Laurie R. King's Blog

What, oh what to give for the holidays?  Something that demonstrates economic responsibility but doesn't feel repressive; something fun yet with substance; something personal but not icky.

A book?  Maybe even a signed one?

If that's your choice, here's for you: bookplates, of three flavors: with the cover of The Language of Bees or The Beekeeper's Apprentice–

–or just  plain vanilla signed plates, with no specific book.

They're yours, free, gratis, and without charge, if you send a...

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I'm in Oxford–the paper, at any rate.

And speaking about Holmes, and the upcoming movie, and all things Sherlock on Chronic Rift.

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When I heard the news from Fort Hood last Thursday, my heart sank.  Not only because of the terror and grief visited on this community of soldiers, but because of the undeniably Muslim name of the man accused.

When a man with an "American" name (ie, Germanic or Irish or Polish or Italian or Spanish or…) vents his madness on his fellow man, we don't even see the man's ethnicity or religious identity, looking straight past those details to the question of Why?  But let a man whose mind cracks...

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Here's how The God of the Hive will come dressed, on April 27th, and my editor craves your reaction:

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There are as many styles of writing as there are writers—and I don't mean the words on the page; I mean how they get there.
I have writer friends who work set hours, every day without fail, year around, as if they were clocking in at a warehouse or office. I know others who take a similar approach with number of words rather than time spent. And a lot of writers swear that the only way to work is to start the next book on the heels of the finished one.
Me? My brain compartmentalizes, so...

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It isn't often I laugh aloud in a silent house, but I challenge you to read this review without snorking your tea out across the keyboard.

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Almost as long as there have been Sherlock Holmes stories, there have been ardent readers commenting on the stories, speculating on the Conan Doyle chronology, indulging in genteel (for the most part) arguments over the minutiae of time, place, and technique.  For example, several times, Holmes mentions his partner's recent change in marital status: So, how many times was Watson married?

Dorothy Sayers, in a commentary on Holmes, describes the process:

The game of applying the methods of...

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Yesterday all over the world, people went to a conference. I took place on two panels, one with Lee Child and our editor Kate Miciak (who were in New Jersey and Long Island, respectively,) the other with Nevada Barr (in New Orleans.)  Since then I've listened to various other panels, including a conversation between the Poisoned Pen bookstore's Barbara Peters in Scottsdale and author Dana Stabenow in Alaska (who, as with pretty much everyone in this paragraph, is a friend of mine.)

I was...

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Friday in Indy, lots of business gets done. 

People who come to BoucherCon primarily as readers (the "fans") may not be aware that the Con is also a trade show, with writers as the manufacturers of product.  My morning began with a long breakfast meeting with my editor, Kate Miciak, during which we covered everything from the state of publishing in general to what this particular cog in the wheel will be working on next.  And because we've been friends for more than a decade, even though we...

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The problem with filling BoucherCons with meetings is that there is no time to listen to panels, which I enjoy doing.  And yesterday I was in two panels, plus half an hour sitting the Mystery News desk, and a meeting with a nice gent from the Lilly library who are collecting papers for their archives and would rather enjoy mine, and then there were the two dinners.

All of which was compounded by a return of the cough under the effects of the air conditioning, which made me sound like the...

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