read more
Who says it always rains in Portland? Left Coast Crime is a mystery/thriller conference of writers and fans, held every year in a town somewhere vaguely around the Left Coast, which tells you something right there. This year it was “Crimelandia” in Portland, a beautiful city rain or shine. And we got both. Even a … Read more
The Company She Keeps: Pomegranate Campari Cocktail (Sneak preview: To appear on Mystery Playground’s Drinks with Authors 3/20/15) Iran. About as far as you can get from Alert, North Carolina, but life takes you places. First stop Georgetown, DC, where Evelyn Walker learns from CIA officer Nick Daley that her smart techie boyfriend is a Soviet mole. … Read more