The happening place

I’m in Los Angeles for Left Coast Crime, the mystery conference for the country’s looser nuts.  It doesn’t begin until this afternoon, which leaves me a few hours to frantically catch up on work.  And to write a blog telling about how I’m frantically catching up on work, which seems like cheating, somehow.

In any event.  Rhys Bowen, Hannah Dennison, and I had a lovely evening at the sparkling Santa Monica library last night, chatting about Writing Brit (and in their case, Being Brit.)  Thanks for those of you who came out to hear us, and for my ladies in the front row wearing their shiny new God of the Hive t-shirts, especially Marjorie who flew across the country for the conference, thus making herself an Honorary Loose Nut.

We had three winners of the broadside, “A Venomous Death”: Kathy R (A Goodreads friend), Ashley W (who got the latest diabolical puzzle correct), and Jessica W (from Twitter.)  congratulations, ladies.  And don’t forget to send me those zingy Sherlockisms, for your chance at winning an advanced reading copy of The God of the Hive.   Even if the dog did nothing in the night time except wake everyone on the block.

And speaking of winners, look at what Rori did to illuminate Mary Russell’s MyStory, here.  If you’re moved to illustrate the story yourself, the instructions are here, and the winner gets instant fame, and a broadside of “Birth of a Green Man.”   And maybe more if you catch me in a generous mood…

And now, back to the action in Los Angeles!

A Case in Correspondence: Week Eleven

What’s this I see? Mary Russell has a new post over on her MySpace page? Episodes of “A Case in Correspondence” will appear there Wednesdays throughout our Twenty Weeks of Buzz, and on Fridays you can find them here at Mutterings.

What on earth are the world’s greatest detective and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, up to now?

Also — make sure to visit the Illuminated MyStory page this week as we add the first gorgeously decorated entries! Perhaps you’ll feel inspired to send in your own…

Folly

Each Tuesday during this spring’s Twenty Weeks of Buzz, I’m talking about a different one of my twenty books, with remarks and reflections about the writing process. This is the eleventh week, so I’ll be looking at Folly, published in 2001, which won the Macavity award and the Washington State Award.

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Sometimes, a book’s greatest review does not come in print. Folly garnered some fine reviews from important journals, but the one I was proudest of was the comment that, following the release of an in-house advanced reading copy, the Random House elevators were filled with wistful conversations that ran the line of, “You know, I was thinking of taking some time off and maybe building a place…”

Ah, the hazards of letting a novelist loose in the House!

Rae Newborne is not so named by an accident. Folly is the story of a woman who builds her house, and herself, under circumstances that straddle the line between drear and dire: her family lost, her blood chemistry ruled by antidepressants, a woman to whom extreme solitude is a positive alternative to the life she leads. Her decision is based on the feeling that, contrary to Dunne, a woman can be an island: bleak, solitary, silent.

But, surrounded by other islands.

What makes a community? Flying over the vast middle of this country, time and again one sees the lines of an east-west road bisected by a north-south road, and there springs up a cluster of houses. With all the miles in between to settle, people choose to live with neighbors.

And in an aquatic terrain, people come together in their solitude, and make a community. Realize, this was a novelist’s fancy when the book was written, but I was fascinated to discover, when I was asked to the San Juans for a community read of Folly, to discover that I had it more or less right, and that the islanders recognized themselves in the pages of the book. Up to and including, I was delighted to hear, a knowing recognition of someone very like the character of Ed, the tattooed philosopher-boatman who delivers many…necessities of life among the island’s residents.

It’s raining Sherlockisms!

The Sherlockism is a pithy turn of phrase as favored by Mr Sherlock Holmes:

* “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

* ”I saw no one.”
   ”That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.”

* ”I believe that you are the devil himself!” he cried.  Holmes smiled at the compliment.

* “The dog did nothing in the nighttime.”  “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

*  “I never guess—it is a shocking habit, destructive to the logical faculty.”

And of course, the sentence on which a thousand episodes of CSI are based:

* “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be true.”

Now, you have an opportunity to exercise your own tart pithiness.  Last year, I asked for submissions of Russellisms, and found it so hard to choose, I ended up with two that I incorporated into The God of the Hive, thanking their authors and reserving a copy of the hardback for them when it comes out in April.

This year, I’m asking for a Sherlockism that I can slip into the as-yet-without-title novel for 2011.  It hardly matters what the book is about for the purpose of the contest, it’s the pith that counts.  The prize?  A bunch of them: an Advanced Reading Copy of The God of the Hive, and your name in the thanks page of the next Russell and Holmes, plus a copy of that hardback when it comes out—but the best prize?  Knowing that your wit has been acknowledged down to the ages!

Sharpen your pencils and/or your quills, and let me see your brilliance by emailing as many submissions as you would like to bees@laurierking.com. The contest will be closed at the end of Sunday the 14th, and the winner announced here probably Monday (with all of the submissions listed over on the Sherlockisms page), unless I’ve been kidnapped by pirates at Left Coast Crime.

A Case of Correspondence: Part Ten

A series of communications (employing means as varied as re-used post cards and the agony columns of the Times) has come to light between Mary Russell and Other Important People, which will be revealed during the Twenty Weeks of Buzz. It follows the 1992 (not a typo!) tale published last year as MyStory (or, The Case of the Ravening Sherlockians.) The current saga posts in its legible version Wednesdays on Russell’s MySpace blog, then as the original documents Fridays here on Mutterings. To review the story, follow the sequence here.

Many of the messages seem to have been delivered by messenger service or in envelopes since lost—unfortunate for the sake of our research, but perhaps understandable when one considers the momentous gravity of matters at stake.

(I should mention that the full significance of the story will not become clear until one has read The God of the Hive, available in April–although members of the Virtual Book Club are debating it nonetheless…)

(Click on the images below to enlarge.)

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