After flying cross-country to Dali, we’re eager for our “slow” train through Yunnan’s scenic mountains down to Kunming. But soon after arriving at the station, we are ordered to evacuate, due to “equipment problems.” Everyone, even support personnel, is driven out while police and security officers pour in. With no further explanation, we all stand around, trading rumors—many translated to me by … Read more
To continue my novel research, we drive down from Sri Lanka’s central highlands to Trincomalee Harbor, where the Americans and British had bases during WW2. No battleships or destroyers now, but a bevy of fishing vessels. In the distance are the ancient ramparts of a Portuguese fort that later passed from the Dutch to the … 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
“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
Funicular, Pest side of Danube, Budapest Last summer, my brother’s big birthday bash launched our travels through Europe By Train. Cara Black was struck by my post from Budapest and asked me to recount it at her blog, Murder Is Everywhere. We were traveling when I wrote it and Cara’s invitation gave me the chance … Read more
Imagine you lived in a 600-year-old kingdom, Austria-Hungary, which ruled a vast swath of central Europe, its own world of high culture, literature, art, and music. And then one day at the end of the Great War, you awoke to see your grand imperial city, Vienna, reduced to the capital of a small, powerless state. … Read more