The bare essentials of safety, from Air New Zealand

In the USA it’s a holiday weekend, which always means lots of travel. Even if you’re not flying to Auckland, here’s a flight safety video that you really ought to pay close attention to.

You may now thank me for my concern with public safety.

The CWA Dagger Awards

The Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards ceremony will be July 15th in London. These are Britain’s longest established book awards, and this year I’m emceeing the ceremony.

A few things are different about the awards this year:

1. The CWA is awarding four Daggers on July 15th: the Debut, the Short Story, the International, and the Dagger in the Library. The shortlists for three other awards — the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and the Gold Dagger — will be announced on the evening. Those awards will be given out at a separate event in the autumn, about which I have to stay mum for the moment.

2. Readers, crime fiction fans, and the public — that is, YOU — are invited to apply for tickets this year. Yes, you can all turn up to see famous authors from Britain, Europe, the United States and Canada, plus me.

If you’re interested, here are the details:

The Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards
Wednesday 15th July 2009
Tiger Tiger, Haymarket, London

Guest speaker: Mark Billingham

6.30 pm Pimms reception
7 pm awards
Drinks and canapes to follow

Tickets are £45 each.

And! Each ticket holder is entitled to half-price dining at Tiger Tiger on July 15th.

If you’re interested, or would like to spread the word, tickets can be ordered by sending a cheque and SAE to:

The CWA
PO Box 273
Borehamwood
Herts
WD6 2XA

There’s also a ticket application form that can be printed from the CWA website:

http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/2009/tickets.html

The real China Lake

Jan writes:

I live in Ridgecrest, so China Lake got my attention in the Kindle store. What a kick to read a book that takes place here! I found your descriptions so satisfying. Other books in this setting have been off the mark IMO. The weirdest thing was Evan going by her neighborhood on base that doesn’t exist anymore. I taught middle school on base with teachers who talked about the same thing. Of course, I’m curious how you’re familiar with China Lake. Do kids from here really end up in Santa Barbara?

Jan, I’m glad you find the setting believable. Every writer wants the world of their story to seem authentic. But it’s always great when a reader says that a setting rings true to the real-world place where they live.

Ridgecrest, California, is the real-life town in the Mojave desert that’s home to the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake. Locals call the whole area China Lake, and that’s what I called the town in my novel because, well, I have in-laws who live there, and if I change all street names and move some bars around on the imaginary checkerboard, nobody can claim I’m talking about their neighborhood or regular hang-out. At least that’s the theory.

I know about China Lake because my husband grew up there. His dad was a naval officer stationed at the base. My husband probably attended the middle school you’re talking about. I’ve spent a lot of time in the town, and have heard many, many stories about the place, most of them hair-raising and centered on the teenage antics of the Husband and the Husband’s Rowdy Little Sister, and which I hope our children never hear.

And yes, there really are neighborhoods on the base where the houses have been demolished but the roads remain. There are also cowboy bars where you can play pool while local bands play hard-charging rock music. The Husband earned the money for college by playing in those kind of bands.

There’s really a Sidewinder missile in the local museum, and little boys like to make sound effects and pretend they’re its target.

And kids from China Lake really do end up in Santa Barbara. That’s where I met the Husband. Years later, when I taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I had a surprising number of students from Ridgecrest.

I like China Lake. I love the endless vistas, the brutal mountain ranges that ring it, the solid blue skies. That’s one reason I set a book there.

Thanks for asking.

Hail, ants!

“Ant mega-colony takes over world.”

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

… In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the ‘Californian large’, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

“But further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects’ global ambition.”

The research team chose wild ants from the European, Californian, and Japanese super-colonies.

They then matched up the ants in a series of one-on-one tests to see how aggressive individuals from different colonies would be to one another.

So the research team has actually trained these ants to fight?

And so the ants’ ambitions come closer to fruition, and humanity nears the day when it toils in the ants’ underground sugar caves.

Old school: right hook

“Pensioner batters burglar with right hook.”

LONDON (AFP) – A pensioner and former boxing champion beat up a knife-wielding burglar who broke into his home, leaving him battered and bruised, newspapers said Wednesday.

Frank Corti, 72, said he felt compelled to defend himself after the drunken man threatened him and his wife at their home in the village of Botley near Oxford.

The burglar has been sentenced to four years in prison.

Pop quiz for British readers: How many of you saw the headline and presumed that the story would end with the pensioner arrested for assault and battery?

Hot

It’s about 95 degrees outside and I don’t have air conditioning. My kids are lying on the floor in front of a fan. The Labrador is pawing the keyboard, trying to book a flight to his ancestral home in northern Canada. The cat found a barber’s hair trimmer and has shaved off all his fur. And my computer is getting so hot that a few minutes ago, Microsoft Word refused to cut and paste some dialogue in my new novel. (First Bill Gates tries to correct my grammar — now he’s editing the words in my characters’ mouths? I don’t think so.)

And the keyboard is actually so warm that it’s melted away my fingerprints. I think it’s time to shut down for the afternoon.

I’ll be back when it’s cooler, or when I’ve cracked a few safes without leaving prints.

“Tiny Shrew Shot Venom Through Blood-Red Teeth”

Yes, the blog has been on a crazed-animal jag lately. But can I help it if Fox is reporting the discovery of a mega-shrew?

Comments welcome. Play nice.

“Somehow, the orange puffy snacks were used in the assault.”

Tennessee couple accused of assault using Cheetos.

Well, there goes the scene I was planning to write, where Evan Delaney and Cousin Tater resolve their differences by fighting in a pit filled with the things.

Must… look… away…

An advance copy of the British edition of The Memory Collector arrived today. You know what this means, right?

I’m not talking about the fact that in a few weeks this editon will begin to hit bookstores in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and elsewhere in the Far East. I mean that this cover is shiny. Mesmerizing. Kind of cool and gritty. And once you set eyes on it, you cannot look away. You Must Read This Book.

Or something. I love this cover. It was designed by Henry Steadman.

Of course it involves Elvis. You knew it would.

Kate writes: “That didn’t take long.”

“‘Jackson’s not dead; he’s living in a bunker with Elvis Presley’: Conspiracy theories flood the internet.”

What it once was

The Jackson Five sing “I Want You Back.” Irresistible. And nothing beats Motown.

This is your animal’s brain on drugs

An even better headline than “Why do cows attack?”

“Stoned wallabies make crop circles.”

Me and the armed robber

My earlier post about Wikipedia led some commenters to check out my entry. In response, Dana Jean asked:

And, don’t want to drag up bad memories or be nosy, but I may and I’m going to: Did you really have an encounter with an armed robber and he asked about your daughter? What the hell did he/she ask? That is so creepy and scary. I’m assuming that you were okay and Kate? was okay from this experience?

She’s referring to this quote, drawn from an interview with Shots magazine:

Gardiner explained that in her writing, she tries “to explore the boundary between morality and wrongdoing. When is it justified to go outside the law to right a wrong? When can you use ruthless violence to defend somebody you love? Possibly I came to reflect on this issue after an armed robber asked questions about my little girl.”

Let me put people’s minds at ease. Sort of.

Yes, I did have an encounter with an armed robber. On the phone. My daughter Kate never came in contact with him. But the fact that he knew about her, and mentioned her, was enough to freak me out.

Here’s how it happened: I appeared on Jeopardy. I appeared four days running, actually, and that gave people all over America a chance to see my face and hear Alex Trebek ask where I lived and whether I was married and whether I had kids. And though I didn’t know it at the time, among the people who were watching the show were the incarcerated felons of the USA, who have plenty of time in their schedules to watch fast-paced quiz shows.

The other thing they have time to do is phone lawyers, seeking to appeal their convictions. And that’s what one man did. He knew from the television show that I lived in Santa Barbara and managed to find a way to reach me by phone with the line, “I need an attorney.”

So I took the call. And it only took a minute to realize that this guy really just wanted to talk about seeing me on TV, and about the money I’d won, which Jeopardy flashes at the bottom of the screen every seven seconds, and about that adorable little girl I’d mentioned on the air, and whether I’d like to marry him. Because he’d sure like to marry me.

As you can imagine, I hung up, redialed the prison, and spoke to the warden. He clarified things for me: No, this fellow wasn’t a jailhouse lawyer who was about to be released (contrary to what he’d assured me, right before the marriage proposal). He was serving 15-20 years for armed robbery.

What, I asked, did he rob?

A U.S. Postal Service truck. With a gun.

Stark naked.

And that’s all there is to the story, except that the warden has put me on a list of people who are to be notified when this convict is released. I’m still waiting for that call, and hope I continue to wait for a long time.

First to squeal across the finish line wins

Northern Minnesota town to hold pig race for U.S. Senate seat.

Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken will see their battle decided by surrogates — pigs — in a race to the finish.

The “pork barrel race” to end the Coleman/Franken election is part of Nevis’ Fourth of July festivities that includes the inaugural Nevis Pig Races, says Dave McCurnin of the Nevis Chamber & Commerce Association.

“‘Whichever of these cute babies gets to the finish first will drop the curtain on this never-ending and much wrung-out election.’”

“This (the pig race) is more exciting than the eight-month wait now in the Supreme Court,” McCurnin said. “This should have been decided by an NFL referee — they decide on the field.”

“To keep the race clean, McCurnin said the piglets will be given drug tests.”

Will race officials go for political authenticity, and have the piglets race toward a trough?

(Thanks to Alicia for the link.)