Side Trips

It seems like everything is hitting the fan at one time. I got the go ahead on the synopsis for the sixth crochet mystery and today got my revision letter for You Better Knot Die. Tomorrow (I’m posting this Friday night) is the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and I’m going to be in the Sisters in Crime booth Saturday from 4-6. Anybody in the area please stop by. The booth is near Royce Hall. Then it’s get ready to go to Malice Domestic in Washington DC. I’m leaving Thursday morning. It’s a chance to meet up with a lot of my writer friends, and hang out in the hospitality room with Joanna. Berkley takes all their writers out to a fabulous dinner at RuthChris Steakhouse (they have a nice vegetarian option) and there’s a banquet on Saturday night. I’m going to be on a panel Sunday morning about red herrings with a book signing afterwards.

The cool thing about the Washington Trip is that the subway station is practically in the hotel. The first time I discovered the subway, I was surprised at how easy it was to get to all the good place. A few stops and you come up in the Mall. One direction is the capital and the other the Washington Monument. And in between all the Smithsonian museums.

This year I’m planning to go somewhere different. I discovered if you take the subway in the opposite direction, it’s only a few stops plus a bus to Old Town Alexandria. I have an book that describes walking tours in and around Washington. That’s where I found out how close Alexandria is to where I’m staying. The book didn’t have any pictures, but it described various old buildings. I find the pictures never really tell enough anyway.

So for now, what it looks like is a bit of mystery to me. I know there is an old apothecary that in the old days had globes of different color water to tell people who couldn’t read when there was an epidemic of some bad disease like plague, cholera or yellow fever. There a Palladian style mansion which interests me because there was a whole thing about Palladian houses in Dead Men Don’t Crochet. I had to write about the style from pictures. It would be nice to see what it looks like in real life.

I know this trip is about meeting readers and spending some time with my agent and editor, but I always like to throw in some tourists stuff. I already signed up for next year’s Left Coast Crime because its in Santa Fe and I’ve always wanted to go there. Last year’s Left Coast was in Hawaii. I loved the day trip I took around the Kona coast. Each night I watched the sunset either from the balcony of my room or from down by the water. It was very cool to encounter a sea turtle sleeping on the black rocky beach.

It’s not going to be all fun and tours, though. I’ll be working on the sixth crochet mystery and the revisions for You Better Knot Die, though that will be mostly during my stop in Chicago after DC.

How about you? Do you like to mix pleasure in with business?















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Left Coast Crime

Even though this posts on Saturday, I’m writing it Friday night. Did I really get home from Hawaii this morning at 7? I was supposed to arrive at 5:30 a.m., but the plane was delayed two hours getting to Kona. The Kona airport is basically outside and it was kind of chilly. All those people dressed in their shorts were shivering. Actually the weather was very untypical the whole time I was there.

It is supposed to rain 11 days a year. It rained four of those while I was there. When the sun finally came out, the wind picked up and was bad enough to make them cancel the whale watching boat ride I was supposed to take. That’s not to say that any of it was uncomfortable. I kept the door to my patio open the whole time and let the air blow in my room. I sat on the beach watching the sunsets (when the clouds made it possible to see them), went on a wonderful trip to the north end of the big island and back with stops at the Parker Ranch and several towns, and watched a sea turtle as it slept on the shore.

It was my first Left Coast Crime conference. I met lots of great people and there were lots of fun activities. Opening night featured a dessert buffet and some getting to know you games. Every night there was some kind of entertainment. They screened a movie or some TV shows and one night there was a nicely done production of a play someone at the conference had written based on a Charlie Chan book. A lot of the actors were from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. They were very actorly in their performance, which I particularly enjoyed. One man seemed to have a signature wave of his arm he used to punctuate a scene. The play was preceded by a luau minus the pig for budgetary reasons. No loss to me the vegetarian.

The panels were fun. My brain is still in tired mode so I hope this makes sense. These panels were the first I’ve done since the crochet mysteries started coming out. It was extremely neat to find out some people in the audience had actually read one or more of my books. I have to admit that me and my fellow panel people all had a hard time with the Hot Sex and Cold Blooded Murder panel because most of the sex in our books is suggestive rather than overt and mostly off scene. I’m not sure what the people in the audience came expecting.

Even with having fun, I managed to get a lot of work done on the book I need to turn in next week. What a great place to work. I’d look over my shoulder and see the ocean – and sometimes rain drops. I also sat on the balcony crocheting samples of the patterns in the book.

Another really nice touch was the gourmet grocery store in the mall a short walk away. Instead of having to eat in a restaurant, I was able to pick up fruit and salads and vegetable sushi. I hate having to eat somewhere and order something and tell them to hold the shrimp, but I still get charged for it.

Hawaii didn’t go to daylight savings time, so between the half of my clocks at home that haven’t been changed to daylight savings time and my brain which thinks it’s earlier than it is, I’m still a little confused. But nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.

Aloha

I’m in Kona, Hawaii at Left Coast Crime. It is supposed to rain 11 days a year here. It was raining last night when I arrived and is raining again today. I am taking that as special. Not that the rain is bad here. Except that the wet pavement made my feet sleep out from under me this morning as I was carrying some bags back from the gourmet market. Not that that was too bad either. Some man came to help me up, apparently expecting the worst (he said something about how easy it was to break an elbow). I was fine. Not even a scrap or scratch. I got up and continued on back to the hotel.

This is the first conference that actually has my books in the onsight bookstore. It was pretty cool to walk in and see Hooked on Murder, Dead Men Don’t Crochet and Blue Schwartz and Nefertiti’s Necklace all on display. So when I have my signing time, there will actually be books somebody might want me to sign.

Last night on the flight I was crocheting the pouch purse for the fourth book. I love crocheting on a plane. It is like meditating. I don’t think, my fingers move and I totally relax. One of the fight attendants asked me what I was making. I explained about the crochet mysteries and gave both her and her partner flight attendant bookmarks for Dead Men Don’t Crochet. She got all excited about the book marks and the books, she wanted to give me an on the house drink. Hopeless non drinker that I am I declined. Instead she opened the snack drawer and gave me cheese and crackers and a bag of nuts which was a welcome gift as I got to the hotel late and food operations were limited. The gift became my dinner.

I love Hawaii. Every place I’ve been on the islands is great. This is my first trip to Kona. My room has a balcony with an ocean view and I could sit and look out forever. There are some side trip possibilities. I’m pretty sure I’m going to go whale watching. Ah, I looked up and the sun is beginning to come out even as I still here the tinkle of rain hitting something. I’m going to go look for a rainbow.

The Way Forward

Back in 1982, my husband and I were among the music dealers invited by the Kimball Piano Company for a trip to Hawaii. The special guest was to be former President Gerald R. Ford. And as part of his appearance, we were allowed to submit questions. However, there was one question Kimball didn't want us to ask and that was, "Why did you decide to pardon former President Dick Nixon?"

My husband refused to be discouraged from asking this all-important question. So David wrote it over and over on the index cards we were given. I did, too. Sure enough, the folks at Kimball weren't diligent enough in their vetting process, and in the midst of the other innocuous queries, Ford pulled out a card and read, "Why did I pardon President Richard M. Nixon?"

He rubbed his chin and paused. I held my breath. I figured David and I were going to be dog-paddling our way home from the Big Island. Instead, President Ford said very gently, "You know, the job of a president is more than a 24-hour-a-day/seven-day-a-week job. It's enormous. And to tell you the truth, there was so much to do, so much healing to be done, that...I just couldn't see spending the time on Nixon. We needed to move forward."

(Okay, that's a paraphrase, but you get the point.)

Fast forward to this week, the week of the inauguration of President Barak Obama.

I think back to Gerald R. Ford--and the decision he made not to spend time on problems with the previous administration. The decision he made to give a nation in crisis his full attention. I hope Obama will do the same. The focus needs to be on fixing our problems instead of fixing blame.