I haven’t been kidnapped by aliens. I’m just busy finishing the first draft of my next novel. So all my keystrokes will be devoted to that project until I send it off later today.
In the meanwhile, amuse yourselves. Seen any good movies? Cooked any good meals?
Posted in Writing
Got no time to blog here today, so I’m just going to send you directly to the blog of the wonderful Pop Culture Nerd, who’s celebrating her third blogoversary.
To help me celebrate, I asked a group of kickass ninja crime writers to answer the question: What’s the nerdiest thing you’ve ever done?
She’s running the answers all week. But you must guess which author committed which nerdy act. There are prizes.
Third Blogoversary Celebration: A Nerdfest and Giveaway.
Writers taking part include Karin Slaughter, Colin Cotterill, Brett Battles, Megan Abbott, Gregg Hurwitz, and me. Moi. The Nerd Princess. So take a look. And perhaps win book-related stuff.
UPDATE: Here’s the Nerdfest Finale — Quiz Answers, Nerdy Slide Show, and Giveaway Winners. Yes, there are then-and-now photos.
My day’s jammed. So here’s some brilliant footwork set to the industrial sounds of dubstep. Enjoy.
(Via Andrew Sullivan.)
This week I’m speaking at a couple of libraries. About thrillers. And writing. And how I work.
Tuesday 27 September 6:30-7:30 p.m.
Hammersmith Library
Shepherds Bush Road
Hammersmith
W6 7AT
Enquiries 020 8753 3823
Friday 30 September 7:30 p.m.
Datchet Library
Montagu House
8 Horton Road
Datchet
SL3 9ER
Tel: 01753 545310
email: datchet.library@rbwm.gov.uk
The rest of the week I’m wrestling the new novel into readable shape, finishing the first draft. Or, as they say in The Princess Bride, “Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity.”
Fun times! Maybe I’ll see some of you. At the libraries.
Posted in Writing
Tagged Datchet Library, Editing, Hammersmith Library, Libraries, Writing
What I wish I could have for my birthday.
The Princess Bride monopoly board.
It’s an homage to the movie in graphic form, not, alas, an actual board game. But how much would I love to play this game with the family? An inconceivable amount.
(Yes, even with the misplaced apostrophe.)
Andy O. sends this photo: “Outside the Camp Arifjan, Kuwait MWR Library…”
MWR stands for Morale, Welfare and Recreation. I’m glad the U.S. Army thinks my novel fits in at least one of those categories. And I love a library that’s open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
But can anybody figure out the book that’s shelved behind The Liar’s Lullaby?
Strangely, editing my not-yet-rough-draft of the new novel on a commuter flight from St. Louis to Chicago turned out to be tough. And editing in the center seat on a 747 to London turned out to be tougher. So I’m back at my desk, finishing up the work to turn this hot mess into a first draft that won’t make me want to kill myself. Picture my office: ankle deep with 450 scattered, typewritten pages scrawled with red corrections. There’s so much red ink it looks like Scream 5 was filmed in here.
To give you an idea of what I’m doing, here’s a hot-stinking-mess paragraph:
The water poured cold around her legs, cacophonous, bitterly cold. Her jeans clung to her. Her running shoes were sodden. She shivered and half-ran, half-swam across the river, grabbing every breath she could, wondering if each one would be the last. She’d lost track of time, and it felt like a pendulum had wound around her chest and begun to tighten.
And here’s the revised paragraph:
The current grabbed at her legs. The cold bit. She braced herself.
Yes, I’ve reached the Strunk & White phase of editing: Omit needless words. Omit needless words. Omit needless words.
Back to it.
Bouchercon has been a blast. And not just because I got to shoot a decommissioned Beretta 9 mm in a police fire range simulator. It’s been wonderful to see so many friends — readers and writers — and spend the weekend talking about great stories. Here’s the obligatory photo of the St. Louis skyline. The arch is really big, and it’s true: If you walk underneath it, you dematerialize and reappear in the Andromeda galaxy.
Last night on the way to dinner with Boba Brett and Pop Culture Nerd (great pho — I didn’t know there were such good Vietnamese restaurants in St. Louis) we passed the Scott Arena, where I nearly leaped out of the cab when I saw that the Foo Fighters were playing. It was only later that my son told me what’s been happening this week with the Foos:
Foo Fighters serenade Westboro Baptist Church.
Foo Fighters have responded to a planned protest by the Westboro Baptist Church.
The controversial church group were picketing the Foo’s show in Kansas City, but, ensuring they had the last laugh, Dave Grohl and co surprised the protesters with a comedy song.
Donning redneck beards, wigs and trucker hats, Foo Fighters took to the back of a pick-up truck to sing the specially penned ‘Keep It Clean’.
And here I didn’t know it was possible to love that band more than I already did.
Time to head to the airport. Enjoy your Sunday.
Thanks, St. Louis!
Students in the English Department at Trinity College Dublin got a surprise when a new professor appeared on the department’s website: Dr. Conan T. Barbarian, “Long Room Hub Associate Professor in Hyborian Studies and Tyrant Slaying.”
Dr Conan T. Barbarian was ripped from his mother’s womb on the corpse-strewn battlefields of his war-torn homeland, Cimmeria, and has been preparing for academic life ever since. A firm believer in the dictum that “that which does not kill us makes us stronger,” he took time out to avenge the death of his parents following a sojourn pursuing his strong interest in Post-Colonial theory at the Sorbonne. In between, he spent several years tethered to the fearsome “Wheel of Pain”, time which he now feels helped provide him with the mental discipline and sado-masochistic proclivities necessary to sucessfully tackle contemporary critical theory. He completed his PhD, entitled “To Hear The Lamentation of Their Women: Constructions of Masculinity in Contemporary Zamoran Literature” at UCD and was appointed to the School of English in 2006, after sucessfully decapitating his predecessor during a bloody battle which will long be remembered in legend and song.
Trinity College has, sadly, removed the hacked page. But the cache, with Prof. Barbarian’s full C.V., can be seen at the link above.
As the daughter of an English professor, I can attest that academic battles fully deserve to be memorialized through epic poetry and ululation.
Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, is in full swing. And as you can tell from the photo above, it’s all deadly serious, completely dull, and no fun at all.
If you ever wondered whether I have fun hanging out with other crime writers, here’s Exhibit 1. The Mystery Author.
Who wouldn’t want to hang out with somebody who dresses in a Boba Fett sweatshirt?
As for his secret identity, some clues: (1) He attended the same high school as the Husband, in Ridgecrest, California. Yes, he’s from China Lake. (2) He is disguised here as Boba Brett. (3) He wrote The Cleaner.
Here I am in St. Louis, about to give a speech at the Sisters in Crime “SinC into Great Writing” conference. Printout of speech: stapled. Hand puppets: packed. Ninja throwing stars: sharpened.
I’ll report back on how it goes.
This morning I’m hitting the road for Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis. Okay, hitting the skies. Actually, not hitting anything, Mr. Air Marshal, so you can put that Taser away, please…
While I’m in the air, here are a couple of news items for you to ponder.
First, Rich sends this link, and writes: “Had The Remnant been a bit more open minded maybe they wouldn’t have been so cranky.”
Arizona church is house of prostitution, police say.
(CNN) — A church called the Phoenix Goddess Temple has been accused of being a house of prostitution, and a six-month undercover investigation has resulted in the arrests of 20 women and men who worked there, Phoenix police said Friday…
During a Wednesday search of the Phoenix temple and two church-related sites in nearby Sedona, police seized evidence showing that “male and female ‘practitioners’ working at the Temple were performing sexual acts in exchange for monetary ‘donations,’ all on the pretense of providing ‘neo tantric’ healing therapies,” Phoenix police said.
No word on when, during their services, the temple gods and goddesses passed the collection plate.
And in other news, joining the Mile High Club now comes with a fighter escort:
Airplane bathroom sex blamed for terror alert.
With security officials on edge for the tenth anniversary of 2001′s World Trade Center attack, even something as trivial as passengers spending too much time in an airplane bathroom proved sufficient to cause fighter jets to be scrambled and bomb squads called in.
… According to law enforcement sources cited by ABC, however, the “suspicious behavior” in that case turned out to be two people “making out” in the bathroom.
The local ABC affiliate in Detroit, WXYZ, was a bit more explicit in its language, noting that “the ABC News National Security team is telling Action News that their sources say the flight was disrupted by two people having intimate relations in one of the bathrooms.”
To quote Dana Haynes: “I’m a believer in safe sex but a Tomcat with weapons-hot status seems like overkill.”
Posted in Random, Weird Crime
Bad spelling opens up security loophole.
A missing dot in an email address might mean messages end up in the hands of cyber thieves, researchers have found.
By creating web domains that contained commonly mistyped names, the investigators received emails that would otherwise not be delivered.
Over six months they grabbed 20GB of data made up of 120,000 wrongly sent messages.
Some of the intercepted correspondence contained user names, passwords, and details of corporate networks.
Poor punctuation is hazardous. I knew it.
There’s much to say about September 11, 2001, but I’m going to let Bruce Springsteen say it.
Remember, everybody, and take care of each other.
