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 image below to enlarge.)

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!

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…

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.

* “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.

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.)

We’ve also had an amazing, gorgeous Illustrated MyStory that we’ll post in the next week for your enjoyment and inspiration.

Next week—Seattle! On Monday, I’ll be reading from The God of the Hive at the Seattle Public Library (5009 Roosevelt Way NE)—join me at 6:30, and meet the new book. Then I turn around and head for the other end of the Left Coast. First, on Wednsday, it’s a sparkling event with Rhys Bowen and Hannah Dennison at the Santa Monica Library: “Murder Most British,” at 7:30.

Then beginning Thursday, it’s Left Coast Crime time in Los Angeles. If you haven’t signed up, or if you can only come one day of the conference, you can get a day pass here. Come hear me talk Holmes with Les Klinger, Jan Burke, Mike Connelly, and Lee Child. Wow.

And for those of you stuck at the farther reaches of the world, maybe it would help if you could hear me over the ether-waves? If so, here’s a couple snippets from my visit to SF in SF (Sci Fi in San Francisco) first, reading from Califia’s Daughters, and then a short interview with my buddy Rick Kleffel.

U

Z

Z

L

E  X  C  E  L  L   E  N  T

…….R

…….O

…….S

…….S

…….W

…….O

…….R

…….DO IT HERE AND WIN A PRIZE

That’s right, the wicked puzzler Marjorie has set another crossword, to eat up your hours between now and the end of Sunday, when we’ll draw a name from those who send in their answers and send them a prize.

Good luck!

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

I am a San Francisco native, more or less. My mother was born there, and her mother before her; although I have never lived within its boundaries, I have spent most of my life in the suburban communities circling its Bay, and I therefore claim matrilineal descent as a San Franciscan.

California is famously the place where, when the country was tipped, all the loose bits came a-rolling. Certainly we have our share of eccentrics: Emperor Norton was by no means the only San Franciscan to claim dual citizenship with a parallel universe.

Along with its eccentrics, San Francisco lives and breathes political activism. Something about the place stirs pride, passion, and a commitment to achieve perfection. The United Nations was born here, and gay rights came of age, and there is no civic element too minor for a demonstration in front of City Hall.

And at times, eccentrics and politics become enthusiastic bedfellows. The Sisters of Perpetual Disgruntlement are a fictionalization of the real-life (or as real as San Francisco life gets) Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Those “Sisters” express their politics through colorful demonstrations of an alternative lifestyle; my fictional ones have a harder edge.

One thing outsiders often miss, and even native San Franciscans may choose to put out of their mind, is that under all this wild show, hidden behind the parades of near-nude men and the Dykes on Bikes, drowned by the touristic siren calls of cable cars and Alcatraz and Chinatown and foghorns, in the edges of ten million photographs of street performers and twisty roads and breathtaking views, there exist the same pockets of physical and moral squalor to be found in any city.

Children go hungry, even in the City by the Bay. Men and women own what can only be termed slaves, who may live under the same roof. There are oppressed whose voices are too weak and timid to be heard.

And there are times when the outrage at these injustices wells up into the streets, when even a politically apathetic woman feels stirrings that bring to mind the bloody hand of the goddess Kali.

Night Work is a portrait of San Francisco seen through the eyes of a woman cop. Her city has a stratum of the wealthy and the liberal; it also has a layer of the downtrodden and invisible. She sees both, on a daily basis, and although her job is to be impartial, there are times when to focus on enforcing the law is to be blinkered to a wider injustice.

There are times when Kate understands rage.

(Photo thanks to bobster855.)