Laurie R. King--Mutterings

Moving Day

2007-05-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lengthy silence here, but we've been busily hammering away behind the scenes, and although we're still sweeping up the sawdust and rearranging the partitions, it's time to make a shift. So, if I might ask you to click over to the new Mutterings site, we will resume our discussions...

http://laurierking.com/wp.php/

Blogger has been great, in spite of my grumblings, but in the general upgrade, we're taking things into our own hands.

And with luck Laurie may learn how to post photos!

A nice start to the day?

2007-05-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

Well, friends, perhaps I should apologize for urging you to sign up for Booked for Breakfast, what with that real downer of the lady’s dead mother on Tuesday and the oddity of my most recent book being Folly, followed today by my most recent book being The Art of Deception. I agree, a much better title, and if it weren’t rather late, I’d just agree to the change, but still. However, maybe you’ve managed to enjoy the snippets of Justice Hall at the end of each day’s letter. And I’m sure future weeks will go more smoothly—it should surprise no one that if it has to do with electronic communication and LRK, something will go awry.

Elaine Viets and the art of book marketing

2007-05-03T07:02:00.000-07:00

[There's supposed to be a nice cheery book cover here, but those of you who read my last post won't be surprised that Blogger won't let me post it. Sigh. But you can see it and some other nice stuff at http://www.elaineviets.com ]

Back in December, some of you may remember a essay by Elaine Viets on the Lipstick Chronicles blog, concerning the Male Romance novel. Witty and with substance, Elaine gently inserted the skewer into the attitude that boy books are gritty, cutting edge, and worthy of review, where girl romances are, well, not.

Elaine has a new book out. Unfortunately, Elaine also has a brain recovering from a stroke, which means she won’t be touring, which means the promotion set up by her publisher has its legs kicked out from under it.

So some of us agreed to step up and say Hey, and support this great lady of crime fiction. And turn readers on to a fun book, as well.

Please go out and buy a copy of:

Murder with Reservations: A Dead-End Job Mystery
By Elaine Viets
NAL Hardcover. $21.95
ISBN: 0-451-22111-7
On sale now.

More information about the book can be found at http://www.elaineviets.com

Constipation

2007-05-01T07:22:00.000-07:00

My name is Laurie, and I am a dialup connector.

This is a shameful state of connection, I confess. And I swear, it's not entirely my fault. I have honestly tried to connect in a more up to date fashion, but the world doesn't want me, certainly not enough to lay its high-speed cable to my door. So I plug in, and as the world outside gets more and more complex, and every site out there gets gigabytes of bells and whistles attached to it, I wait, and I wait.

This post, for example. It took twelve minutes for Blogger to appear on my screen in a form I could use. First it paused for thought, its blue bar stuck four-fifths of the way across the address. It paused while I made coffee, it paused while I let the cat out, and when I tried again, it paused just to let me know it could. Finally, it took me to my sister's site, my sister having been the last person to use Safari. And when I suggested I was not she and it was Mutterings, not gmail, I wanted, it paused some more.

Constipation on dialup.

My web lady tells me that rescuers are just over the horizon, that the program we bought from England, then had to change servers to install, will make my life a thing of ease and beauty. That one day soon I will but click a button and I can post--Lord, pictures? Italics? Indents?--the door to my personal electronic Paradise will glide open with the sound of heavenly choirs.

In the meantime, Blogger will not permit me outside the bounds of this rather dowdy setting. And although I appreciate the opportunity to blog at will, I do rather look forward to the day when I can blossom and post in all dimensions of the e-world.

However, it is the first of the month, and it's been a while since we've done a Q and A. So if you'd like to send me some questions, I'll hoard them, until Blogger permits me access to Mutterings.

***

As for New York, you no doubt have seen the results of the Edgars awards on Thursday night. And on Friday, I had a nice time at the Flatiron Building, where St. Martin's Press first welcomed me back in 1993 and where its Picador imprint will be bringing out the first four Russell books in the fall, in trade paperback with very striking covers. My agent, my daughter and I had lunch with the great Ruth Cavin, editor extraordinaire who has nurtured so many writers into their careers, and who is still going strong despite closing in on the end of her ninth decade on the planet.

Daughter and self crept off to the airport late in the day, sat and read for the extra hours until the flight finally left, and arrived home at 3:45 Saturday morning.

This country is just too damned big for comfort.

Edgars Thursday

2007-04-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

The Wednesdays of Edgars week are for the symposium, when people shell out money for a day of panels and an interview with that year’s Grand Master, in this case, my distant (very, very distant) cousin, Stephen King. And although it’s intended for writers new to the business, I often shell out my own ninety dollars in order to listen to my colleagues talk about their experiences, because I always learn something. This year I got a free pass to the other panels because I was on one, so I stayed on to listen.

One of the pleasures of being on a panel is that often you get to meet writers you’d never met before, or if so only briefly. This time the only person I’d worked with before was Jerry Healy, which meant I got to meet Sandra Brown, Joe Finder, and Barry Eisler—I had to come to NY to meet Barry, although he lives maybe fifty miles from me, but on the inland side of the mountain range while I’m on the coast, and although it’s not quite the case that never the twain shall meet, it’s much more likely to meet in NY for Edgars or Anchorage for BoucherCon.

And one of the pleasures of this particular gathering is that I have the leisure to sit and have a chat with various people, which rarely happens in the rush of BoucherCon. SJ and I enjoyed a long breakfast and a walk up to 59th Street Wednesday morning, talking about writing and the publishing business (which are not at all the same thing) and tossing ideas at each other, a great and rare joy.

But I skipped out early on the agents’ and editors’ cocktail party that evening, somehow I don’t have a lot of excess energy this trip. And today it’s been quiet, breakfast with agent and daughter, coffee with friend Les Klinger (World’s Greatest Expert on All Things Sherlockian, and about to take on the title of W. G. E.on A. T. Draculanian), responding to emails from my editor, writing this blog, and putting together my (brief!) remarks for the Edgars dinner tonight.

Tonight you can see the results of the Edgars awards on the MWA web site, or read all about it on Sarah Weinman’s always-excellent blog.

And tomorrow I will try to report on things myself.

In the meantime, you can imagine sixty writers, new and established, print and film, who are trying to ingore the growing jitters in their bones as they consider the awards tonight.

I've been a nominee and I've been a judge, and I have to tell you, the judges find it a whole lot easier to eat their banquet dinners.

Edgars week, 2007

2007-04-25T05:26:00.001-07:00

And a big Hey There from La Manzana Grande. My daughter and I are here for the Edgars, the week where the mystery world tells itself that things are cool, and we’re all on the top of the pile, literarily speaking.

So we flew in on Monday, in a United flight out of San Francisco that was configured so the entire flight had enough leg room for a woman of normal height, ie, five foot ten. Very nice.

Tuesday I had breakfast with my editor and publicists at Bantam, three cool and incredibly hard-working ladies. Then the day at leisure, which meant wandering and having a nap and then extricating ourselves from 42nd street (the Pres and various prime ministers seem to have been in town, which meant ten thousand police moving all the taxis on.) to go up to 81st street and the Black Orchid’s annual street party. This is a small bookstore in square footage, which means you get there and see two or three dozen people standing on the street outside a house on 81st, all of them with glasses in their hands. You sidle inside, which takes a while because you have to say hi to everyone, but once there you say hi to Bonnie and Joe, and sign whatever copies of your books they have on hand, and shake hands with the workers who are more like family, and then you sidle back out (which takes a while, as above) and when you come out Lee Child is holding up a corner of the building, so you stand and talk with him a while and then Annette Meyers catches your arm and pulls you down the steps and you talk with her and her husband Marty, and then SJ Rozan in her cool Malcolm X shades needs greeting, and Twist Phelan and and and.

Then you realize that your agent, who is freshly off a plane and whom you promised to feed instantly, has been given nothing more substantial than several glasses of wine, so you pull yourself away from six other fascinating people and take your agent and your daughter next door to the Italian restaurant and feed them, by which time the night is finished and you go to bed, and so to sleep.

And on Wednesday there’s breakfast with SJ and a day of seminars, which means that this seminarian must run and will see you tomorrow.

The joy of lex

2007-04-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

So now that I’ve finished with TOUCHSTONE, I’m finished with it, right? I can give it to other people and go sit in the sun eating strawberries and reading all the novels that have come out in the past six months, right?

Well…

Sure. Except it’s Edgars week in New York so I leave tomorrow for five days, and I have a short story badly overdue so I’ll be working on the plane, and by the time I finish the story my editor will have done her read of TOUCHSTONE and have her suggestions for tweaking the ending, and just a little in the beginning, and maybe that middle…

Actually, although I complain as loudly as anyone else about the process of the rewrite, in truth I find it the most satisfying part. If writing were a sport, the first draft would be the downhill slalom, a barely-controlled fall off a mountain while dodging obstacles: equal parts thrill and desperation. Making it to the bottom in one piece is the primary objective, after which you can worry about the time it took.

But the rewrite process is closer to figure skating, where craft comes to the fore: the craft of shaping the routine, the relationship between the moves and the theme, and then going over and over every part, to make sure you’ve hit it absolutely right. Over and over, every part, with a pencil to change that generic verb to a specific one, to sharpen that description to remove the waffle, to delete all those unnecessary phrases that appear when thinking about how to say something gets in the way of saying it. Then when you’ve done all that fine-tuning, you have to stand back and look at the arc of how it hangs together, at which point you realize there’s a little problem with the protagonist’s motivation, so you rip out six chapters and redo them, starting over again with the pencil and the generic verbs and sharpening the waffles. Oh, and watching out for peculiar mixed metaphors.

Whenever I am asked to give a lecture on writing, I generally talk about the art of the rewrite, handing out Before and After examples from my own work. Sometimes it’s just a matter of tweaking words, chapter breaks, and punctuation, and reading the two samples aloud generally illustrates why I’ve made certain choices. Other times the rewrite will have changed straight narrative into dialogue, and I’ll spend a while talking about why too long a stretch of one form or the other wearies the reader. And sometimes a two-line scene will have become three or four pages, when I’ve realized that I needed a) to expand my description of a character or setting, b) to add a plot twist, c) to pause for a more leisurely exploration of what’s going on, giving everyone a breather, d) needed to divert for a while into humor, again as a breather.

As I’ve said before, my first drafts are little more than 300 page outlines of the book I am trying to write. Some people put everything into their first drafts including their protagonist’s kitchen sink: the brand, whether it’s stainless steel, porcelain, or fiberglass, its size, even the depth (real cooks like deep sinks, after all, as do parents of small babies, and if God is in the details then surely the more detailed the writing, the closer to divine it is?)

I don’t usually write that kind of first draft (although some chapters of TOUCHSTONE were awfully prolix, as I felt my way through the political situation by having the characters talk, and talk, and talk some more.) Some parts of one of my first drafts are complete, but others give little more than the bones of the story, so that even minimalists like Hemingway (or, as he claimed to be) would find it hard to support any cuts from them. The rewrite adds form and color, individuality and interest. The rewrite crafts the life in the routine.

It doesn’t matter if you’re sweating over your first novel or if you’ve published seventeen novels and made it onto the New York Times list: If you’re not just phoning it in, every book is a new universe. Every book is a learning experience. Every book involves re-inventing the wheel.

Every book, I remind myself that it is so.

c'est fini

2007-04-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

TOUCHSTONE is finished. The world's longest rewrite, certainly MY world's longest rewrite, and I've sent it off to my editor just in time for the frantic last-minute business of getting off to New York. The first draft a year ago was 400+ pages, the second draft in December was slightly more than 500, this (final, absolutely, no questions except maybe tweak a couple things) version is 640 pages, 170,000 words, polished and perfect and gloriously alive on the page. I feel as if I'd been pulling a car uphill for the past three months. I feel as if my head is leakng grey matter. I feel...

...relieved.

It'll be party time in New York, I tell you what.

Librarians and other loves

2007-04-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

Happy National Libraries Week!

Kiss a librarian today! Or at least thank one.

Nibbles and bites

2007-04-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

My beloved publisher (now, how many authors do you know who would say that?) is playing with a new venture that you may want to get involved with. It’s called Booked for Breakfast, and designed to that every weekday morning, you start you day with a delicious and maybe even nutritious serving of fiction, five minute’s worth in your email. Lee Child, Barbara Cleverly, Lisa Gardener, Dean Koonz, writers you know, writers you don’t know, and writers you thought you knew but maybe didn’t, so much.

And Laurie King. I’m on the schedule in the first part of May, and you can sign up here, at BookedforBreakfast.com.

Which sort of relates to a question posted here by Carlina, asking--has anyone gotten this month's newsletter? I signed up to get it back in January and have not received one yet...just curious...Perhaps I should send the person in charge an email? Thanks for your time!

No, sorry, no one has received a newsletter since December. I refer to the newsletter as more or less quarterly, and yes, this quarter has gone on for a long time. I’d hoped to send a newsletter in March talking about our New Internet Project, and then said project got bogged down in software questions and one web person who decided to get out of the business (oh, and then there’s my own up-to-my-eyebrows-in-rewrite status) and reinventing the wheel and—

Anyway, I’m sorry, I hate to send newsletters with nothing but drivel so I just haven’t sent one. I’m at the mercy of other people, from family to hired guns, and unless I teach myself programming overnight, you’ll just have to wait a little longer.

Honestly, it’ll be worth it when it comes out. And if you’re not signed up, you could do so now.

There was also a question that came in a while ago, from mbhs, concerning professor Donald Nicholl at UC Santa Cruz.

If you have a copy of O Jerusalem, take a glance at the dedication. Donald and Dorothy were great friends, the godparents of one of our children, and we miss him a lot.

Ordering Independents

2007-04-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

To order books from independents (mystery specialists or otherwise) you can either phone them up, or go to their web site. To order from three of my favorites, drop them an email:

Seattle Mystery Books, as I posted yesterday:
staff@seattlemystery.com

My local guy in Watsonville, who is great if you want me to inscribe, or just sign, a book for you before he ships it:
crbkswat@sbcglobal.net

And one of the biggest, best, most knowledgeable, and nicest mystery booksellers around, in Scottsdale:
sales@poisonedpen.com

Environ/mental action

2007-04-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

I want to talk to you a minute about your bookstore.

Yes, you. You know that place you go on this very machine you’re looking at right now, where you click sideways and you’re either at a river in Brazil or among a whole lot of really strong women (tastes may vary) and you decide you want a book? Yeah, that place.

Or say you’re driving by the mall and you have twenty minutes before you need to pick up The Kid so you drop in to that enormous supermarket of books and get a latte and an umbrella and a cute set of refrigerator magnets for your mother’s birthday next week and in the process pick up the book that’s stacked so high near the register it practically falls into your shopping basket, you know, THAT bookstore.

I just wanted to have a word with you about environmental responsibility. No, not the hairspray and SUV type that is threatening to kill off 30 percent of animal species in the next five minutes, but the kind that is having a similar devastating effect on our city streets.

The Seattle Mystery Bookstore is just one of an endangered species, small independents. SMB lives on a nice sloping street in Seattle, not far from Pioneer Square, and they love books. Oh, I’m sure a lot of the people at The A Place and The B Place and The B&N Place love books, too, but the folk at Seattle Mystery really, really love their books.

Of course, I have a special place in my heart for these folk for a lot of reasons, but notable among them is because they have kept my sci-fi oddity, CALIFIA’S DAUGHTERS (by “Leigh Richards”) on their bestseller list pretty much every month since the book was published going on three years ago. That’s right, August, 2004. For thirty-two months, JB and Bill and Fran, and all of them have been putting a copy of that book into the hands of every customer who asks, “So, what’s good?” So that last year, two years after it was published, CALIFIA shared number five on their bestseller list.

A sci-fi title, in a mystery bookstore.

But it’s not just my own loyalty speaking here. Seattle Mystery recently started a blog that functions as a guest book, where authors in the store for a signing write a Hi There! and post it. Take a look, it will give you an idea of what independent mystery bookstores are all about.

And it goes without saying (although as you see I’m going to say it anyway): The only way JB and the rest can indulge your need to read Dana Stabenow’s recipe for truffle pasta or Harley Jane Kozak’s remarks on cookies or a whole bunch of writers commenting on jet lag is IF YOU BUY BOOKS FROM THEM. Them or another independent, they’re pretty generous-minded.

They’re in it for the love, yes, but that roof over the books costs money.

Circumscribed passions

2007-04-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking recently about my early days of writing, in the late eighties and early nineties before I was published and I had to carve writing time out of life.

My kids were young. I started writing when my second child went off to preschool three mornings a week, although I did manage more hours than that, most times, because my parents lived on the same property with us and my mother would take the boy pottering in the garden (the kid hasn’t pulled a weed since he was five, which may tell you something about the difficulty of infecting a kid with your own particular love.)

Back then, I would do the school run, then sit down and plunge into my ongoing fictional dream, coming out reluctantly when the clock nagged me to leave for pickup duty. Then when the kids were old enough to start in on after school sports and piano lessons, I would take my oversized clipboard and my legal pad, prop it against the steering wheel, and write for an hour in the afternoons. It isolated me against friendships with the other parents, but it got the books written.

Later on, I was a published author, with contractual obligations to produce words. This was great, because I actually had an excuse to do what I wanted to, and didn’t have to justify my addiction to the clip board and writing pad. But it also meant that my passion became a job, which inevitably took a little of the sparkle out of it. A superb job, and it was still occasionally a battle to work the writing life in and around the rest of life (Summer vacation is coming—aaugh! Or, I have to finish this first draft before school lets out on Dec 17th or my kids will hate me forever!)

Back then, it was the kids who set the boundaries on my writing life, because kids have to be fed and transported and noticed. And now I find I’m in an oddly similar situation with a husband (who is doing really well, thanks for asking) whose mobility problems mean that he needs someone around to do things for him and listen to make sure he’s not headed for trouble, like when he sees the massively heavy rechargeable lawnmower sitting out and tries to be helpful and put it away, leaving his walker behind to do so…

So I’ve arranged with his assistant and general factotum to come in full time, a thirty-five to forty hour week, and that’s where my life is, during those hours. I shop, I go to the gym, I see my dentist, and I write, because I cannot focus on two places at once.

The downside is that I have this massive rewrite pressing down on me, despite the generosity of spirit exhibited by Bantam when it comes to deadlines. But the upside is, I’m rediscovering the thrill of writing within limits. If I only have thirty five hours a week to focus on the book, by God it’s a tightly focused thirty-five hours. I break to make tea, eat lunch, and answer the phone, maybe half an hour total throughout the day, and then it’s back into the book.

I’m finding that, as happened back then, I tend to think about the book more. I always think about what I’m writing anyway, especially a first draft, but this is more like actual writing, but just suspending the part where the words are being set down. And there’s no delay and dithering, no taking leisurely side-trips into other peoples’ books (novels or research) while I’m at work. The car comes up the drive, I take my coffee and have my shower, walk into my study, and flip the switch.

I’m probably being the world’s worst Pollyanna, seeing the bright side of a black hole. On the other hand, there may be something to this nine-to-five business. I’ll have to try it in the future, not permitting myself to write to my heart’s content.

But now I have to go, because it’s time to make the coffee, eat the breakfast, and get ready for the car to come up the drive.

Hot flash!

2007-04-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Technical difficulties having to do with the number of working hours in a week and the inability of LRK to produce satisfactory clones has delayed the promised announcement for today. But fortunately, my excellent friends at the Seattle Mystery Bookstore have stepped into the breach, with the following hot news flash (and if you know where the report originated or know of any AP wire photos on the subject, please don't hesitate to let us all know more) :

A stunning announcement from Britain has rocked the scientific and literary world for the second time this Spring as a multinational team of archeologists report having found the ossuary of Sherlock Holmes.

“We’ve been searching for his resting place for decades, though most have laughed at us”, said lead researcher Dr. I. M. Bruce-Partington. “Clues as to the burial grounds of the Great Detective were carefully hidden within the Canon and, with the help of the latest AI from around the Globe, we were able to crack the case. It was a solution worthy of the Great Man himself.”

The exact location of the find was kept secret to ensure treasure hunters, true believers and members of the Moriarity Crime Syndicate wouldn’t be able to disrupt the work. Thought to be sited somewhere to the Northwest of London, deep in the Moors. “While the Moors are thought to be largely boggy, it has been widely known within the geological community – as well as the archeological community, I should add – that cave-like structures do occur and are quite stable and dry.” Explained Dr.Charles Milverton. “The spot we’ve been excavating is quite large and contains a number of boxes related the Holmes family, as well as boxes we believe to be associated with them.”

According to Dr. Jonathan Small, the first ossuary to be discovered bore marks that were quite difficult to decipher. “The marks seemed to be saying ‘my crafts’ as if we were going to find knitting needles or paintbrushes inside. Our cryptographer, Gloria Scott, recognized it to read MYCROFT, and from there it all began to make sense. We have no unearthed ossuarys holding the remains of Mrs. Hudson, John and Mary Watson – those were found in a niche with a number of old battered metal dispatch boxes - our literary investigator, Professor L.S. Klinger, is pouring over those and his report will be forthcoming – in a separate niche. We are most puzzled by the recent discovery of 5 other limestone boxes. Tests are still ongoing and we are not confident, at this time, to announce whose remains those might contain.” One of the most intriguing is one which bears the damaged carving “Maria de Frans---”. The American specialist Leigh Richards has been called in to work on that stone container.

The literary world has been ablaze with comments and controversy. Most mainline, serious critics have railed at the thought that Sherlock Holmes could have been a real person. “What’s next?” demanded Thorneycroft Huxtable, MA, PhD, “The crypt of James Bond, Miss Marple’s headstone?” Reached at the prestigious Istituto per gli studi religiosi di Bologna, Professor Sabaglione objected strongly: “è questa gente di mistero pazzesca? sta confrontando un detectivo fictional ad una figura santa! deve essere uno scherzo!” A spokesman for the British Crime Writer’s Association, who requested anonymity, expressed guarded enthusiasm. “This is something like the discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls, I should think. Just imagine how this could change our understanding of the beginning of the mystery story.”

Most excited seems to be the Minister of Tourism and Visitors, Frances Carfax. “We in Her Majesty’s Government are quite thrilled with the possibilities this scientific discovery may provide. Sherlock Holmes is a beloved figure world ’round and, if this cannot be proven beyond a doubt to be the final resting for Mr. Holmes, his believers will not be deterred and will flock to the site in massive numbers. True believers, as we all know, will bear any effort or cost to be close to those they worship and we very well may see the beginning of a new Holy Land of Literary Greats. The PM and Her Majesty are quite excited.”

San Francisco Holmsian expert Philip Gilbert was unavailable for comment. However, spokesman for the Gathering of Critical Literatis, Sir George Burnwell, retorted “Harumph! Really, Holmes, while an interesting fictional figure of minor importance – good lord, we’re talking about genre fiction, after all - cannot possibly become the central figure of such economic and journalistic focus. These people toss about words like ‘Great’ and ‘Canon’ as if just any creature of fiction can have holiness bestowed upon Him. Anyone believing such rubbish is simply a fool.”

All Sherlock Holmes, all the time

2007-03-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve just been writing the answers to a set of interview questions Picador are putting in the back of their new editions of Beekeeper’s Apprentice and Monstrous Regiment of Women next October, along with their suggested Reading Group discussion topics. The questions were actually fairly demanding, as interview questions go, and I had to work at getting them right.

(Which reminds me, if the nice Swedish lady who sent me a postcard about an interview wants to try again, this time make sure the address isn’t in the bottom half inch of the postcard, where it gets obscured by the Post Office’s machine.)

Where was I? Oh right. Questions like:

7. Mary Russell not only has progressive politics, she also has a sex life. What inspired you to bring this dimension to her character, how have you managed to allow the frisson without offending traditional fans of Holmes?

To which I could only answer:
Mary Russell has a sex life? With whom? Does her mother know about this?

Oh, you mean those steamy scenes where Holmes fiddles with her fingers or brushes her long hair? Surely you know that, when it comes to describing sex, less is more.

Anyway, in the process of doing these interviews, I realized that it had been a while since I did a Holmes blog.

Then I thought, Have I ever done one? I don’t remember if I did—probably I figured that, having posted pieces on the web site about Holmes, about Arthur Conan Doyle, and about my version of the Holmes chronology, I didn’t need to post a blog about the man. To say nothing of the fact that Russell herself is nowblogging, saving me the trouble of speaking for her. Although she seems to be having some reservations about my role of literary agent…

One question that often comes up is why I’m forever separating Russell from Holmes in their investigations, since most of the really fun scenes are when the two of them are together. I’d have thought it was self-evident, that it’s too hard to write the fun scenes so I space them out with a lot of other stuff. What am I, Dave Barry or something?

There are other reasons, of course. With Holmes always looking over her shoulder, Russell would either not get a chance to do the investigations on her own, or else she would turn around and murder him, which might bring Laurie King a moment’s notoriety but might also displease my editor.

Besides, if they were always together, I wouldn’t have had a chance to write Holmes on his own for The Art of Detection, and that would have been a pity.

And before I forget, if you’d like to read that paper I gave to the Baker Street Irregulars back in January, the BSI Journal will be publishing it in June. Domestic subscriptions are $26.50/yr ($29 for foreign addresses), but single copies are a bargain at $7. Orders in US funds can be sent to--
The Baker Street Journal
PO BOX 465
Hanover, PA 17331

Tell ‘em Laurie sent you.

Slaughter of the innocents

2007-03-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

I live in the woods. I expect the pitter-patter of tiny feet, four at a time, and the occasional rattle -thump when those four-footed nocturnal visitors fossick through the pots for grubs. I only object when they move into the house, although even then, if they’re polite and don’t actually run across my feet or fill the place with poison gas, my general inclination is live and let live.

But something has been eating my mother’s plants (my mother lives in a house at the far end of our deck.) She’d like to think the culprit is some cute and fluffy scalawag, some misled squirrel or chipmunk that soon will see the error of its ways and move on. I, however, am pretty sure it’s not cute, not unless your heartstrings are tugged by scaly tails, yellow teeth, and pointy noses.

Still, even rats have a right to do their thing, and once I’d hacked back the overhanging trees and they stopped doing the samba across the roof at night, they weren’t bothering me too much. I did wish they would find something to eat other than my orange and lemon trees, which they denuded back to the trunks so that my deck has a lot of weird, modernistic sculptures sticking out of it, and I really wished they’d leave my mother’s treasures the hell alone, but even that only made me buy sprays and powders guaranteed to slow them down at least five percent.

However, we now have reached the point where the Cycle of Nature is beginning to enter the equation. And since the way we humans live these days isn’t exactly natural, this takes some adjustment—normally, as I say, on my part, but the time has come to ask Nature to nudge back a bit.

It was the bobcat that did it. Or rather, the two bobcats, one small (probably female) but one the size of a coyote, and neither of them in the least shy. They stroll across the lawn (in broad daylight, nothing nocturnal about these cats), they stare at you when you clap your hands at them, they only mosey off when you begin to throw things in their direction.

They’re not going to attack anything as big as a human, these aren’t mountain lions—and if they felt cornered or had their young threatened, well, even a cute and fluffy squirrel could be forgiven for attacking under those circumstances.

But they’re here during the day, and our cats (which we already lock up at night, for fear of providing the coyotes with dinner) might begin to look juicy to them.

Now, before you get all het up, I’m not proposing to trap, poison, shoot or otherwise harm a bobcat. They’re gorgeous, and they have the right to live in the woods.

But I can discourage them from hanging around. Which means make them nervous about being here, and take away their food supply.

The first of those is a thing called a scarecrow motion activated sprinkler, which you put on the end of a hose and, when it senses motion, lets off a burst of noisy water on any deer, dog, cat, or unsuspecting human who passes in front of it. Great fun.

But the second is wholesale slaughter, cold-blooded murder, vicious entrapment.

In other words, I’m killing the rats. If there’s no prey for the bobcats, and if every time they wander through this thing jumps out at them and flaps and shoots out water, pretty soon they’ll begin to stay down at their end of the hill, hunting mice in the neighbor’s vineyard, and my own cats will again venture outside.

That’s the theory. I’ll let you know how it goes.

(And now when you see me at an event or a conference, you’ll think to yourself, Gee, that King woman doesn’t look like a vicious killer….)

Growing characters

2007-03-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school (think long straight hair, granny-glasses, and ankle-length skirts, the only hippie in Tacoma, Washington) I was a tremendous Simon and Garfunkel fan. Back in the dark ages, before cassettes and 8-tracks, I would buy one of their albums as soon as it came out, or as soon as I could cajole my parents into taking me to a record store, and plunk it down on my portable LP turntable, and listen to it.

And invariably, I would hate it.

But because I couldn’t quite accept that, and because I’d paid good money for it, I would play it again. And again. And pretty soon, I would hear the nuances and not the differences, and fall in love with this version of the singers, and it would be my very most favorite of all.

I’ve found the same thing with writers. I know I hated the first of Dorothy Sayers’ novels that I read, although granted, it really wasn’t her best (the one with the Evil Lesbian—even the title is boring: UNNATURAL DEATH.) And the same with Lee Child, and Bob Crais, and a number of other writers whose first acquaintance just didn’t do it for me, but whom I love, respect, and buy in hardback the first day they’re out now.

(This doesn’t always happen, that I change my mind. If it did, I’d make a point of trying a second volume of any writer I didn’t like, which would be a real headache. Though it would sure be nice to be able to figure out which I don’t like, and which I’d absolutely adore if I gave them a second chance.)

I’ve been thinking about this (and the following is not so much a parallel line of thought as a tangent) because I just read Bob Crais’s new novel, WATCHMAN, and it led me back to one or two of his early Elvis Coles. (As a side note, I often reread books when I’m in the throes of a hard writing slog. I can’t not read, but the parts of my brain needed for the work are just too close to the parts that follow a new story line and new characters.)

It is fascinating, and awe-inspiring, to watch a writer grow. I watched this happen with Reginald Hill, whose early cop whodunits moved out of the set of stereotypes he’d set up for them (very good stereotypes, funny and vivid and colorful, but still) into true novels that explored the characters he’d been playing with for a while. Real emotion began to sneak in, believable motivation instead of the games of the genre, and the humor changed from jokes to situational absurdity, and occasionally had a very dark edge. PICTURES OF PERFECTION is one of my all-time favorite novels, scary and funny and warm all at the same time. A cozy thriller, if you can imagine that. Personally, I find his recent novels just too much, beginning with the much-praised ON BEULAH HEIGHT, but BONES AND SILENCE, RECALLED TO LIFE, and PICTURES OF PERFECTION are just gorgeous.

And now Bob Crais is doing the same thing, taking his very decorative and entertaining chessboard characters and breathing life into them. Elvis Cole still does his morning yoga on the deck, Joe Pike still wears those damned sunglasses, the feral cat still growls, but where in the first books those set pieces were surface amusements, one now begins to see just where the yoga and the sunglasses come from.

If you don’t know Crais, and want to see what I mean, get one of his early books—THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT is the first, but STALKING THE ANGEL or LULLABY TOWN will do as well. Then get L.A.REQUIEM, and see the characters stirring and coming to life. Then go out and get the WATCHMAN, because hardback sales are important to authors. And while you’re in the bookstore, pick up THE LAST DETECTIVE, too, and maybe THE FORGOTTEN MAN, because you’ll want to read those as well. (I’m only talking about the Cole series here, but his standalones are great, too.)

Why do some writers grow like this, where others repeat themselves? Of course, some repetition is inevitable, in a business that sells identifiable products (When an author hits a certain level of popularity, he or she is called a “franchise” author, which may tell you something.) And when it comes to a series, the familiarity is a large part of its appeal.

But it’s like the repetitive bore at the family reunion, whose stories—although once interesting—everyone has heard a hundred times before: When a writer works with the same characters year in and year out, finding new stories for them to tell can be tough.

Both Hill and Crais, by the way, write outside their series. And I suspect that, in both their cases, the non-series novels don’t sell quite as well, because people want the same, but different. In the case of these two men, they found it by writing the same characters, but reaching down into them and finding a new and mature voice.

Rather like Simon and Garfunkel used to, back in the day.

3/07/QA/finishup

2007-03-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

…and then there’s those…different questions.

Q: Nikki asks, Also, in honor of the Bloggiversary, I think I'll try to introduce the concept of the Big or Bigging to this site. A Big is basically getting the writer to post a snippet from his or her WIP. This is usually not a spoiler, just an innocuous little bit to keep the mouth watering until the whole story is out.

The term Big came about after an e-friend from the compuserve forums instructed me in the fine art of begging for new material. Afterward, she jokingly denied she was teaching me how to beg, but only speaking of making bigger scenes in our own WIPs.

What do you say? Are you open to the concept? I promise my Bigs are creative and usually funny.

A: You mean you want a chunk that’s been hacked out of TOUCHSTONE, rough and unpolished? Wouldn’t you rather see the WIP I’ll be returning to as soon as I put TOUCHSTONE into the mailer, which is the short story whose beginning I posted oh, so long ago on the web site?

In fact, if you want to play The Edit Game, you could print it out and take your blue pencil to it (why blue? My editor uses a plain #2, the copy editor uses green or brown. Anyway--) and compare what you get with what I do with it.

The story is certainly rough, having been written during a two-hour period when people were (Virtually) looking over my shoulder. There’s plenty there to edit, and you can even give it an ending, if you like.

Just don’t send it to me.

Q: Enid wanted to know: I would like to participate in the book club. That sounds interesting. Can anyone join in? I am situated in the tropics.

A. Hmmm. It’s difficult to know how to answer this without the flavor of snark creeping in. Let me say simply that this is a Virtual Book Club, and unless the tropical humidity clogs up your computer’s little motors or the bugs climb into its housing, your location shouldn’t affect your participation.

Q: And finally, Bronwyn wants to know my shoe size.

A. Surely anyone reading the first part of THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE can see that the author is writing first-hand about foot size. And sorry, but a size nine (US) doesn’t count as truly large. Ten and a half? Getting there.

3/07/QA/3

2007-03-09T07:32:00.000-08:00

Q: Mousie asks, You wrote about the feminine aspects of God in Monstrous Regiment. Do you have any suggested reading about that idea?
Thank you!

A: If you go to the web site’s Scholars Corner page and scroll down to Recommended Reading, then click on to From the Books, you’ll find a list of titles I found useful. Most of them are old, since I did my Masters back in the Dark Ages, but a library ought to have some of them.

Q: And in a related question by my most regular blog contributor, Anon: I wonder if Mary Russell's book on Wisdom will ever surface (hint, hint)?

A: She’ll probably need to write under a pseudonym, so her publisher doesn’t worry that readers of her memoirs will be confused….

Q: Emily asks, As a fan of both the original Holmes canon and the Russell books, and as a Mormon, I was wondering-- in the course of Holmes and Russell's trip across the US, do they happen to come to Salt Lake City? Any mention of the atrocious way the Mormons were vilified in A Study in Scarlet? Doyle sensationalizing again? Or was it poor Uncle John? I would find that highly amusing.

A: Interesting, isn’t it, how one era’s villains become the next era’s Ordinary Folk? In the late nineteenth century, the Mormons were this subversive and powerful cult that enslaved women and murdered nonbelievers, and now they’re our neighbors who have some slightly unusual habits but well-behaved kids.

Makes you wonder what today’s Evil Muslims will become a generation or two down the line…

The process by which a “cult”—outsiders, prone to wicked acts, ruled absolutely by a charismatic fanatic—becomes a mainstream religion is a fascinating one. And as with many things that fascinate me, I turned it into a book (A DARKER PLACE, or in the UK, THE BIRTH OF A NEW MOON).

I don’t know that I’ll introduce Russell to the Mormons on this particular cross-country trip, although it would as you say prove amusing to explore a more rational (ie, Russellian) take on the matter.

3/07/QA/2

2007-03-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

Q: Kitty wants to ask A very humble question. What book are we talking about for the book club? you did say it was going to be on April 1 right? Sorry if this isn't the time or place for this question. It's just that I would like to be ready. ;=)

A: We’ll be starting with A Grave Talent. And sorry to harp on this, but anyone who wants to receive the official notice might want to sign up for the newsletter.

Q: Sara asks, Masterpiece Theatre recently aired Philip Pullman's "The Ruby in the Smoke," whose main character, Sally Lockhart, is startlingly Russellian in her description: orphaned, unconventional partnerships and acquaintances, possessing a working knowledge of Hindustani, utter disregard for social standards of the day, and deadly aim with a pistol. Have there been other instances with characters whose traits so closely resemble those of your creation? And if so, does it bother you?

A: …and Liz answers (in part) With regards to The Ruby in the Smoke and the Russell novels, I feel compelled to point out that the Sally Lockhart novels were published between 1985 and 1994. Seems a bit unfair to Pullman to suggest that he was cribbing ideas from LRK.

I haven’t read those novels, but what I really want to know is how PD James got a copy of my futuristic novel before it was published, to rip off wholeheartedly for her Children of Men? Mine was originally even titled Daughters of Men, and had later to be changed to Califia’s Daughters. Harrumph.

Q: Shari asks, You have submitted short stories to various anthologies over the years. Are we ever going to see a Laurie R. King "Collected Stories" volume?

A: Most of the short stories I agree to write are aimed eventually at a collection of stories that tie together to make a larger story. Which is one reason why you don’t see too many Russell short stories out there. I’m probably more than halfway there now, so maybe in a few years.

Q: AJ writes, Is there anything you think you could not write about? A vaguely written question--let me clarify: One of the things I love most about writing is the chance it gives me to learn about anything in the world, as long as I decide a character needs to know about it. I have written about a stage manager, a painter, a vet, a businessman, an attorney, a chef, an engineer, a photographer, etc. And in each case, it works for me because I can imagine doing all of these things. I could make a business deal, even if I lost my shirt in it. I can paint a picture, even if it looks like a five year old did it. But for years now, I have wanted to write a book about a composer and have hesitated, because I cannot, even using the best of my imagination, figure out how one comes up with so much as a tune much less a symphony. So, to go back to my original question, is there anything that you just can't get your mind around to write about?

A: Because I was born without the fashion gene, and grew up during the time of the hippie, I never learned all the skills and esoterica that go into the womanly arts. So I am utterly incapable of writing anything resembling chick lit: I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Ferragamo or a Choo (or indeed a ten buck ripoff from Payless shoes, unless I looked closely) and couldn’t recognize an Armani without looking at the label (I’m assuming they have labels?)

As a result, my characters tend to wear “expensive” or “extreme” rather than brand name, although I find that if I write about Worth or Chanel in the Twenties, I don’t get screaming letters of derision.

For the most part, if I need to know about a job or area of expertise, I try to hunt down someone who knows. I collect a few telling details (cop shop-talk, academic references) to sprinkle in, but don’t try to flood the reader with impressive minutiae because it will 1) bore most readers and 2) not fool the real experts. I aim for middle ground, with just enough knowledge displayed to show I know what I’m talking about, but not so much that it resembles a series of note-cards glued together.

I’d suggest, if you want to write about composers, you read a couple of autobiographies or well-written biographies of composers, and get a feel for their attitudes and language. Maybe you can find a few music students and take them out to dinner, talk about politics and religion for a while and then sneak in a question about how it feels to compose an effective piece of music.

But in the end, you have to remember: Novelists lie for a living. We don’t have to give footnotes, we have to give a sense of verisimilitude.

Lambda nomination!

2007-03-06T06:37:00.000-08:00

March 1, 2007--Finalists for the 19th annual Lambda Literary Awards were announced on March 1 by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Awards are presented in 25 categories, and winners will be announced on Thursday, May 31, at the Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City.

3/07/QA/1

2007-03-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

Okay, that’s enough questions for March. Save any others for next month.

Q: Roxanne wanted to know: how serious were/are you about the autorickshaw trip in India?

A: Oh, honey, I’m working insane numbers of hours, with my foot nailed to the floor because of family responsibilities, with one book overdue, a short story past deadline, at a time I should be starting the next book.

You think going to India and racing autorickshaws might be a fantasy?

Q: Wendy says, It was wonderful meeting you when you came to Madison last fall! I adore the Kate Martinelli and Mary Russell books, but I am also enamored with Anne Waverly-- do you think you'll ever write another book with her as the character? thanks!!

A: I’d like to, if for no other reason than finding out what happens to those two kids. Maybe, let’s see here, 2010?

Q: Aaron Paul Lazar asks, Please clarify for the newbie: may we ask writing/agent/publishing/craft questions here, or are these intended to pertain only to the wonderful books you've written? Thanks in advance for your response. ;o)

A: Ask what you like, so long as your question is well-mannered. I can always just not answer.

Q: How do you pick the places for your books? In The Moor it's Dartmoor, in The Game it's India, etc. I love the settings and how Russell usually has to learn a new language.

A: Poor Russell, she’s always cold, often hungry, and invariably confused. She must have a lot of headaches from straining to figure things out in a foreign tongue, although she doesn’t talk about that.

I write about places I’ve either been to and which seem interesting places to set a story, or would like to go to and which seem etc. The place determines the character of the story—India (The Game) sweeping, grand, colorful, crowded, and scary; Dartmoor (The Moor) bleak, lonely, wet, mysterious, quirky; Palestine (O Jerusalem) old, complex, uncontrollable, compelling.

Incidentally, you can see a few photos of the settings by clicking on the individual book pages, beginning on the web site’s books and reviews page.

Q: Gail asks, One of the best parts of the Russell books is how you keep to Russell's perspective while still telling us things about Russell and Holmes that either she isn't consciously aware of, isn't admitting to herself, or isn't interested in sharing. Do you think about what each are thinking or feeling or how she looks and then figure out how to express that through Russell's pen or do you just write from Russell's view and then make sure the whole thing hangs together?

A: First person narrative is tricky. There’s only so much add-a-letter-from-Holmes you can do to bring in different perspectives, which means, as Gail says, I need occasionally to show Russell seeing and hearing things one way, while the reader perceives that same thing from a slightly different angle.

Clearly, the between-the-lines viewpoint doesn’t work if you write down to the reader, overexplaining and beating any dead horses you come across. Most readers are perceptive enough to catch subtle jokes, and if they don’t, well, what’s the harm of enriching a second read?

NOTE: SPOILER ALERT FOR CALIFIA’S DAUGHTERS
Q:WDI asks, Given that we may have to wait quite a while for the other parts of the "Califia" trilogy, could you bend far enough to just let me know -- does Dian reunite with her dog?

A: I should think so, wouldn’t you? Why else show him limping on, if he gets eaten around the next bend?

Q: Gin wants to know, Although an avid Russell fan, I wonder how much obligation you feel towards your readers to produce another in the Russell series. How do you balance telling your story vs satisfying the demands of your readers (ie: Holmes and Russell's personal relationship)
Do you get pressure from your publishers to keep a series going?

A: I’ve tended to alternate the Russells with either Martinellis or standalone novels, which helps to keep my writing fresh. I’m always grateful when readers are willing to give my non-Russells (or non-Martinellis, depending) a chance, because the thought of being chained to the oar of a galley producing endless Russell tales makes the heart quail.

NOTE: SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT FOR O JERUSALEM:
Q: Carlina formerly Maria asks, Karim Bey...that man...yes..I am curious is there any relationship between him and the Kerim Bey in the Bond flick From Russia with Love (perhaps an inspiration)? On that note, will we ever know exactly how deeply Holmes's experience with Bey scarred or affected him? Will you ever explore that aspect of Holmes's psyche (which is no doubt complex and possibly messy as it is)?

A: I don’t know that I ever saw the film, although I’m sure to have read the book many and many a year ago.

It’s always frustrating, isn’t it, when a writer (or series of writers, for a television series) overlooks some major event in the life of the characters, which really ought to be mentioned again. On the other hand, the writer needs to make each book complete unto itself, without endless bits dragging in from previous adventures.

So the answer is, maybe. I might mention the experience, if it feeds into a later book.

But exploring Holmes’ psyche? God, I doubt even Russell herself would have the courage for that.

March the first

2007-03-02T07:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, questions anyone?

Killing your sweethearts

2007-02-25T14:09:00.000-08:00

One of the drawbacks of writing without an outline is that I think my way as I go. Which is fine if that place in the back of my head is keeping track of things, but this past year, the back of my head was busy with sick husbands, so that although I managed to write a book, it is a book that meanders rather more than one would want of a story intended to be tight and suspenseful.

In other words: Oh god, I thought YOU were driving.

So this rewrite is different from others. Mostly my rewrites aim at taking a bony 300 page first draft and putting flesh on it, so that it’s a balanced and comfortable 400 or so pages.

Not TOUCHSTONE. Going through it for the first time in months, I find six chapters made up of one conversation after another—great conversations, you understand, witty and revealing of character, but in the middle part of a sort-of thriller you don’t really want to be working on character, you want to have your already-well-established characters taking the bit between their teeth and pulling the reader along at a brisk pace.

Which means I’m busily killing my little sweethearts, shifting small portions and heartlessly mowing down page after page.

And because it’s such a painful process, I depend on two forms of analgesic. One, I copy the file and work on the copy, so if I change my mind, I can just dump the copy and be back where I started. Two, I don’t just delete the parts I’m chopping, I shift them into a file called Cuts, in the theory that when I’ve finished, I can go through the Cuts file and retrieve any true and priceless gems that really need to be placed back in the manuscript.

In practice, of course, I never go back to the original file, and I never find anything in Cuts that the book isn’t stronger without. However, it’s like a chess move that isn’t final until the fingers come off the piece: It’s reassuring to know that I can change my mind.

Autorickshaws rule!

2007-02-22T05:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, here’s what I want to do next year, either of them. Anyone out there want to join me?

http://www.indianarc.com/

http://www.rickshawrun.com