Library Journal gets my Friday off to a great start:

“Single mother Sarah Keller makes a living by tracking down folks on the run from, say, debt or prison. But maybe she’s on the run herself; after her five-year-old, Zoe, is in a school bus accident, tests show that she’s not the daughter of Sarah but of Sarah’s sister Beth, who was murdered. Now Sarah has a lot to prove. A standalone from the Edgar Award winner that should not be missed.”

And even better, LJ includes the novel on its list for “A Suspenseful Summer: Ten Thrillers for the Hot Months Ahead.”

Yes, you may picture me jumping around like a dork. Thanks for letting me brag on the good news for my novel. As you were.

Google Street View is an amazing tool for writers. If you want to get a sense of a faraway place you can’t visit, you can use Street View and feel as though you’re walking around the locale — whether that’s Tokyo, San Francisco, Rio, or the Australian outback.

Geoguessr is a game to warm a thriller writer’s — or geography geek’s — heart. It drops you at a random unnamed spot on the globe, and you have to guess where you are. Try it. I dare you to stop playing.

Mwahahaha.

First, Kate sends this link to the TV Tropes entry on Chekhov’s Gun.

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
—Trope Namer Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)

Chekhov’s Gun is a literary technique whereby an unimportant element introduced early in the story becomes significant later on…. Many people consider the phrase “Chekhov’s gun” synonymous with foreshadowing (and they are related), but statements the author made about the Gun can be more properly interpreted as “do not include any unnecessary elements in a story.”

Recently I used Checkhov’s Gun to explain why a movie some friends and I had just watched felt disastrously disappointing. The film was about two men repainting lines on country roads in Texas after a wildfire in the 1980s. It opened with a written introduction that said: The fire was arson. The perpetrator has never been caught.

Cut to: two guys having coffee over an open flame before they get to work in the fire zone. Hmm.

But no. The movie was just about two guys painting lines on country roads.

TV Tropes’ list of items stocked in “Checkhov’s Gun Depot” is entertaining. Kate particularly likes “Checkhov’s Volcano.” As do I.

Second, check out these pages from the official 1967 Star Trek writers’ guide.

THE STAR TREK SCRIPT FORMAT.

THE TEASER.

We open with action, always establishing a strong jeopardy, need, or other “hook.”  It is not necessary to establish all the back story in the teaser. Instead, we tantalize the audience with a promise of excitement to come. For example, it can be as simple as everyone tense on the bridge, hunting down a marauding enemy ship… then a tale-telling blip is sighted on the screen and the Captain orders “ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS.” Fade out, that’s enough.

Fantastic stuff, says she who has only once worn a Starfleet Captain’s shirt to a Star Trek exhibition. Honest.

Finally, 30 Pieces of Wisdom from Stephen King Novels.

It’s a great list of pithy quotes. Such as this one, from Wizard and Glass:

Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve.

There’s also a quiz. Enjoy.

I’ll go first.

I’ve never seen Citizen Kane. Or The Bodyguard.

I’ve never read Harry Potter. Or Catcher in the Rye.

I know. It’s shameful. In fact, a couple of years ago my children were so horrified to learn of the modern classics I’d never read that they bought me a bunch of them for my birthday. One of those was Salinger’s iconic book. And today it’s on my office bookshelf, 5,000 miles away, waiting. Kids, don’t kill me.

Anybody else?

Because everything rocks in Austin, attorneys should too.

And here are a few legal cases in the news. Maybe one of these people could use a rockin’ lawyer.

8 Charged in $45 million High-Tech Heist. And two of the guys posed for a photo with $40,000 of the cash the authorities say they were laundering.

Florida Man Escapes Police, Is Mauled by Alligator.

And finally, courtesy of the mighty Kitsap Sun: Man angry at neighbors goes on bulldozer rampage in Washington State.

I’m back in Austin. And I have plenty of things I need to do, including work. But being in Austin means I’m back within the gravitational field of Book People. Let’s see how long it takes before I’ve sold all my worldly goods to buy books there. Wish me luck.

A few weeks ago Publishers Weekly reviewed my upcoming novel The Shadow Tracer, saying: “Gardiner’s second stand-alone (after Ransom River) boasts another of the strong female characters she’s known for and enough pulse-pounding action to satisfy the most avid thriller fan.” This made me run outside and dance in a manner that would severely embarrass my children.

For a friend, however, the line about “strong female characters” grated. Ann Aubrey Hanson pointed out: “They never say that Lee Child writes strong male characters.”

True. Almost universally, thriller heroes in novels written by men are expected to be strong. Whereas some heroines might be strong and others, even when they’re main characters, might be fragile femmes.

Ann added: “I think it’s about the reviewer trying to indicate that you aren’t writing a ‘girl’s book’ and that you do the genre justice… but aren’t we past that by now?”

Maybe, maybe not.

It’s true that I try to inject strength into my characters — by the end of a novel, they’d better have picked up a banner and rushed into the teeth of battle, metaphorically at least. Besides, how many readers like to spend time reading about wilting flowers who cringe and require rescue? I don’t. To paraphrase my fellow crime author NJ Cooper: Who wants to spend 300 pages with wimps?

In any case, I am happy to have the women in my novels recognized for their strength. Because in my books, “strong” means that the heroine is:

• Resourceful
• Decisive
• Smart
• Creative
• Loving — to the point that she’ll risk herself for friends and family

It does not mean:

• She’s coldhearted
• She packs a gun
• She can kill a man fifty different ways with her bare hands
• She hates the world for what it has done to her

I try to write about women who are realistic, flesh-and-blood, full-hearted human beings. And because I write thrillers, these women are going to be thrown in front of spinning propeller blades. (Again, metaphorically. Probably.) Last autumn at Bouchercon, somebody suggested that my heroines are all tough women. I said that in my mind, they aren’t; they’re ordinary women facing tough situations. They’re people who must rise to the challenge.

Digging deep. That’s what my heroines have to do. Just like folks in real life. If that makes them strong, I’ll take it.

My son was born late in the evening one Wednesday in a city far, far away. A few minutes later, the obstetrician delivered another baby. Afterwards, holding our newborns, that mother and I chatted. The gal said that in years to come she planned to celebrate her daughter’s birthday as if she’d been born after midnight, on Thursday, so that the world would celebrate with her. Because Thursday was May 5: Cinco de Mayo. And that was a day for fiestas, unlike plain old Wednesday.

But celebrations have a way of turning up in unexpected ways. Today and every year I shout to my Star Wars lovin’ kid: May the Fourth be with you!

Happy birthday, Mark!

This was my view on a hike with a friend today. It’s May in Surrey, and a gorgeous  afternoon all around. It was great to spend some time in the fresh air — the walk sent me back to my desk all pink-cheeked and eager to inflict mayhem on my characters.

June 27th, 7 p.m.
Austin, Texas
Book People

June 28th, 6:30 p.m.
Houston, Texas
Murder by the Book

July 11-13
Grand Hyatt, New York City
ThrillerFest

I’d love to see any or all y’all at these events.

Book People is calling my event a book party. And when folks in Austin say party, they mean it. Plus Book People is becoming my local bookstore. I’m halfway to being an Austinite, and Book People is just around the corner from us. I can and do walk there, often. In January I was serendipitously in town the night Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke there, and when I got to the bookstore the line was around the block. The atmosphere was like a rock concert. A rock concert where the crowd excitedly discussed U.S. Supreme Court cases. I thought: These are my people. Last month I told myself that if I wrote 10,000 words by the end of the week, I could go to Book People and buy the new T. Jefferson Parker novel. Which I did. Plus two others. I now realize that rewarding myself with trips to the store could bankrupt me, which is why I have flown to London.

And Murder by the Book in Houston is one of my favorite mystery bookstores. It has supported my novels for years, since back when the books had to be imported from Great Britain. Plus, once readers enter this store, they never want to leave. It’s the Hotel California of bookstores. I know. I barely escaped last time. I’d still be there if they hadn’t found the little fort I built out of Michael Connelly hardcovers in the corner of the stock room.

As for ThrillerFest: It’s in Midtown Manhattan. There’ll be 400 thriller authors there. What’s not to love?