Thursday??

Coming down towards the end of the away part of the LOCKED ROOMS tour, just Los Angeles to go, which I reach not by the traditional Californian methods of automobile or plane, but by (gasp) train. Only a New York publicist would think of mass transit to get a person from San Diego to LA. And to make matters even more peculiar, the train station is about two blocks from my hotel, so I shall set out on foot. Actually, they’d scheduled a car to pick me up and take me to the station, but I’m glad my escort Larry pointed out how close it was—I would have felt completely ridiculous to have solemnly climbed into the limo and driven for thirty seconds. Laurie King, rock star.

In San Diego, I’ve stayed at an unrelentingly hip hotel called, W. That’s all, just W. The sure sign of a hotel’s hipness is when the doormen wear wires coming out of their ears, like laid-back FBI agents. In the evening, semi-techno music throbs through the lobby bar, which is filled with Beautiful People (and being Southern California, they are young and beautiful indeed—I skulk through the perimeter in my Clarks clogs and my travel-wrinkled khakis, giving the elevator button many vigorous pushes.)

In fact, so hip is my room—waist-high window seat with bold throw pillows, a framed chalkboard hanging where an ordinary hotel would stick some boring and predictable painting, the buttons on the phone labelled with directions such as “Whatever/Whenever” (this gets you to the main desk), Rice (I think this is the restaurant), and the enigmatic “Wheels”—so hip, as I say, is my room, that as I was talking to my agent I had to wonder aloud if one was permitted a nap in such a setting. But we decided that, to the truly hip, the Power Nap was the Next Big Thing, to be proudly announced by a call to “Whatever/Whenever” asking for a wake-up call at its appropriate end. I tell you, Laurie King is riding the wave of the future.

One drawback of this degree of cool is that it’s not always clear when something is being cutting-edge and when it’s just not working. So the television was on when I came into the room (wasted electricity is the modern equivalent of splashing fountains in the houses of dry countries) but set to some (I thought) dancing random channel, and when I searched for something resembling a room service menu, the closest I came was a catalogue of Lifestyle Ingredients where one could purchase the bath products and sheets one found in the room. I turned off the television (although it did in fact have some problem making it dance, which I would find until later when Brian Williams was seen but through a glass darkly) and called the “W/W’ people downstairs to enquire humbly about mundane foodstuffs, which those of us who have not reached True Cool occasionally require. Turned out there was indeed meant to be a directory on my modular white desk, but when they brough tme one it was so cleverly packaged, the last people in the room must have taken it as a souvenir. Like an elongated deck of cards with heavy plastic covers and a grommet in the lower left corner, one investigates menus and the dry-cleaner’s numbers by splaying out the pages. Not a terribly successful design, since the grommet is too tight and the pages must get torn a lot, but damn, it’s hip.

See you in LA.

Well, at least it's the right state

Thanks to my fellow bloggers who turned out in Bellingham—and remember, Jacqui—mothers are designed to embarrass their daughters. It’s part of the job description.

I got back to the hotel before eleven, and up again this morning for a 7:15 pickup. I am writing this in the SeaTac airport waiting for my flight to be called, but it won’t be sent off until I get to my San Diego hotel, since my laptop is four years old and hasn’t that new-fangled wireless stuff wired in.

[Here in San Diego, delayed by a faulty window seal in the pilot’s compartment—yes, please, do fix it so the window stays in during the flight—and met by some of San Diego’s (yawn) perfect weather, I may even get a chance to have a nap this afternoon. Boy, the glamorous life of a writer, zzzzzz.]

Seattle was, as always, a pleasure, although not having any time to wander down to the waterfront was a pity. Maybe I’ll have to write another San Juan book, in order to have some time here (it’s all research!) But my escort Helen drove me competently up to Bellingham, through countryside that reminds me a bit of the road between London and Oxford, with water to one side. And the old town of Bellingham is very attractive (again, the wish to wander) and Village Books a great venue for an event or a day of coffee and reading. Drop in on your way to Canada.

I sent my editor some suggested titles for the Martinelli book, compiled on the flight from Houston, and she seemed to like some of them. They'll probably be just the titles that five people in the past ten years have used.

Hope to see some of you tonight in San Diego, and in the next two days in LA.

And--just got news that LOCKED ROOMS hit the New York Times list at number 17--thanks to all of you who put it there!

If it's Tuesday...

Well, I have to admit, that when I’m up and throwing clothes into a suitcase at 4:30 in the morning, posting a blog isn’t the first thing on my mind. You will forgive me?

The 7:30 am flight out of Houston arrived in Seattle a little late, thanks to the clever planning of the Houston controllers who decided that eighteen planes needed to leave the ground at the same time. After half an hour in a queue, we finally did so. And getting into Seattle late meant that my signing at Partners West, the very charming local book wholesalers, was what one of them pronounced more of a surgical strike than a drop-in signing—100 books in under five minutes, and every signature as legible as the first. Which admittedly isn’t saying much, but hey, they’re signed.

Then to the great new Seattle Mystery Books, in the same building as previously but now with space and a windowed corner, terribly posh. So great to see an independent actually building in size. Quite a few people dropped by the chat and get books signed, which is the format SMB uses instead of a formal event. Saves a whole lot of shoving moveable stacks around the store, that’s for sure.

When we finished there, I signed stock for Elliott Bay and the University Bookstore, two great local independents, and also the gorgeous Barnes and Noble in upscale University Village. A quick taping for KING-FM (who promise to let me know when it will air, I’ll pass that info on when I get it.) And beginning at 3:30 I’ve had two entire hours in my hotel, during which I washed my hair, gulped down a hanburger (lunch? dinner?), phoned my family, got my email, sent off six emails concerning the upcoming Corte Madera conference and the next book (including a no-doubt unsuitable list of titles sent to my editor, sigh), dried my hair (well, it’s in the process), ironed a shirt for the evening event, thought about lying down, and wrote this instead.

It is now 5:00 and I have to leave in half an hour for my evening event in Bellingham which, despite New York’s sense of geography, is actually more in Canada than in Seattle.

Tomorrow to San Diego, wheeee!

Yee haw, Houston

It’s summertime, and the livin’ is humid.

Greetings from Houston, the country’s fourth largest city (as the board on the way in from the airport cheerily informs a visitor—in lights, so it can be changed instantaneously with any shift in population.) A city with summer weather seeing rough matches in temperature and humidity, both in the upper nineties. A city with no zoning laws—that’s right, nothing whatsoever to stop your over-the-fence neighbor from knocking down his house and converting it into an all-night gas station. Ah, ain’t Western freedom great?

I have a morning in my hotel, so other than taping a radio conversation with a friendly and intelligent gentleman by the name of Kacey Kowars, to be aired next week (I’ll try to let you know when) I’m tucked into the manuscript of the next book. As I scribble, cross out, and note questions, I’m also looking for a title, since my editor wants to present the thing at the rapidly-approaching sales conference and it’s better to have a name than just the feeble, “Laurie King’s next book.” I had a great one, but of course it’s already taken—and by a book also by Random House, coming out at precisely the same time next year. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Someone asked about the history of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. The Fairmont was new in 1906, a modern steel-framed structure that survived the quake but not the fire. Large portions of it were salvageable, however, and the hotel dog was found in the wine cellar, shaken but alive. They rebuilt along with the rest of the city, and by 1924, it might never have had its history interrupted.

I’m doing a live radio interview this afternoon on the great NPR radio station KUHF, at 3:40—let me know if you hear it out there. I remember a few years ago in Denver I did brief piece on the noon television news, then went out for lunch with my escort. Walking through the restaurant lobby, a woman glanced at me and then did a startled double-take, blurting out, “I just saw you on tv!” The immediacy of modern life does take one aback.

And tonight I’m at Murder by the Book, no doubt will be great fun.

Tomorrow, Seattle!

Heading out

Yesterday, day four of the LOCKED ROOMS tour, was for my home town store. Capitola BookCafe is owned and run by four women who by this time I count as friends, although when they hosted my very first event back in 1993, I had only met one of them, our husbands being colleagues at the university.

By now, BookCafe is family. I've done events for every book but CALIFIA'S DAUGHTERS (and they'd have done one for that if I'd asked them) and almost always it's my launch event. My daughter has worked there, my mother and I lunch there, I've hunted down all kinds of books, tapes, and odds-and-ends there. The women of BookCafe are what make independent booksellers so great.

Unfortunately, for this event I was tired, and couldn't summon the bounce I like to give an audience. It was a perfectly adequate event, people laughed and listened and asked good questions, but those who tell me I ought to go into stand-up comedy wouldn't have said that after yesterday's talk.

However, I've had a solid seven and a half hours sleep since then, so today's in San Mateo ought to go well. And I can sleep on the plane.

See you in Houston!

Day three

Kepler's in Menlo Park is a bookstore with a fifty year history of social activism. It began during the days of the civil rights movement, kept stirring the pot throughout Vietnam, and survived more than one arson attack in its determination that a bookstore is not just selling carrots, but ideas.

These days, Kepler's might be mistaken for just another successful independent with a great location and a super cafe next door. A browser doesn't notice any predominance of activist tomes, because it doesn't really have one. Just great books, and a recognition that even in novels, even in entertaining mystery novels, one can find transformative ideas.

It is an honor to be asked to do an event for Kepler's, and great fun as well--they sure know how to pull in a crowd!

And by the way, to Becca, my daughter posted a comment on yesterday's blog about LSE. I should add, in case she hasn't, that rational thought should not be expected of someone just coming off the extended rite of passage that is the British Exam. A dimmed room, soothing music, and mother's cooking may restore her.

It's a launch

There are successful launches, where the bottle thumps against the prow and the boat slips into the water, and then there is what we did Wednesday night, when the champagne flowed like a fountain (literally like a fountain, at one point) and the vessel pirouettes as it dives for the sea.

We had fun. A couple hundred of us assembled from far and wide (three from Oregon, a pair from Boston, Denver, Phoenix, and where else?) with maybe a dozen great Twenties costumes (speak up, Jennifer Ice and friend) which were rewarded by LOCKED ROOMS t-shirts or copies of last year’s hardback THE GAME. Book Passage provided the aforementioned champagne, as well as trays of great snacks which, if they weren’t accurate for the Twenties, were all the better for it (both Ritz crackers and Velveeta cheese were developed in the decade, but since the Ferry Building is a place dedicated to a celebration of great local foods, we thought maybe Ritz with Velveeta wouldn’t hit quite the right note…)

And the Rolls—it was, well, it was blue. As a number of the Mary Russell fortune cookies said (eighty-five of them, to be precise) It was the colour of a cloudless sky in June. Jon Hart brought the car over from the Blackhawk, along with Dick Griffiths (who gave me much of the technical information I used in the book) and a number of other docents, and it went without a hitch. Oh, aside from a little starting problem at the end, but really, Jon was just helping us work up our appetites by a laying-on of hands and a nice long push of this noble azure lady (called Roller Bleu, or RB, and if you’re ever in the East Bay, go to Danville and see her, and sigh.)

The event itself, when I read a snippet and talked about Hammett, Holmes, and oh yes, Mary Russell, seemed to meet with general approval. Certainly it was the kind of audience that laughs happily even when you haven’t actually made a joke--I must remember to have champagne served more often at my events, everyone seemed to think I was terribly witty. They even stayed to buy books, always gratifying, and a relief for the bookstore, who had gone to such great effort.

We did not, in the end, dance any Charlestons, partly because we were all having such a good time we couldn’t hear the music playing. However, nobody complained.

I hope to put some photos up on the web site in a few days, if my daughter can sort out some kind of digital magic. I’ll let you know when I’ve done so.

I will also quickly mention another event, Thursday night, at Books Inc in Alameda. This is a new bookstore, shiny and filled with enthusiastic staff, and the people who showed up were a great bunch. Thanks to them all.

And thanks to you, reading your LOCKED ROOMS with such relish.

A thank-you note

I just want to say (since I know that in the maelstrom of a tour, good manners are the first thing to vanish) THANK YOU, everyone, for your demonstrated enthusiasm. It's the one thing that makes it all worth while.

That, and the book sales...

I'll try to post as I vote, early and often.

Laurie

On reviews

I’ve never been able to understand writers who don’t read the reviews of their work. Sure, it can be painful, like having strangers tell you that your child really isn’t as attractive, or talented, or even as nice as you thought. Sometimes you are possessed by the rage-fueled urge to pick up a phone and track the reviewer down and point out that although they thought they were being oh, so clever to point out a glaring flaw in your plot if they’d actually done the job they were getting paid to do, for Christ sake, and kept their eyes open as far as page 67 they would have found that…..

However, you don’t pick up the phone, not to call the newspaper anyway, although you might call a friend or fellow writer and bitch mightily.

But I do learn things from reviews. Not necessarily from the critical remarks of one reviewer, even when it’s the kind of review that sears itself into your brain (“a long, keen disappointment” is the phrase that will be found on my own frontal lobes at autopsy) but when two or more point out the same problem, I have to assume it’s there. That just because the readers who love me haven’t written to complain, doesn’t mean there isn’t cause for complaint.

Having said that, I get mostly positive reviews, so reading them is not a painful experience. It is hugely boosting to an ego suffering under the slings and arrows of a recalcitrant plot to open the San Jose Mercury News and read that for the last book, anyway, one David Beck thinks that “no one, not even Conan Doyle, has ever done a better Holmes than King does.” What’s not to love about David Beck?

But what I truly adore about reviews such as this one in the Merc is the discovery of similar minds. Here is a person who has not only read the Doyle stories, but has read Dashiell Hammett as well, and thoroughly enough to know that I’ve played on one of Hammett’s short stories in LOCKED ROOMS (the scene with the Chinese feng shui master—the reference, for those of you whose interest I’ve now caught, being the wincingly named “Dead Yellow Women.”) The scene, and particularly the dialogue, is one of those touches I put into books knowing that no one but me knows it’s there, that maybe one reader in a thousand—maybe in ten thousand—will immediately zero in on the reference and smile to himself at it.

To find such a spirit in the excellent Mr. Beck is a prize discovery. Who wouldn’t read reviews?

Buckling on armor

The days before a book comes out are always an interesting time in a writer’s life. Interesting, you understand, in the Chinese-curse sense, which is accompanied by a vague sensation of fluttering panic and a specific awareness of panic because The Book—and last year’s book, at that--is going to overwhelm life for far too long and the current book is going to disappear completely at just the wrong time, the vulnerable time, never to recover…

Beginning Wednesday, I have a straight run of eleven days of events, in the Bay Area (who hours away by car, every day) and away (Houston, Seattle/Bellingham, San Diego, LA). I then have the 3rd and 4th of July off, when I get to spend some time with my daughter who has just survived MA exams at LSE in London, and then I have another run of six days. When I raise my head again in the middle of July, she will be gone and the book will be overdue.

A few years ago I was in Amsterdam doing a day’s series of media interviews, which is what Europeans prefer to this business of bookstore talks and signings, and by chance a friend who even then was a bestselling writer was there at the same hotel. Our handlers arranged for us all to have lunch together, on a dusty square across from large heaps of builder’s rubble (luxury is my middle name.) And once we’d caught up on family stuff, I said that I hadn’t thought he toured much, far less in Europe. He told me that he’d seen the numbers of his book sales (admittedly good to begin with) flatten out for the past three years while he’d refrained from touring. And with this one, for which he’d gone on the road again, numbers had gone up.

It’s a very odd thing, because even a long tour isn’t literally going to sell enough books to make a difference between, say, fifteenth place on the NYT list and fifth. An author can only reach so many readers in a day, and most of those, you would think, were going to buy the book anyway. So why do touring authors tend to do better than non-touring authors?

It seems to have something to do with energy. Even at the beginning of a book’s sales life, buzz builds, and excitement is contagious—from editor to house to store to reader. Without interest at one of those stages, it’s very unlikely to pass on to the next. Committing to a tour illustrates that the house is putting energy behind their author, in a way that a full-page ad in the New Yorker, even though it probably costs more money, somehow doesn’t do on its own.

So I am setting out for a spell as a road warrior, mounting my trusty ten year-old Land Rover and fighting the crowded highways to Berkeley and Corte Madera, getting home at midnight to an indignant cat and snoring humans, and setting off the next day to do it again.

I hope anyone within the potential sound of my voice stirs themselves to fight their own freeways and come to one of the events. Because having readers show up at an event is the thing that makes it all worthwhile.

See you in… wherever. And I hope you like LOCKED ROOMS.

Overdue fines

What did I learn in Phoenix?

Temperatures that would slay a wrestler if there was so much as a touch of moisture in the air are remarkably bearable in the desert, particularly when all one has to do is pass through the out-of-doors between one air conditioned space and another. Not sure I’d want to mow the lawn in it.

The only people nicer than the participants at conferences are the people who run the things.

I got the description of pig-sticking right on, in THE GAME. Yep, there was a man there who had actually filmed a traditional pig sticking, and according to him, the red haze that covers Russell’s spectacles happened to his camera lens. Laurie King: channeling the Raj.

Speaking of THE GAME, I thought you’d also like to know that a fellow in Oakland recently returned a book to the library that his aunt had taken out in the summer of 1927, forgotten to return, and through the years, nobody thought to ask if the library due-card in the back was current. Until Mr Jim Pavon was clearing out some cartons of books and came across it. The library has agreed to waive the late fees of $550. The book?

Kipling’s KIM.

Rising Phoenix

This post is early in the day even for me, I know, but I’m off to the Poisoned Pen conference in Phoenix, where it’s going to be 108 degrees—the mythic bird is surely aflame and ready to rise from the ashes. I’ll write Sunday and let you know what, in the end, I decided to talk about.

I’ve drawn 15 names for copies of LOCKED ROOMS, you’re being notified today. And if you didn’t win, you still have a chance at the audio tapes next month.

Responses:
There was a question about the length of a book talk. The party is an hour, then at seven we’ll all listen to Laurie natter on about the book and ask questions for a while, and at eight we’ll sign books and slink away into the night. Certainly, by 8:30 we should let Book Passage put away their chairs.

And the answers to the June 10th blog are:
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
The Game
O Jerusalem
I don’t know
Locked Rooms

Walking with Mary

The last posting generated a response from Jennifer, who wants to know about a day tour of the city before the San Francisco launch party for LOCKED ROOMS next week. What fun!

(Now, if I can only remember what the book is about and where they went in it…)

Before you set off, you might like to print off the “San Francisco Then and Now” page from my web site’s Press Page and take it along for a comparison of the Cliff House, the Ferry Building, and Lafayette Square.

Chinatown is most definitely a part of the book, and be sure you look for the pagoda that was the phone exchange in the Twenties, because the poor operators there were rather startled by the events of the book’s ending scene. And while in The City, Russell and Holmes stay at the St Francis, whose afternoon tea I can recommend, and Russell walks from Union Square to Chinatown in a bit of a daze.

Her walk that evening would be a bit of a stretch for most of us, but in case you’re feeling ambitious (or want to cheat and drive it) she goes down Grant all the way to the Embarcadero, follows the water past Fisherman’s Wharf and the Aquatic Park and then turns south on, probably, Gough or Octavia up into Pacific Heights to her house.

The Cliff House is a place you should definitely visit, and the best way to begin here is to park near the Sutro gardens at the top of the hill and walk through them until you are staring down at the road, the sea, Ocean Beach, and the (new) Cliff House. This is another fabulous place to eat, with the waves, rocks, and sea lions just as Russell and Holmes see them in the book, although the version of the place that shows on the cover is the earlier building, which survived the earthquake (one wonders how) only to burn a year later. For those who object to the anachronism, please see page 67 of the book, and don’t write me any more letters to point out the mistake.

Dashiell Hammett’s home at this time was in the apartment house at 620 Eddy, and he often ate at John’s Grill, on Ellis near Stockton. There’s no name to the grill where Holmes meets him in the book, but it could be John’s.

And Russell’s home? Unfortunately, she gives no address. But for an idea of her neighborhood, drive into Pacific Heights and park along the perimeter of Lafayette Square. From the eastern side of the Square, you can see what burned during the 1906 fire, described by her father’s manuscript in the book. And for a lovely, beautifully preserved private home similar to what hers must have looked like, visit the Haas-Lilienthal House on Franklin Street near Washington. It’s even open on Wednesdays, from noon to three.

At the time, and especially during Russell’s childhood, the cable car lines were considerably more extensive. Visit the exhilarating cable car museum for an idea of what stops Russell would have made. It’s on Washington and Mason, eight blocks east of the Haas-Lilienthal house, three west of Chinatown’s main street. In fact, you could walk the length of Washington from Lafayette Square to the Embarcadero, about a mile and a half, and you’d end up at the Ferry Building, just in time for a restorative glass of champagne and a Mary Russell fortune cookie.

Many of these places have web sites, to give you background, and the St Francis has rooms very like those of the 1920s that look out over Union Square.

And be sure you tell me at the party what you ended up seeing.

words in the wind

The life of a writer is nothing if not varied. This weekend I’ve been cutting up pieces of paper one half inch by two and five-sixteenths. This is under the assumption, which may prove mistaken, that the little heavily-accented lady on the phone was telling me the size of the papers she needs, and not some Taoist key code to the universe (“Two, five, sixteen” she confided briskly.) I’m having Mary Russell fortune cookies made for my launch party in San Francisco, and the Chinatown bakery needs the slips of paper precisely that size to fold inside the cookies.

So first I find a whole lot of really short quotes from the various books including LOCKED ROOMS—“I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes”; “By God, pig-sticking was indeed a game of games”; “’We need a Baedeker’s guide, Holmes,’” I whispered”—and typed them up so their divisions came to precisely half an inch (this is not an easy thing to do), then retyped them so their ends wouldn’t be chopped off at 2 5/16 inches. Printed them off, went over them with the ruler, then retyped the lot when reality and the screen of my laptop weren’t quite in agreement.

It took me a couple of hours (God I hope my editor isn’t reading this, I’m supposed to be immersed in the rewrite) to feed the pages, no more than three at a time, through the high-tech paper-slicer (no more guillotine styles out there, they finally decided they were a little dangerous around kids. Even the local print shop has gone to these zip-kind, which really don’t work half as well.) Trim the side, then the other side, the top, then zip away at one-half inch increments all the way down, finding that a heavy clip at the bottom end helps keep the pages from shifting that critical sixteenth of an inch. Throwing out a lot of little quote-slips (“Prolonged stress can take the oddest outlets”, “Holmes’ upper lip was nothing if not stiff”) when their upper halves vanished under the blade. The wind coming up unnoticed and the cat maneuvering the door open so the slips (those that aren’t stubbornly welded together into clumps by the cutting of the zip-blade), sensing the closing in of cookie sides, make a sudden burst for freedom across the floor of my study…

Now, for those of you who play the game, I’ll tell you in a day or two where those quotes come from. Anyone want to venture a guess? Come on, most of them are easy. And it’ll get you in training for the New Yorker contest later this month.


Responses:
Ah, Jess, that’s a joke, right, about the RSS feed? You know how utterly clueless old LRK is and think, with an evil gleam in your eyes, let’s just throw a technical question at her, then you stand back and giggle maniacally. Well, my dear, I DO know how to use the HELP key on Blogger. Although I admit that the language at the other end of it is pretty thick. Anyway, as far as I can tell, yes, my site is set up to use syndication feeds. Anyone out there using a syndication feed? Or are my settings deceiving me, and you poor folk have to keep peeping in the door to see if I’ve left a message for you?

And, no, I am not touring in Washington, DC this year, or England, or anywhere that isn’t on the Events page of the site. Although I may be in UK this September, and will no doubt stop in various bookstores to sign and chat. If I set up any events there, they’ll be on the events page, so check there from time to time.

raging hormones

A while ago (on May 13th, if you want to dig it out of the archives) I wrote about the hormone ocytocin, which stimulates the response of attachment, whether it’s between mothers and newborns, between mates, or one’s pet Rottweiler.

Now they’ve found another use for it--and I’m waiting to see who grabs it first for their thriller. Because in an experiment in Zurich, 178 male students in their twenties played an investment game, involving how much to trust a “trustee” broker with. After a shot of oxytocin nasal spray, just like is used to stimulate the let-down reflex in nursing mothers, 45 percent of the lads invested the highest amount of money they were permitted, compared to 21 percent investing the lowest amount. Without the hormone, the stats were directly reversed toward the conservative, with 21 percent investing the highest amount, and 45 percent the lowest.

And because these good Swiss scientists wanted to be sure it was trust they were looking at and not a general increase in risk-taking or something (as if a mothering hormone would involve a biological thrust towards risky living--although, come to think of it...) they ran the experiment again, making the trustee-entity a computer program this time. And with a neutral machine in charge, the investors put out roughly the same amount of money, whether they’d received the oxytocin or not.

I suppose the point of this is, don’t go see your shady broker of used-car dealer just after you’ve nursed your baby, moms. And if someone asks you to try this new nasal spray and then suggests that they’d be a really super person to give power of attorney, just listen to the little alarm bells behind those raging hormones, and remember: You heard it here first.

Do what I do, not what I say

Somehow or other I’ve managed to get myself involved in two conferences in the next few weeks, added to an already full schedule of rewrite and tour. For some writers this wouldn’t be a problem, because they could just pull a folder containing a syllabus out of their files and work off of that, but I don’t teach enough to have any number of files. In fact, I don’t teach much at all. And having never taken a class in writing, I don’t even know the basic theory and language of the desk side of the classroom.

All I can do is talk about my own experience, the areas that have challenged me (challenge as in a large uniformed man with a dog, both of them snarling and bellowing in my face) and how I’ve managed to work my way out of tough places.

The two conferences, if you’re interested, are for the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Phoenix (Nice thing about it, it’s a dry heat.) and, in July, for the annual mystery conference held by Book Passage in Corte Madera (just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.)

For both of them, I’ll be talking mostly about character, since what I write is driven far more by an exploration of character than it is by the plot. (Which may explain why I backed out of teaching about plot. In a cold sweat of terror.) Plot is what I do to keep my people grounded, not my area of intense fascination.

But how do you teach how to write effectively about character? Just because I do something, doesn’t mean I know how it gets done. I try to console myself with the idea that the reverse is true as well, that those who know the theory of how to do something don’t generally manage actually to do it—hence all those books about Writing the Bestselling Thriller! by a person who can’t get on the bestseller list of their local home town, population 4700. But the consolation doesn’t work much when it comes to putting together a class for people who have paid good money to hear me dither.

So I guess what they’ll get is my mistakes. Since I do most of my real work in the rewrites, what seems to be most effective for the purpose of pedagogy (although these are grown adults, not children) is to show then-and-now. I’ll give a handout with a couple of scenes as I wrote them raw, the first time around, and then the same scenes as they appeared in the book itself. Or maybe I’ll use the book I’m working on now, the still-unnamed Martinelli, although that will still be a work very much in progress and if anyone says something rude about it I may not be able to pick it up again.

When I’ve done this before, using material from THE GAME, the before versions were very short, the after much longer. I have to be careful to point out that my first drafts are more or less outline, and that not everyone should automatically double or triple a section in their rewrite—I don’t want to be responsible for a dozen unsaleable 1200 page first novels floating around out there.

What works for you? If you’ve taken a class on writing, from a writer, what did you find most helpful?

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And a couple of notes about your comments. No, I am not in New York, I am home working. I think the BEA excitement just got me thinking about the city, and thus MOMA. And for those of you, then or in the future, who pointed out errors in the revisions of the site, a thanks. I'd caught some of them before, but it never hurts to say it twice.

Art appreciation for girls

The new MOMA in New York is an interesting place, although the building itself had less of a personality than I had anticipated, and I don’t know that the light is as perfect as I would ask for, were I one of the painters hung there. Monet’s lilies looked pretty muddy to me.

Still, one finds a collection of friends there as no place else, and the advantage of new surroundings is that even the familiar faces have a startlingly new look to them.

I learn things at MOMA. On one of my first trips there, I learned that, despite my longstanding mistrust of the purely abstract, Jackson Pollack was indeed an artist, that it is possible to create a complex emotional reality by dribbling and throwing paint at the canvas: these are not things your three-year old can do.

This visit added a dimension to my experience of the man Pollack, and it was, I am certain, due to a deliberate and subtle choice on the part of whoever was in charge of hanging those paintings.

The new building has a lot of ins and outs to it, including a bridge that induces severe dizziness in those of us who dislike heights. One crosses the bridge into the next section, and there are some Krasners.

Lee Krasner was a painter working the same time and methods as Pollack. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember her as the woman to whom Pollack, by way of seduction, says something along the line of, You’re pretty good for a girl painter. This being the attitude of the era, of course, although my daughter bristled furiously at the movie’s attitudes, she herself being pretty good for a girl anything.

Krasner and Pollack were together for a long time, and she was always in his shadow. It was a big shadow, but had she been a man, she might have succeeded in making a bigger one of her own.

But here at MOMA, Krasner has a secret friend. Because as one wanders through the room in which her paintings hang, admiring the squiggles and splashes, one then walks into the bigger room containing (if containing is the word) the Pollacks. Big, grabby paintings, absolutely assured, and yes, damn it, masterpieces.

However, as one turns to head for the next room, the eyes might spare a brief glance through the wide doorway at the previous room. That room is bisected by a freestanding section of display wall, which fills the viewpoint from the Pollack room. On that display wall, facing the Pollack room, is a Krasner painting. On the wall of the Pollack room, to the left of the wide doorway and facing in the same direction, is a Pollack, nearly identical in size and style to the Krasner. The eyes flick from the nearer to the farther, from his to hers, and one begins to smile. Particularly if one is a woman.

Because Krasner’s is the better painting. And someone in the museum wanted us to see that.