Cheery words from Laurie

In case some of you missed this, we’re (we being the earth) due a cycle of huge solar storms beginning perhaps the end of this year, certainly by the end of 2007, just to make our joys complete. The sunspot cycle is projected to peak in 2012, at which time airplanes will be diverted from the more exposed zones to keep their instruments from frying and to keep from exposing any pregnant women on board to fetus-scrambling radiation. Global communications could fry (and if we’re dependent on electronics now, multiply it times—what, ten?—in another six years) and satellites drop from the sky (remember Skylab in 1979? Solar storms then, too.) Power grids will fail, especially in the northeast (where the ground holds more electricity-conducting metals.)

Add this to the increasing ravages of global warming, with the melting of the south polar ice, and we’ll all be huddling together in half the land mass, with no lights, waiting for the next hurricane.

You get the feeling we’re being asked to leave?

Monday's Fourth

And this week's winner of the ARC for THE ART OF DETECTION is Jim in Sacramento. Congratulations, Jim--and we have four ARCs left, to give away the next four Mondays, so don't give up yet. But if your name isn't on the mailing list, you can't win one, unless you sign up here or by going to LaurieRKing.com and clicking on the newsletter tab of the menu bar. And if any of you think you are still having problems,send a note to Maggie at webmaven@laurierking.com and ask her to check into it.

Weird brain

TOUCHSTONE is galloping alone, wrapping me up in it, so that even on days then I have other jobs to do, I get 2000 words in on it. Sometimes writing is like stumbling through a dark attic with a failing flashlight, hard on the shins and inspiring no confidence in the eventual outcome. Then the path ahead opens out and you see that it’s not an attic, it’s an open track, gently curving over easy hills, and someone’s even been so nice as to surface it for you. You break into an easy run and feel like you’re flying.

Of course, often the apparently easy path takes a jog sideways and you’re back in the attic again, cursing and stumbling through the accumulated crap and dust.

But the singleness of mind required to keep the path in focus has its drawbacks. Extensions are taken on filing taxes, debris accumulates first in corners, then on surfaces you need to use all the time. The other day I found I’d driven ten miles without fastening my seat belt, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before in my entire driving life.

Then there’s the peculiar brain things. At this stage I’m often plagued by ditties. Over and over again, a few bars of some really idiotic song moves into my brain and takes it over, as if it’s just got to have something to chew over during the hours I take its word-producing machinery away from it. Every time I wake up at night, the ditty is there. I peel carrots, the ditty visits; fold laundry, I’m clicking my teeth in time to it. At the moment, it’s a stupid country western song I’ve heard perhaps three times in my life about how you should life like you were dying, but it dropped out of the radio the other day (Note to self: never listen to the radio when a first draft is going this way. Or television.) and has moved into my distracted brain like that bug Ricardo Montalban drops into Checkov’s ear in the Star Trek movie, which still grosses my daughter out (Hi, sweetie.)

The only thing I can to is counteract it with another song—Sweet Betsy from Pike works well, something about the relentless beat—and finish the damn book. It’ll go away as soon as I am a multi-dimensional person again.


In the meantime, between March 13th and 18th, the excellent Lynn Viehl over at Paperback Writer discussed ten questions about the publishing business. Any of you interested in the nuts and bolts of being a writer should take a look. Or maybe print it out and pin it to the pocket of your shirt for regular reference.

Just don’t set it to music and send me the results, okay?

Happy campers all around

And the Monday winner for this week in March is Kathleen in Philadelphia—Congratulations! Both Greg in NJ and Philip in SF have their winners’ copies of the bound galley of THE ART OF DETECTION, and are no doubt head-down in them as I write this. Have fun, you three, knowing what happens before anyone. Well, maybe not absolutely anyone, but before lots of people.

We’ll do another drawing next Monday, and the Monday following, and on until May when the hardbacks will be starting to peep their little heads above the ground and nobody is interested in an advanced reading copy any more. If you’re not on the LRK newsletter mailing list, sign up by going to LaurieRKing.com and clicking on the menu bar, or zip over here.

(The problems with newsletter links that you’ve commented about I’ve been forwarding to Maggie, who does the wizardry for me but who’s been swanning around in Europe for Left Coast Crime. She’ll be back this week and will check links. Someone asked about the long autobiography, too, but I can’t see any problems there—its link is on the site’s The Author page, beneath the main essay. Anyone else having problems with the web site, links not working or anything?)


Weekends often prove to be fruitful, work-wise, without much email or any business calls, and this weekend was productive indeed: just short of 8000 words over the two days, that’s about 30 pages (this section is heavy on the dialogue) and it brings me to the beginning of the end, at 230 pages of first draft. The rewrite will bring this to 300 or so, since my firsts are little more than an expanded outline with usable sections. And considering it’s a first and therefore by definition clumsy, stupid, unbalanced, and basically unreadable, this is good, really good. I’m a happy camper this Monday.

The ups and downs

The other day when I was out shopping, a couple of strangers and I had one of those little riffs of socializing that make trips to the store about more than just bags of groceries. It started when the guy at the register asked me how I was doing, and I glanced outside and said that since the sun was shining at the moment I was doing just fine (we’ve had a lot of rain lately) and the woman next to me chimed in with how she knew what I meant, her mood swung up and down. So the man and I tossed around for a minute how this kind of weather turns us all a little bipolar (Santa Cruz being the kind of town where the guy at the register knows the term ‘bipolar’ instead of the old ‘manic-depressive’.) and how when the sun comes out we’re all bouncing and chipper and then Eeyore crawls back when the grey washes across the blue, and then he gave me my change and I wheeled my bags out to the car and drove home feeling that I’m living in the right place, even if the weather could use a hell of a lot of improving. (Did I mention that it’s been raining, a lot, of late?)

And it occurred to me that the same process is going on with the writing. One day I’ll pound out 3500 words in no time at all, I’ll walk away feeling strong and satisfied and knowing just what’s going on next, and still have the energy to go do something useful like file a stack of papers that’s been waiting forever, all the while knowing that I’ll have the first draft out of the way by the end of the month and it’s genius and my existence on this earth is justified. And then the next morning I sit down and it’s all gone blank. The sequence is gone, the events I’d planned don’t make any sense now, the motivation for the situation is shaky and insubstantial, and I sigh and plod out words, checking the count every couple of paragraphs until I come justifiably close to 1500 to quit for the day.

I’m not much of a drinker, but I can sure understand why a lot of writers self-medicate.

Winner the second; and, penguin Papas

And the second winner in The Great THE ART OF DETECTION Advance Reading Copy Giveaway is, appropriately enough (honest, this is a random drawing!) Philip in San Francisco. Appropriate because TAoD’s victim goes by that name—please don’t let this put you off, Phil.

We’re drawing from the mailing list of the LRK newsletter, and we have six more weeks and six more books to go. If you’re not on the list and want a stab at this, sign up at LaurieRKing.com before next Monday’s drawing.



And from my newspaper the other day:

In Missouri, a children’s book about two male penguins who adopt and raise an abandoned egg has been moved form the kids’ section of the library to the nonfiction department (after the complaints of two parents), so it would not “blindside” readers.

And lest you think this is some queer (both senses) storyteller’s imagination at work, it is based on an event in the late ‘90s at NY’s Central Park Zoo. Adoptions aren’t unusual in the penguin world. It’s only homo sapiens who get all hot about it.

Come on, librarians. Can’t you suggest your patrons just get a life?

LRK's high-wire act

For those of you who don't--or didn't--get the newsletter earlier this month, I'll let you know some of what the comments posts were talking about, in this excerpt:


And now, your attention, please, as I introduce the death-defying trick we call Writer’s Improv, in which Laurie R. King will walk the literary high-wire.

I have been named Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year for 2006 (Pause for tumultuous ovation, whistles, and the throwing of confetti and streamers. Thank you.) This is a great honor, considering the richness of artistry in my home county—previous winners include poet Adrienne Rich, photographer Frans Lanting, dancer Tandy Beale, and writer James Houston.

The sponsor, the county’s Parks and Recreation department, has asked me to take part in their celebration of the book on May 20, 2006, and in the process of thinking about what I could do by way of artist’s performance, I decided that the most appropriate demonstration of a writer’s craft is not to talk about writing, but to do it.

So, in the morning (Pacific Standard time) of May 20, Muse willing and the electronic gods cooperating, I will be shut into a room with my trusty laptop and, with the words in full view of the book-loving public, set off to write a short story.

It’s, well, Writer’s Improv. The people in charge of the event will collect an assortment of prompts, around which I will shape the story. On the morning of the event, I’ll be given a selection of those prompts. I’ll let the ideas rattle around my brain for a few hours, then sit down in a quiet room at the school where the event is being held, plug into various cords and wires, and write. It will be a first draft, therefore pretty rough, and I probably won’t come anywhere near to finishing the story then and there (unless it turns out to be flash fiction) but the process will go onto a screen in the venue—AND online.

You read that right: Thanks to the miracle of modern technology (which I’m NOT in charge of, thank goodness) those of you interested in the writing process can log in and watch an actual, live and living writer plug away at her craft for a couple of hours. When I eventually finish the story, I’ll post that online, too—there may be a small download fee going to one of the organizations involved in the event—AND if the finished story turns out any good, I’ll be giving it to Dana Stabenow for her upcoming short story collection, Powers of Detection II. The before and after versions will remain posted on my web site, as a teaching tool and to cause more sensible writers to shake their heads in wonder.

Insane? Sure.

Fun? I hope so—this is all in the planning stage and something may come along and knock it off the air, but I’m going to try. Stay tuned for more information, and put May 20th on your calendar now.

Arrest 'em all

Sarah Weinman's blog has a sobering reminder that being a writer can be putting your neck right out there. Even in what is supposed to be a member country of the EU.

Drum roll

And the first ARC giveaway of THE ART OF DETECTION goes to:
Greg, of Runnemede, NJ.

Greg, if you didn't get an email from me, get in touch somehow and let me know you're there, okay?

Congratulations, and good luck to you all for the next seven weeks of giveaways.

MM(4)

Q: I've been thinking, (shocking, isn't it?) will we ever know what the wedding of Russell and Holmes was like? There seem to me a lot of interesting theories floating about.

And a related question: This may be a subject you choose not to comment on, but have you read any of the Mary Russell fan fiction? I'm specifically thinking of some of the stories from the Hive. (I discovered it one night when I was longing for new things to read, but had no desire to leave the house for the bookstore - it saved the day!) How is it to see other people writing episodes for characters you created?

A: No, I never read any of the fan fiction on places like the Hive, mostly because I’m afraid I’ll read something there and, five years down the line, incorporate it into a book thinking it was mine originally. I rarely read Holmes pastiches for the same reason, in case I confuse ACD’s stories with those of more modern authors.

Besides, if I stumble across a variation on Sherlockian erotica involving that infamous wedding night, the indignation will no doubt fester in my mind and come out some nasty way, like writer’s block. Best not to look.

Q: E.N.Harrison wants to know, Could you tell us the precise nature of Russell's professional position at Oxford after A Monstrous Regiment of Women? I know that in later books she describes herself as doing some "informal tutoring" which sounds like she advertises her services to students struggling with the material. Except that doesn't sound like something Russell would much enjoy---do you mean that she conducts actual tutorials under the aegis of her college? Does she have a fellowship or some other official position within the college? Does she have her M.A., and if so when did she acquire it? Is she at Somerville or Lady Margaret Hall? Or even Shrewsbury? Erm. Not to deluge you, or anything, but any comments you would care to address on Russell's academic career would be valued.

A: I’ve deliberately left Russell’s academic career vague, for a number of reasons. First, to Americans the whole system is terribly confusing, and I didn’t want to have to work in an explanation of how a Master of Arts degree is converted after a certain number of years to a D.Phil, or how the colleges and the university itself are related, or the gradual stages in which women’s degrees reached equity with those of men, or the meaning of the different kinds of academic gowns, or….

You get the picture. This is one of those areas in which I find it’s better to write as if speaking from one expert to another, leaving the details aside. This not only impresses a lot of people with how knowledgeable you are in so many areas, but glosses over the possibility that you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

Basically, I think you could assume that Russell’s position in regards to her college is largely informal, since it would be highly impractical for her to have any kind of position there that required her regular presence. I mean, look at the academic year of 1923-1924: She meets Dorothy Ruskin in August (LETTER OF MARY) and is involved with that, then is dragged off to Dartmoor (THE MOOR), followed immediately by the pounding of Ali’s fist on their door (JUSTICE HALL) which takes us to the end of the year. Then Mycroft summons them to London and shoots them off to play THE GAME in India, followed by San Francisco (LOCKED ROOMS) and heaven only knows what will befall them on their way home.

Would you want a tutor so perennially distracted as this?

(And people ask me if I’m not afraid Holmes will get too old for the series. With five books over nine months, I think it more likely the poor fellow will collapse of exhaustion.)

Q: The Iris lady asks, Do you ever have trouble creating a villain? I have a terrible time demonizing even a fictional character. Makes writing a murder mystery a tad difficult. I always keep seeing the villain as a multi-dimensional person who has been influenced by his background and experience, and turning him into a sympathetic character. Go figure.

A: So what’s wrong with having a multi-dimensional person who is basically sympathetic as a villain? Better than a two-dimensional stick figure with a sign around his neck saying, Bad Guy—Hate Me.

Q: Melissa says, Hi, I'm living on Orcas Island in the San Juans. I actually moved out here after reading "Folly", how could I not? I was wondering if you were planning on setting any other books out here?

A: I’m in conversation with my editor about what comes after TOUCHSTONE, and we’re leaning (sorry, Russell fans, but I will have spent the better part of four years in the Twenties) towards another San Juan book, and bringing the existing stories together into a San Juan cycle. It’s going to mean a trip up there this fall to research, oh, the arduous tasks we writers are forced to undertake!

Q: Clever Ruth asks, Am I correct in thinking that yourself and Val McDermid share Mutt, the dog who appears in Night Work? I read Hostage to Murder recently and noticed the mention that Mutton had been left behind in America with some friends in the bay area, then appearing in Night Work as Roz and Maj's dog?

A: Very good, you win today’s Sharp Eyes prize. Yes, I adopted Mutton in NIGHT WORK, and then Val and I had to puzzle over how old the dog was before I allowed it to wander through THE ART OF DETECTION. There are a number of these tongue-in-cheek incursions out there, friends tipping hats to friends.

March Madness (3)

Q: Jennifer from Minneapolis says, I love being able to hand your books off to my younger sister, knowing she can have a female hero to relate to. As a biblical archaeology student, I've loved the theological tidbits in your stories. I was wondering how you originally became interested in writing about Sherlock Holmes. Were you a Doyle fan as a child?

A: No, when I started writing THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE I probably hadn’t read one of the Conan Doyle stories since high school. Holmes is so much a part of our common mind, I felt I knew him. Of course, as soon as I picked up the books (about two days after writing, “I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes…”) I quickly realized that the Holmes I knew was but a caricature, and that only as I read the stories themselves did I see the depth of passion and—utterly unexpected and a delight to find—the humo(u)r.

Q: From Laura in GA--Is there a setting (locale?) that you really want try to use in a story sometime?

A: Japan. Hence the beginning of LOCKED ROOMS.

Q: Liz (whose spelling suggests she may be one of my English readers) asks, I have a writing question which is, I fear, slightly obscure. But I often wonder how a professional writer, with editorial committments, deadlines and so forth, recognises that a story is non-viable. That there's no point in telling it, or that it's too ambitious/grim/doesn't fit with the existing style of the series, etc. I particularly wanted to ask you because I have a vague recollection that you once said you rarely leave anything unfinished. Have you simply developed an instinct for recognising ideas that won't work out in the long run, or do you have enough self-confidence to hammer the thing out? Like I said, terribly obscure. I'm in the early throes of research for an embryonic novel, which is probably causing masochistic musings on Books That Don't Work.

A: I don’t know about obscure, but it’s a very interesting question. I’d have to say that I don’t know if there’s any idea which, in and of itself, is an invalid starting place for a story. Certainly there are ideas that won’t work for certain purposes—grim serial killer books in a cozy series about a bed-and-breakfast Miss Marple, for example, might make for some great black humor but probably wouldn’t make it past one’s editor.

Great stories can come from the most unlikely beginnings. I’m currently reading Michael Chabon’s manuscript of a detective story set in the Jewish state of Alaska, which was one of the proposed bits of the globe offered to survivors of WWII Germany (along with Uganda, which would have made the middle of Africa a far different place right now…) Sounds unlikely, works great.

The real problem is, where do you draw the line with the oddity? The book I’m working on, TOUCHSTONE, has a main character with extraordinary powers, which since it’s not science fiction, has to be very carefully handled. And another book getting a lot of buzz at the moment, Robert Ferrigno’s PRAYERS OF THE ASSASSIN, seems to work for a lot of people, but not for me, as I just couldn’t swallow the basic premise of the US as a Muslim state. Similarly, I couldn’t handle the premise of Margaret Atwood’s A HANDMAID’S TALE, where an entire society of women meekly permit themselves to be put into boxes that would make a 16th century noblewoman chafe.

If you are beginning with an odd premise, then that is where you need to put your attentions—at making it not only plausible, but inevitable, from word one.

Q: Maer asks, Laurie, I love your Mary Russell books and have read The Beekeeper's Apprentice almost to shreds. There are layers and layers in that one book, and plenty of details to get lost in. One detail I come back to time and again is the location of Holmes' cottage. Did you base its location on the Doyle Canon, or decide on another location based on your own travels in England?

A: There are several references in the ACD stories (The Lion’s Mane, among others) to the fact that Holmes has retired to raise bees in Sussex, and a few details of location are given. Many and many a year ago I wandered that part of Sussex between Eastborne and Seaford, near Beachy Head, which is about as close as Doyle gets to nailing it down. Lovely area, especially in spring when the lambs are being born. I should mention, there's a picture of the area, from an old Ordnance Survey map, on the book page of THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE on the LRK web site.

Q: demendtedslinkybrain wants to know, Have you read Lois McMaster Bujold's Vokosigan Saga? I see that you read Michael Connelly and Robert Crais (whose new book "The Two Minute Rule" is next on my tbr pile. I know this is a dumb question, because they ARE fictional characters (aren't they?) but how is Mycroft?

A: I haven't read her books, mostly because anything labeled "saga" is a little daunting, considering how many unread books I have now. And as for brother Mycroft, I don’t know any more than Russell does at the end of LOCKED ROOMS. But surely if he’d taken a turn for the worse, Mrs. Hudson would have wired the news.

Let’s see if we can finish up these questions tomorrow. Are any of you still reading?

March madness (2)

Q: “Cousin Robin” writes--Seeing that photo of you and your husband with the Dalai Lama has me wondering whether you have been influenced by the intrepid explorer, pioneer feminist and theologian - Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969). This extraordinary woman might have been a role model for Mary Russell. Disguised as a beggar, with a revolver concealed beneath her rags, at the age of 54 she became the first European woman to enter the forbidden holy city of Lhasa in Tibet; this through bandit-ridden forests in the dead of winter. She was a world authority on Tibetan Buddhist tantric rites and was ordinated as the first woman Lama. Lawrence Durrell admired her and she was an accomplished singer who went on to live until she was nearly 101 years old. I do hope Mary Russell enjoys similar longevity!

A: Certainly Russell would benefit from similar press. These days when authors who fudge the facts are pilloried on national television for sport, we forget that it ain’t nothing new. Not that David-Neel didn’t do absolutely everything she claims, I’m not saying that. But it sure didn’t lose anything in the telling.

Q: Maxine in Annapolis asks, Do you ever get to the "right" coast to the Baltimore/DC/Annapolis area? It seems as if you're more well known on the West Coast, but I keep encouraging my friends to read your books. Thanks for many hours of entertainment.

A: The June tour is in the planning stage now, but I’m afraid it looks like I won’t be very far east yet again. I don’t know why authors get pigeonholed to tour in certain areas, it’s very peculiar. In part it depends simply on whether or not bookstores have put in a request to have me, and if so, whether the proposed event would be solid enough to justify the expense. (Publishers do not make money off tours; they make their calculations on how much bang they get for their buck.)

All I can suggest is, if you have a local store who is salivating madly to have LRK do an event for them, have them talk to their Random House rep or write my publicist, Sharon Propson (spropson@randomhouse.com) asking to be considered.

Q: Jacqui M askes, Will there ever be a film version of The Beekeeper's Apprentice?

A: A perennial question. All I can say is, there’s nothing firm in the works at the moment.

Q: Would a person be able to download your next book directly onto an IPOD? Are any of your books available for downloads?

A: The excellent people at Recorded Books tell me that their audio editions of a number of the books are available for download onto I-Pods via the website Audible.com. Let me know if that doesn’t work.

Q: And another technical question, from Marianne McA, about signing up for the newsletter list--Help! It says I'm already on the list - which I thought I was - but I don't get the newsletters. Can anyone tell me where I've gone wrong?

A: My newsletter maven Maggie answers, "Without their email address, it's very difficult to figure out what's wrong. There could be a number of reasons:

a) they didn't sign up or they signed up using an old email address
b) they didn't confirm their sign-up (ours is a double opt-in system)
c) they have spam blockers

B & C require somewhat lengthy explanations (many variables) if either is the case.

I’d suggest that they try to resubscribe. If they’re already on it, they'll get a message saying they're already subscribed. If they are subscribed and didn't get it, they probably have spam blockers, either personal or on their ISP's. Absolutely nothing we can do about that."

You want to check on those things and see how it goes? Maybe I should post the newsletters on the web site as well.


I have forty-three hundred and twelve tasks for the morning, so I’m going to cut this off now and return tomorrow.

Happy Friday.

March madness (1)

Okay, friends, I’ve got enough questions here to keep me busy for the next month or two, let’s save any others for April, okay? Thanks.


Q: Karen asks: Now for a nit-picky question from a former academic: In MRW, Mary is abducted on her way to Oxford to present a paper with Duncan. Does she ever get to present it?

A: Alas, the rigors of academic life in Oxford are so unforgiving. However, I am sure that in the months between MONSTROUS REGIMENT and A LETTER OF MARY she’d have found time to reschedule. What else might she have been doing, after all?

Q: From Geri: Your books have such a strong sense of place (one of my favorite things about my favorite writers). How do you go about developing the sense of place. Do you make numerous visits, take photographs, ?

A: I never write about a place I haven’t been to, well, almost never. And I rarely visit a place without reading up on it beforehand, preferably by natives and (if the book is historical) in work written near the time. Mostly I love old guide books (waiving the “natives” part of the rule) because unlike their modern counterparts, they’re honest and personal. You can feel the discomforts of the Baedeker’s guy when he writes so feelingly, “The divans are mostly infested with fleas.”

I usually have some pictures tacked up where I write, not necessarily about the specific places but evocative shots that remind me of what I noted most about that specific patch of countryside. I'll be putting up a couple of those for THE ART OF DETECTION during the spring, so you can see what I was looking at as I wrote the book.

Q: Shari says, I love, love, love the Mary Russell series, but I need something else to read! Would you share some of your most recent "favorite reads"?

A: At the moment, as you may know if you read the blog regularly, I’m heavily immersed in boy books. So I turn from my turgid 600 page history of the FBI and pick up Bob Crais or Tom Perry—hardly compatible with Russell’s style. I’d suggest you take a look at my web site’s “Scholar’s Corner page” and scroll down to the General Reading section. It’s woefully out of date, I know, and I hope to add to it in the renovations this spring, but it gives you some idea of what I like.

Q: Two questions on research, one from Sara: How do you approach research? Do you prefer to dive into books, or travel, or just blue-sky imagine first?

…and the other from hgladney: You may have already answered this earlier, but I wonder how you work on period details… When you write about period details, do you also go to the effort of listening to period music, and looking at costume, and so on?

A: I generally do preliminary research into whatever specific place or event I’m thinking about before I get into a book, so I know the major players and themes involved. But I prefer to leave the more detailed research for later, when I know more clearly exactly what I need. If I were one of those clear-minded writers who works to an outline, I might be able to assemble all my material beforehand, but since I’m not, I can’t.

Of course, with the historical stuff, I’ve been working in the Twenties since 1987, and sometimes feel more au fait with their fashion and interests than I do with those of 2005. When you’re working consistently in one time or place, you can do the sort of continuous research that has no specific purpose, examining a Worth dress in a museum, dropping in on antique car rallies, that sort of thing. And then when the first draft is either written or coming into shape, and it’s clear that you really need to know how to repair a smoking 1910 Daimler engine, you can hunt down that information. Really, I don’t have all those bits of arcane knowledge permanently lodged in my fevered brain.

Q: Sinda writes, Laurie, I'm curious about a theme I've noticed where a psychiatrist or therapist is instrumental to the salvation of the character. I'm thinking of Mary Russell - most notably Locked Rooms - and A Grave Talent, specifically. Can you tell us why you chose that route to develop your characters? Do you have experience with therapy that inform your work? Also, I wonder how writing this blog has affected, if at all, your other work? Do you find that it clarifies your thoughts when you capture them here for us, or does it distract you?

A: A mystery is about knowledge; a good mystery is about self-knowledge. Sometimes an outside influence helps us achieve that, in fiction or in life.

As for the blog, no, I just like to hear myself think. And really, a person can write a book just for so many hours a day. I do the blog at another machine, so it doesn’t feel like work.

Q: Vicki wants to know, Where do you find the energy and physical strength, to say nothing of the mental strength, to do all that you do? Would you say you are a Type A personality? Work being what keeps your engine going? What do you do for relaxation?

A: Um, I don’t know. There are times, towards the end of a book, where my brain just feels fried. I literally lose words, simple words, and have to go back and fill them in later when they come back to me. As for the Type A thing, I feel that competitiveness is part of being a Type A, and although sure, everyone would like to be near the top of whatever profession they’re in, it’s not an all-absorbing drive in my life. I love writing, I love being published, and I try to keep some perspective even when things are busiest, and produce dinners, have lunch with friends, go see movies. But it’s true, I am probably abnormally eremitic, and left to my own devices, would no doubt go days without emerging from my cave.

More tomorrow.

March onest

It's the first of March, so let's open the floor to questions.