Royal Wedding week: the Royal Wedding

Your Royal Correspondent here, reporting from my living room. Originally I was in the third row at Westminster Abbey (thanks to my home-printed “Little Moi” press credentials). But I was unceremoniously booted out when the Archbishop of Canterbury spotted me updating my Twitter feed from an iPhone hidden in my hat. So it’s back to the sofa for me.

This means my reportage will include running commentary from the guys in my family.

The royal whirl has been exhausting for a Californian-Oklahoman who doesn’t curtsy and who thinks “classic national music” means Motown. But here’s a summary of the morning’s highlights, as seen from my house.

To start with a random observation: Most of the royals rode to the church in a procession of minibuses. They looked like schoolkids going on a field trip.

Then, my husband and son couldn’t decide whether William and Harry were driving to the church in a Rolls or a Bentley. It went like this: Rolls. Bentley. No, Rolls… no — Bentley! Me: to be fully patriotic, they should have put a Rolls Royce jet engine on the back of the car. That would get them to the church on time. (Bentley? Bentley.)

(Photo: my son the Eagle Scout, trying to look like a Brit.)

The Queen then appeared, wearing yellow. My son: “She could have made a lot of money off the bookies if she’d bet on that.”

And at last, Kate Middleton emerged from her hotel and climbed into a Jaguar for the drive to the church. I shouted, “Bride! Bride!” Proving yet again that I am six years old at heart. And an incurable throwback.

The service:

The music was glorious. Now, I’m the daughter of a church organist, so choirs, trumpets, and processionals always choke me up. This morning was no exception. And as the first hymn finished echoing down the nave of Westminster Abbey, and the Archbishop stood before the bride and groom, my son said: “Mawwiage. Mawwiage!”

But as Rowan Williams went on to speak, in deep velvet tones, my son changed his tune. “How do you get a voice like that?” he said. “He gives Morgan Freeman a run for his money.”

Then it was vows, readings, and more music. As the cameras panned the guests singing classic, traditional Anglican hymns, the Husband spotted the Beckhams. He pointed. “Posh is lip synching.”

By this point, however, the choir was singing “Jerusalem.” That hymn always brings this Yank to tears. (“Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear — O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!” God, I’m crying as I type this.)

In sum: the bride looked radiant. The groom looked dashing. As did the best man — Harry wore spurs with his uniform. They completed him. I just hope he didn’t pick them up at last night’s bachelor party. Everything looked sleek, nothing more so than the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters that overflew Buckingham Palace before William and Kate gave the throngs the kiss they’d been waiting for.

Now the couple and their guests have gone back inside for wedding cake, line dancing, and a wicked game of Twister. And your royal correspondent is going to sign off. Thanks – it’s been fun.

(Photo: your correspondent. Adieu, cheries! That’s all, folks! )

(Cross-posted by Penguin.com at The Author’s Desk.)

A London revelry slideshow

Because Little Moi had so much fun playing royal correspondent in London this afternoon, here’s a whole collection of photos I took of the pre-wedding revelry.

And in the morning, when they play the national anthem, I’ll inevitably sing, “My country, ’tis of thee…”

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Royal Wedding week: the London street party

(Photo: Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey.)

At first I thought the gent with the parrot on his shoulder wanted to hail a taxi. The cab was stuck in the traffic outside Westminster Abbey, between a Dutch tour bus and the rainbow double-decker bus chartered by Pink Punters LGBT Nightclub of Milton Keynes. The Pink Punters’ bus was festooned with Union Jack bunting. The parrot was festooned with tropical green plumage. And two little girls in the taxi were leaning out the window, talking to it.

Welcome to London, the afternoon before the Royal Wedding. The place has let the lid off.

(Photo: Westminster Abbey base camp.)

The city’s streets are packed, and it’s a party. As your official Royal Correspondent (“Little Moi” on my press credentials, which I printed at home this morning) I spent the afternoon braving the crowds outside Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey.

(Photo: Little Moi with revelers in front of Buckingham Palace.)

(Photo: Piers Morgan, dodging taxis.)

It’s wall-to-wall reveling. Along the wedding parade route families are camped out. Tourists — from Bedouins in full black to Yanks in full-figured jeans — are ten deep. A BBC reporter says he’s “overwhelmed” with the number of Americans outside Buckingham Palace. Fortunately, he’s smiling when he says this. And the tourists are swamped by the Brits. Who are all in a great mood.

(Photo: Majesty!)

Across the street from Buckingham Palace, a temporary three-story television center has been set up, with booths for dozens of networks from around the world. And behind the temporary studio, in Green Park, dozens of satellite transmitters have been set up.

It’s a daunting sight. Listen, I’ve gotten married. Fifteen minutes before the ceremony, when I heard the organ start to play, I thought OH. MY. GOD. This is the real deal. That was when I took a big gulp. But that was nothing compared to the scene on the Mall this afternoon. If I’d seen this forest of satellite dishes getting ready to focus on my wedding, I would have completely freaked out.

(Photo: Best of British!)

A few minutes ago Prince William “took a walkabout” on the Mall. Women in the crowd, dressed as sunflowers and circus clowns, greeted him, champagne glasses in hand, like he was Justin Bieber.

All I got to see was Piers Morgan. Now I feel cheated.

Final sign that the media machine is revving into high gear: walking from the Mall to Parliament Square, we were overwhelmed by the drone of hovering helicopters.

Not everybody, of course, is happy about the wedding. Aside from misanthropes and anarchists, there was a group across the street from Westminster Abbey protesting that the Freemasons are a cabal of secret assassins. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either. But the complainers are a minority. As the BBC put it just now, “All but the hardest hearted wish this young couple well.”

Royal Wedding week: the build up

(Photo: Your Royal Wedding correspondent, decked out in her native dress.)

As your official Royal Wedding correspondent, I’ve been keeping my eyes on Britain’s newspapers and magazines. I’ve also been asking the man on the street — okay, the boy and girl in my kitchen — for opinions on the big event.

For today’s vox pop, I asked my son’s girlfriend how she and her friends plan to celebrate the royal nuptials.

She thought hard. “One group of friends are having an all-day party, where they’re going to be as English as they possibly can.”

My son: “So everybody will be eating curry and drinking Fosters?”

“No. One of them is baking miniature Victorian sponges,” she said, looking baffled and slightly stunned.

(Photo: Today’s tabloids and glossy magazines. Yes, that’s Rob Lowe, shirtless, on the Vanity Fair cover. Don’t judge me.)

And on the tabloid front, here are today’s most absurd and misleading headlines. Because nobody does absurd and misleading like the British tabs.

From The Mirror:

“A Hanson Prince. Latest star to get involved with our royal wedding campout is… Taylor Hanson. Remember him?!”

But it turns out Taylor Hanson isn’t actually camping out at Westminster Abbey with the Mirror’s little hotty totty reporter in her pup tent.

Having spent the entire Bank Holiday weekend wilting inside her tent for our Royal Wedding Camp Out, we decided to surprise our reporter by organising an extremely important phonecall from an iconic musician.

Taylor, the fittest one off Hanson.

Yes, the lovely, bushy-haired bloke dropped her a line, all the way from Oklahoma, to chat about the Royal Wedding and the band’s new single Give A Little.

Bonus tabloid excitement: The first sentence of that extract did indeed start with a dangling participle!

(Photo: the Mirror’s patriotic Royal Wedding Camp Out tent.)

Tabloid doozy 2 comes from The Sun:

“Kate Middleton ‘To Borrow Queen’s Diamond Tiara.’”

Well, no. Kate has not wrested the “glittering Russian fringe tiara” from the Queen’s hands. A woman has bet that she will.

A GAMBLER left bookies quaking last night after placing a bet worth £72,000 on Kate Middleton wearing this Russian fringe tiara as she weds.

If the posh punter’s hunch is correct, it will mean Kate, 29, has borrowed the priceless head-dress from the Queen to tie the knot with Prince William.

But while the headline is ridiculously misleading, the article brings up an important point: In Britain, you can bet on anything. Horse racing, of course. Soccer, sure — that’s why two big bookmaking chains opened franchises in my little suburb right after Chelsea Football Club moved its training facility to the town. Cobham is overrun with betting shops. There’s one next to the bookstore, and another one fifty yards away by the fish & chip shop. There are so many bookies in town that a friend once walked through the door of what she thought was a travel agency, only to find a wall of televisions and men cheering for the racehorses in the Grand National.

But betting in the UK isn’t limited to sports. Pick anything, and you can slap down money on it. British bookies let you gamble at Bingo, or bet on who’ll be chosen Archbishop of Canterbury.

And on what Kate Middleton’s going to be wearing on her head. Me, I bet it’ll be a smile.

UPDATE: Many thanks to the Penguin USA blog The Author’s Desk for cross-posting this.

Royal Wedding week

It’s Royal Wedding week. For me, this means it’s officially a three-day work week around these parts. Monday (Easter Monday) and Friday (Royal Wedding) are national bank holidays. But of course I’ll be working as your official American thriller writing correspondent for the marriage of HRH Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton. I’ve been asked by readers of this blog to give you the view from the British street. It’ll be my pleasure. As a Californian with Oklahoma roots, nobody’s better placed to explain Britain that than I am.

(Thanks to Rich for the link to Papa John’s Royal Wedding pizza.)

Sneak Peek II: The Nightmare Thief U.S. edition

Here’s the cover of the American edition of The Nightmare Thief. I love it. Oh, yes, I do. And if you’re getting the message that if you go into that forest, watch out, then the cover’s doing its job.

The novel will be published in the U.S. on July 21.

Here’s the jacket copy:

“Autumn Reiniger expects something special for her twenty-first birthday. Daddy’s already bought her the sports car, the apartment, and admission to the private college where she parties away her weekends. Now she wants excitement, and she’s going to get it.

Her father signs up Autumn and five friends for an ‘ultimate urban reality’ game: a simulated drug deal, manhunt, and jailbreak. It’s a high-priced version of cops and robbers, played with fake guns and fast cars on the streets of San Francisco. Edge Adventures alerts the SFPD ahead of time that a ‘crime simulation’ is underway, so the authorities can ignore the squealing tires and desperate cries for help.

Which is convenient for the gang of real kidnappers zeroing in on their target and a mammoth payday. Because what Daddy doesn’t know is that someone has spotted his hedge fund’s bulging profits, and the path to those riches runs right through Daddy’s Little Girl.

Working on a case nearby is forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett with her partner Gabe Quintana. When the pair encounters a suspicious group of men carting six sullen college kids to the woods for a supposed wilderness adventure, alarm bells ring. Jo takes a closer look, and winds up with an invitation to Autumn Reiniger’s twenty-first birthday party — a party they may never leave.”

That’s the set up for the story. I’ll talk more about the novel as publication gets closer, but for now, here’s one last preview:

(1) The novel features Jo Beckett.
(2) It also features Evan Delaney.

So:

(3) Yes, I had a blast writing it.

Extortionist clown gets three years

Clown-suited blackmailer convicted.

“Frank Salvador Solorza targeted his immigrant cousins in Redwood City, sending letters and calling them, posing as an immigration officer who threatened to deport them unless they paid him $50,000 to ensure that their papers ‘would be good forever.’” But the family called the police.

Solorza was arrested after picking up a bag which he believed contained $50,000, wearing “a clown suit, a clown glitter wig, a Pirates of the Caribbean hat (complete with dreadlocks), and sunglasses.” He was riding a small bicycle. He was carrying a receipt for the outfit from the House of Humor costume store in Redwood City.

No word on whether the arresting officers poured by the dozen out of an equally tiny police car.

Friday, sunshine, holiday…

It’s Easter weekend and the sky is cloudless, the lilacs are blossoming, and we’re all barefoot. I’m going to step away from the keyboard and enjoy the evening. Probably listen to some music, too.

What are you all listening to? I’ve picked up some new favorites in the past few weeks, including Florence and the Machine and Radical Face (whose “Welcome Home” so wonderfully accompanies the video of Ueli Steck’s record solo Eiger climb). I always need new tunes when I start a new novel, and these bands give me a good kick in the writing pants.

Oh, and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto.

And, hell, the soundtrack to Star Trek.

Have a good one.

Peeps Show V

It’s Eastertime. So here are the winning entry and 35 runners-up from the 2011 Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest.

“TSA Agents Get a Peep Show” is good. But my favorite is “Inpeeption.”

“If I do a mistake, I fall off.”

Ueli Steck sets the record for speed solo climbing the North Face of the Eiger.

Not only is this beautiful, and terrifying, it’s awe-inspiring. That mountain is a beast, and magnificent. The town briefly glimpsed in the film is 11,000 feet below the summit.

I tell myself I read books and watch films about climbing because my heroine Jo Beckett is a climber. And I do. But it’s also because these are incredible accomplishments.

Two hours, forty-seven minutes? Teams of people have spent days attempting that climb.

The music is “Welcome Home” by Radical Face. Which this freaking mountain has.

Two quick doses of British eccentricity

Papa John’s creates a “William & Kate Portrait Pizza” to celebrate the royal wedding.

“UK man disguised as mannequin snaps women in toilet.”

That is all. Except… where’s the number for pizza delivery?

(Thanks to Rich for the Papa John’s link.)

Novels by politicians: massacres, propaganda, and… stallions?

Because it’s Monday and we’re all thinking about serious things, or at least about another pot of coffee, here’s an essay in The Rumpus about the novels of politicians. Seth Fischer’s conclusion: politicians’ novels tend to be bad because politicians don’t empathize with their characters.

It’s not a surprise that these members want to write a novel, to create a fictional world that supports their worldview, that shows how their philosophy can help change the world for the better despite all the terrible things that they are tacitly accepting. Like almost every writer, they want to justify their existence through their words. But for the most part, it appears that they are writing ghosts, or character outlines. The characters in these books are ideas, not people, and I can’t blame them for making this mistake. For a politician to relearn how to actually empathize with a character, and hence a person, the pain of the responsibility of their power would become unbearable.

Okay, okay, you’re thinking — what’s with the introspection? You want examples of prose by politicians. Head over to Roll Call. This is from Blood of Patriots by Former Rep. Neil Abercrombie, now governor of Hawaii:

“Luisa retrieved an Uzi machine pistol from under her trench coat; Oscar pulled a Model 29 Smith & Wesson .44 magnum revolver with an eight-inch barrel from under his trench coat. Oscar shattered the skull of Speaker Jim Purdy at the Republican leadership table and picked off Representative Barbara Laine next to him. Holding the monster pistol with both hands and moving it in a smooth sweep, he then quickly picked off the guards just inside each door of the gallery. He squeezed off each shot with dispatch, yet each was deliberate and well aimed. Not once did he break his lethal rhythm with a miss.”

But that’s not what you’re really after, I can tell. Fine. Politico summarizes the findings, with juicy examples: The Worst Political Sex Writing. If you want to read erotic prose by Newt Gingrich (“Suddenly the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress”) or a pulse-pounding scene featuring with two horses going at it (“A ton of finely tuned muscle, hide glistening, the crest of his mane risen in full sexual display…”) by Senator Barbara Boxer, that’s where you’ll find it. But you’ve been warned.

And by the way, if you spend any time on The Rumpus, and are wondering: Yes, I want this mug. (The column that spurred the blunt and inspiring message on the mug is here.)

A view of Greenwich for a Sunday afternoon

I don’t have much to say at the end of a sunny weekend. So here’s a photo taken from the spot where I got to watch boats on the Thames, and runners digging in for Mile 19 of the London Marathon. The view looks south past the O2 Arena toward the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Someplace in there, smothered by haze and the low resolution of my phone’s camera, is the green laser that illuminates the Prime Meridian.

How’s your weekend?

“2030: All Books Will Be Crowdsourced and Cloud-Based.”

Some satire for the weekend.

First, The Onion discovers the true glamour of book tours:

Author Promoting Book Gives It Her All Whether It’s Just 3 People Or A Crowd Of 9 People.

“Sometimes 7:30 comes around and only three people are there, one of whom is my agent,” Massey said. “Well, rather than go through with the whole presentation I’d normally do for a group of six including my parents and a woman who appears to be mentally ill, I can make the reading into more of an intimate discussion where there’s a lot more back-and-forth.”

Reminds me of the booksigning in Westwood where I had to climb over barricades to reach the bookstore. The street had been blocked off because Get Smart was premiering next door. And yet half a dozen readers braved Hollywood security, found their way past the roadblocks, and managed to come hear me talk. And all of them were mentally on-the-ball. However, I’ve attended booksignings where the author was not so lucky.

And at McSweeney’s, James Warner foresees The Future of Books.

2040: Authors Will Become Like Tamagotchi.

Having determined that what readers want is a “sense of connection,” publishers will organize adopt-an-author promotions, repackaging writers along the lines of Webkinz and other imaginary pets. “Feeding” your favorite authors by buying their books will make their online avatars grow less pale and grouchy. If they starve to death on your watch you will lose social networking points. Book clubs will cultivate with their favorite writers the warm, fuzzy, organic bond a trainer develops with his or her Pokémon, a process that will culminate in staged fights-to-the-death between your author and the author sponsored by another book club.

The whole thing is priceless.