“You’re so gangsta, I’m so thug...”

What I’m listening to right now...

“You’re so gangsta, I’m so thug, you’re the only one I’m dreaming of/You see, I can be myself now finally, in fact there’s nothing I can’t be/I want the world to see you be with me.”

And a kickin’ ukulele. Nice.

Is Sarah Palin’s Book A Book?

Writing on her own blog, Pinky’s Paperhaus, Los Angeles Times’ lead book blog maven, Carolyn Kellogg, eloquently argues that, despite appearances to the contrary, not only is Sarah Palin’s book not a book, Kellogg herself would rather read Edmund Morris’ biography of Ronald Reagan (that kinda says more than it says. Kellogg is skilled that way.

On Palin’s Going Rogue (snicker), Kellogg writes:

I know it comes between covers and is sold in bookstores. But it’s not a book, it’s a celebrity media push. Maybe it’s a campaign advertisement. Maybe it’s a talk show audition. Maybe it’s a prelude to a line of “you betcha!” ladies huntingwear -- who knows. But whatever it is, “Going Rogue” is not a book in the way we book people think of books.

I’ve likely quoted more of Kellogg’s delicious post than I rightly should have (it’s brief but trenchant) but check out her blog here. Her opinions are always interesting and sharply stated.

Quote of the Week: Susan Orlean

“Being a writer requires an awkward balance of utter confidence and abject insecurity. Both necessary, neither sufficient.” -- Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup)

Interestingly enough, this quote came to me via Twitter, as retweeted by the fabulous Sandra Gulland. It wouldn’t fit as a retweet and it was, in any case, just too great a quote to be lost in the sludge of the Twitter timeline.

This captures precisely what I’ve often tried to articulate in many more words: Close the door. Shut off the other voices. Listen to your heart. And write.

And write.

I Heart Reading Groups

I always forget how much I enjoy spending time with reading groups, either on the telephone or, when possible, in person. I got to do that yesterday in James Bay in Victoria, B.C. with a really terrific group. OK, I’ll be honest: I’ve yet to meet a reading group I did not like. They’re readers, so they’re intelligent and interesting. And they want to talk about my book so... what’s not to like?

The James Bay group are currently discussing Death Was the Other Woman, which has it’s own reading group guide. If you’d like me to attend your reading group, please contact Dana and she’ll hook you up.

On the less fun front today: I’m dealing with server and quota issues on January Magazine. It’s high class complaints, in one way. We’ve gone so far over our server’s traffic quota this month, it’s created madness and confusion. We’re working on solving things right now. Meanwhile, I’m howling at the moon (and into the phone) because nothing makes me crazier than issues with background issues with January. Film at 11. (Not really.)

If this is Friday the 13th, it must not be Belgium. (Is that too obscure a reference?)

Still Chasing History

How did I not know about the Library of Congress’ American Memory Project? In case you didn’t know about it either, I’m sharing information about it here:

American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

It’s very cool, for instance, to be able to look at the Olympic Stadium on the opening day of the in 1932.

Or old maps, appropriate to your area of interest or salient to current research.



The American Memory Project is beautifully designed. It’s gorgeous, easy to use and it’s here.

This Isn’t Research...

... at least, not research as we’ve always known it, but there’s something a little magic about finding stuff -- despite expectation -- on the Web.



Something that’s all about serendipity in -- surprisingly often -- coming face-to-face with something that exceeds expectation. That sometimes even exceeds your wildest dreams.

It’s magic, sometimes, the stuff that can be found there. Images -- both visual and verbal -- that help make things real for me so I can, in turn, make them real for you.

And, BTW: if you’re guessing that the third Kitty Pangborn novel has a somewhat horsey theme, you would not be far off. At all.

Happy trails!

National Bookstore Day: Let’s Go Shopping!

Let’s face it: bookstores have had a pretty rough ride this year. Between the (cheerfully monikered) economic meltdown (cue scary music now), the rising tide of electronic books and the hardcover price wars of earlier this autumn, there’s got to have been at least a few days in 2009 when some booksellers just didn’t even want to get out of bed.

All of this leads us to the Publishers Weekly-sponsored National Bookstore Day, the idea being that bookstores are front and center on one day: November 7th. Says PW:

Event organizers are hoping promotions tied to the day will attract local and national media coverage -- and, in turn, draw new customers into bookstores. “The number of stores already signed up meets our rosiest hopes for this first year. Many of the stores celebrating National Bookstore Day are recognized nationally as leaders, so we're gratified that this idea has been endorsed by these savvy booksellers,” said Ron Shank, PW group publisher. Among the offerings that bookstores are planning are author signings, children’s activities, discounts, extended hours, free refreshments, marathon “read-aloud” events, raffles and writing contests.

Though the idea is laudable, here at the 11th hour, National Bookstore Day doesn’t seem to have gained the traction garnered earlier this year by American thriller author Joseph Finder’s grassroots “Buy Indie Day” earlier this year.

Even so, every conscious step taken moves us in the right direction. The message is one to cherish and remember: books are important. So are the people who buy, make and sell them. The place books have in our lives is of value: it’s meaningful to us. And if we take all of this as read, it behooves us to do everything in our collective power to keep independent bookstores not only strong and out there, but going. And how do we do that? We try to raise awareness. We raise readers. We spread the word.

And then we shop.

The Great War & Modern Memory

My review of the new edition of that historical classic, The Great War and Modern Memory is on January Magazine today. If you have an interest in World War I from either a research or a point of interest perspective, you will not do better than this book. The new edition has lots of great new photos and illustrations and is even better than the 1975-published version which won the National Book Award over 30 years ago.

My January Magazine review is here.

Cat Bowling?

Hey, I don’t make this stuff up, you know.

(And, no: it isn’t mean. They’re not real cats. Or witches. Or balls. Or anything.)

This one is kinda halloweenie.

Cheese or Font?

A bit of Friday fun.

Warnock? Rotis? Baladi?

Are they kinds of cheese? Or fonts?

Montasio? Iberico? Graviera? Serat?

Again: are they fonts? Or cheese?

I think this game is ridiculously funny. So funny, in fact, I have to share it with you. All that fun is right here.

Living History

Though nothing can take the place of old-fashioned research, it never fails to astonish me what type of arcana a well thought out Google search can produce. Take for example this bit of trivia I found today on Time magazine’s amazing online archive. From a Time piece from August 1, 1932:

Of the 1,500 athletes who had arrived in Los Angeles last week for the Xth Olympic Games, saddest were 69 Brazilians. They had brought with them 50,000 bags of coffee but no money. When they tried to land at Los Angeles, they were unable to pay the head tax of $1 per man. Having no radio, they learned for the first time about the Brazilian revolution. Appalled, the Brazilians set about selling coffee to pay their expenses.

Now the book I’m working on includes absolutely nothing about the price of coffee in Brazil... or Los Angeles, for that matter. But this is the sort of detail that can make a book really live for an author. And if it lives for me, it will live for you.

Research on the X Olympics continues...

When History is a Mystery

One of the things that is both interesting and frustrating about writing books set in what is the relatively recent past is that you get a taste for just how malleable history can be. When you look back, for instance, on things that happened during the Restoration or the Renaissance or any time in the more or less long ago, enough time has passed that there is some historical agreement. With more recent history, sometimes you discover that the amount of time that has passed is so brief, no one has yet had a chance to get concerned about the things that are missing and the big decisions that are still to be made.

Let me give you an example. The third Kitty Pangborn novel, the book I’m currently calling Death Was in the Blood, takes place -- as all books featuring Kitty have and will -- in Los Angeles in 1931. This time out, some of the action takes place against the backdrop of Olympic preparation, as the Olympics, of course, took place in Los Angeles in 1932.

They were, in many ways, ground-breaking Olympics. On that there is agreement. For one thing, it was the height of the Depression. A number of countries pulled out, as they just couldn’t afford to send their teams on such a big trip. Less than half the number of participants of the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam competed in Los Angeles in 1932.

Those 1932 Olympics in LosAngeles was the first time in history that an Olympic village was built to house the athletes. It was apparently really fantastic, with dining halls and entertainment centers and even a screening room where the athletes could watch moving pictures of their performances of the day. Movie stars would drop by every night and give impromptu shows (so L.A.!), but it was all for the men. The women athletes were housed in a hotel on Wilshire and got left out of all the fun though, in fairness, 1206 men competed and only 126 women.

So all of this is known absolutely: we have first-hand accounts, we have photos and even film. What we don’t know exactly is where this village was because it was dismantled right after the Olympics and, near as anyone can tell, beyond one structure that ended up -- and still stands -- at the police academy in Elysian Park, the rest of that ground-breaking 1932 Olympic village is gone without a trace.

There is agreement that the village was located in the Baldwin Hills, but it might have been in the Blair Hills, an area that’s now actually part of Culver City. Or it might have been near Crenshaw and Vernon in the View Park area and, according to the Baldwin Hills Park Web site, “One account places the village in the Crenshaw or Angeles Mesa district, in the hills to the west of Crenshaw Boulevard south of Vernon Avenue. The roads Olympiad Drive and Athenian Way in this area commemorate its history.”

From the same source:

The village comprised between 500 and more than 600 two-room dwellings and included post and telegraph offices, an amphitheater, a hospital, a fire department, and a bank. The village was built on between 250 and 331 acres that was loaned by the heirs of the estate of Lucky Baldwin. The buildings were removed after the games.

This account is pretty consistent with what I found in other sources: references to developer and stock market speculator Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin, who died in 1909 but whose fortune -- by the early 1930s -- was still largely intact. Mentions of the Olympic village being constructed at great cost during the Depression, then mysteriously disappearing right after the games.

But there are enough things not mentioned or hinted at that if you’re of a certain disposition or mindset, your mind fills in the blanks. The construction of a whole village during the Depression -- one that needed to look good, yet not be required to stand the test of any significant amount of time? That would have been a plumb contract. A multi-million dollar contract, even in the dollars of the day. One worth killing over? Well, perhaps you’ll wait and see.

Bouchercon or Bust

I’ve been Indiana dreaming all weekend, while Bouchercon, the 40th world mystery convention, takes place in Indianapolis. Fortunately, I’m not stuck without connection because The Rap Sheet has been delivering amazing coverage from the event. Results from the various awards handed out there, various news items and even some fantastic interviews. Thanks to the magic of labels, you can see it all collected here.

The Hats Have It

I love the implication here: that the weatherman has something to do with the outcome of the weather. A scary thought, actually!

Like all of the very best things, I found this clipping on my way to something else: while researching something for the third Kitty Pangborn novel, the book currently going under the working title of Death Was in the Blood.

And forgive me, please: I’ve been so immersed in this book and other stories that I’ve been neglecting this space. I won’t promise to try to do better -- it always irks me when people talk about how they have to write something for their blog. If they feel they have to do it, how fresh and necessary can it actually be? And, anyway, for me it’s never a shortage of things to write, but rather the time in which to write it. So many stories to tell, right?

So I won’t promise to do better, but I think I will try to do this: I encounter so much great stuff when I’m researching the Kitty Pangborn books. I think I’ll share more of it here. Some of it funny, like our hat men, here. Some of it deeply interesting and some of it the stuff of which lost secrets are made.

Gourmet Gone

Hard to believe Gourmet Magazine is no more. (Though someone needs to tell their Web team: the Gourmet site was still flogging subscriptions as of a few minutes ago.)

Foodisima covers the magazine’s folding here:

On Twitter, Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl was necessarily -- and characteristically -- succinct. “Dishes done,” she tweeted. “All gone. Great gathering at the house tonight. I so love the people I've worked with at Gourmet. Hard to believe it's over.”

Walking the Plank and All That Good Stuff

I swore I’d be ready this year. But I was not. Because here it is, September 19th, and I’m still not talking like a pirate.

“Arrrr...”

Not quite it, right?

In trying to come up with something to share with you about this... ah... auspicious occasion, I came across two amazing facts.

1. International Talk Like a Pirate day is a major observance in the parody religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And...

2. It is the only holiday that came into being due to a sports injury.

Both of those things are explained here.

Meanwhile, if you want to get some pirate into your life right now and you’re on Facebook, Pirate is actually a language preference. When on Facebook, scroll down to the bottom of the page. On the extreme bottom left, right after the Facebook copyright mark, it indicates what language you’ve chosen. Click it and you’ll get options. One of those options is English (Pirate) Beta. Choose this, but be careful to remember how you did it so you can do it again to make things go back to normal. This is one of Facebook’s big lessons: having a computer talk to you in pirate is amusing for about seven minutes. After that it’s just annoying.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

The Call of the Sleeping Giant

I’m on my way out the door to the Sleeping Giant Writers Festival. (A trip that will involve both water and air travel.) The Festival is held annually in Thunder Bay, Ontario, this year from August 28th-31st. Other presenters includes Scott Steedman, Leilah Nadir, Sheree-Lee Olson, Fred Stenson, Betsy Struthers, Moira Farr and the fabulous Lynn Coady. From the Web site:

The largest literary festival in Northern Ontario, held in the shadow of Thunder Bay's Sleeping Giant, the Sleeping Giant Writers Festival brings premier Canadian authors to the city for a weekend of workshops, readings, and interaction with festival attendees.

If you’re in the area, check the schedule and come by. It sounds like a really great festival. I’ll be taking part in several signing events, a gala (when have I ever missed a gala?) and teaching a couple of workshops: one on the art of the interview, and another on writing mystery and thriller fiction. More details are here.

Let Me Set the Scene For You

Dominick Dunne passed away today at home in Manhattan. I cover it briefly -- with links -- on January Magazine. Marie Brenner breaks our hearts with her remembrances online at Vanity Fair:

Let me set the scene for you. That phrase was Dominick at his best, at once intimate and detached. His voice always pulled you in, whether as a reader or as a friend. I had not known what to expect on that last day. It seemed impossible to believe that Nick, whose life had been defined by astonishing reinventions, would not find a way to navigate another act.

I’ll miss his sweetly bitchy takes on everything he set those big round glasses on.

Rat Poison Threatens UK’s Hedgehog Population

I am always astonished at how often normally environmentally aware people will resort to using rat poison around their homes when faced with a rodent problem. However, no matter the circumstances, using rat poison is always a bad idea. It can get into the food chain so easily. Where I live, there are feral cats, eagles, hawks and other wildlife that feed on rodents and never mind neighborhood cats and dogs... and my own. And I’d never even considered the fact that mice killed by poison might be ingested by slugs and insects who would then be eaten by songbirds.

An article in today’s Telegraph really underlines the importance of not using rat poison at any time:

New research showed the presence of anticoagulants -- chemicals used to kill rodents by stopping the blood clotting -- in “significant levels” in hedgehog corpses. This could have an impact on their survival, breeding success and mobility, the charity fears.

We don’t have hedgehogs where I live. But this connection between hedgehog deaths and rat poison makes it very clear that this is not suitable stuff to use in your home:

Dr Claire Dowding, from the University of Bristol, who carried out the research, said: “The number of hedgehogs affected is quite worrying. It's difficult to tell exactly how these animals are exposed to the chemicals.

“They may be eating them directly, scavenging on dead rodents that have been killed by the poison or eating their favourite diet of slugs and snails that have fed on the poison bait.”

I do understand why people use poison. Faced with a rodent problem, people can feel desperate and poison is invisible. It’s possible to just put it out and then not think about it again. But resist the urge. There are other things you can do: traps, cats and changing the way you manage certain parts of your life so that pests are discouraged can really help solve the problem. But don’t use poison. It’s horrible stuff that kills indiscriminately. Other animals and even children can easily be exposed. In the greener world we’re all trying to build, it’s the very last thing that we need.

The Telegraph piece is here.

Wit and Style?

Today on her blog, author Tara Hanks (The Mmm Girl) offers a gorgeous review of Death Was in the Picture. Here’s a tiny excerpt:

Death Was In The Picture is the second in Linda L. Richards’ series of mysteries, set in Depression-era Los Angeles and featuring Kitty Pangborn, a debutante fallen on tough times and now working as secretary to an alcoholic private eye, Dexter J. Theroux.

As the title suggests, this novel focuses on Hollywood, and more specifically the Motion Picture Production Code, a set of moral guidelines relating to movies -- specifically their depiction of sex and violence -- devised by a Catholic priest, and implemented by Will Hays, a former Postmaster General.

And later:

Linda L. Richards has the wit and style to make this more than an exercise in nostalgia. When she writes about the excesses of the twenties, and the harsh economic realities of the Depression, it is hard not to be reminded of what a similar situation we find ourselves in now, almost a century later.

The full review is here. Hanks’ 2008 review of Death Was the Other Woman is here.

Mystery/Crime Staff Picks

Many thanks to the Essex Library for choosing Death Was in the Picture as a “not to be missed staff pick” of the year so far. Others picked included Jo Nesbo’s Nemesis, Jacqueline Winspear’s Among the Mad and Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. Strong company, indeed. You can see the full list here.

Archie & Veronica Will Tie the Knot

After all these years -- 67 of ’em, to be exact -- Riverdale will rock this month when Archie and Veronica tie the knot. At least, that’s what the Archie blog let readers know back in May when the announcement caused a hailstorm of “Oh, no, poor Betty!” type comments from deeply concerned fans.

It will take six comics to tell the whole story, but the first one, Archie Marries Veronic Part I: The Proposal, goes on sale September 1st. Our breaths? They’re held.

Meanwhile, the story of an angry Betty fan who sold the Archie #1 comic he’d been holding onto for many years broke yesterday. Don’t feel too badly for him, though: sale of the comic brought $38,837 at auction.

How to Fight

When you write about hand-to-hand combat or even street fighting, it’s important to know how to describe the thing you’re trying to share. Should any of that come up in your work, you might end up being glad you watched this video.

Writing Your Novel: Insert Fairy Dust Here

I wanted to write a novel for such a long time. In fact, I started several that, when I look back at them now, I can see were doomed for failure. At that point in my life, I had such a huge emotional commitment in not finishing the books I began. It’s hard to explain. It’s as though I felt that it was presumptuous of me to even try to write a novel. Who did I think I was? I was a writer, sure. And at that point I’d written hundreds -- and even thousands -- of articles for newspapers and magazines all over the world. I’d written non-fiction books. But none of those things were novels. And a novel is… well, it’s different. It seemed to me that a novel -- at least, one worth reading -- would have to have all the ingredients necessary to make any piece of writing worthwhile, plus it would have to have a little more. Magic. That’s what was needed. An interesting story. Strong characters. Good grammar. Good spelling. And magic. Only where the hell did I ever think I’d manage to get fairy dust?

So for a very long time, I didn’t write a novel. And then one day I did. In 2002 I got a fire in my gut. The pieces fell together. And I worked and I worked and I worked at it. And then one day, I had it: a finished book. Mad Money. And I was proud of it. I felt it might even have some of that magic: like the fairy dust had managed to get in. But I was shy talking about the book. Nervous in a way, I guess. Presumptuous. There it was again. What would anyone say?

One by one I told my friends and family that I’d written a novel and, as I did, I waited for their reactions. Expecting, I don’t know what: certainly less than they gave. “Of course you have,” several people said to me and “what took you so long?” And also “Finally!” It seemed that the only one surprised I’d written a novel was me.

Why do I share this with you now? It seems to me that if there is a single thing that connect most authors, it’s this: we get in our own way rather a lot. We make excuses. We give ourselves reasons. We tell ourselves stories. And all of this in order to explain why we can’t write the thing that, on some level, we understand must be written.

None of it matters. The demon voices in our head must be ignored, no matter how dire they make their warnings, no matter how effective-sounding the excuses they dream up. Just write.

And finally: the magic. The fairy dust. It can’t be inserted. It can only find its way. We sit down and tell our stories and we do that until our heart sings. And when we’re done, the magic is there or it is not. Either way, we had the journey. In the end, nothing else matters. We have our story. We ride it away.

Quote of the Week: Frank McCourt

“At 66, you're supposed to die or get hemorrhoids ... I just wrote the book and was amazed and astounded that it became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. It still hasn't sunk in.” -- Frank McCourt after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Angela’s Ashes in 1997.

Frank McCourt died in New York yesterday after a long illness. He was 78. More here at January Magazine.