The Paper Tiger

Purgie Power!

2012-01-24T16:13:00.000-08:00

Cyber Monday Website Extravaganza!!!

2011-11-28T11:41:00.000-08:00

New pages! New covers! Music! Prizes!

Er, actually, I don't know about the prizes. I guess I would have to have a contest of some sort for that. Any suggestions? I have an autographed copy of ROCK PAPER TIGER I could kick in.

What I definitely do have is a lovely revamped website to reveal! Check it out! lisabrackmann.com! Yes, you may have been there before, but it's newer! Shinier! And multi-media-rrific!

From the books page you can navigate to the page that's all about my upcoming novel, GETAWAY (hmmm, maybe an ARC of that. What do you think, Soho Press?). You can also check out the grand reveal of YEAR OF THE TIGER, which is ROCK PAPER TIGER in British! (my UK editor hastens to add that the actual cover will have "blingin' gold foil" on it—I can't wait!...hmmm, maybe a copy of YEAR OF THE TIGER would make a nice prize...I don't have one yet, but I will...)

Finally, something completely different...music! Yes, actual MP3-quality music! Written and sung by me! (and played by some truly talented musicians)

Many thanks to my wonderful web designer, Ryan McLaughlin of Dao by Design for his typically fantastic job!

Returning to Earth...

2011-11-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

Greetings! Okay, that was a longer posting hiatus than I'd intended. But I think I've taken my last major out of town trip for the year, so, time for a catch-up.

Bouchercon was awesome! What can I say? All the cliches about how writers spend all this time alone in front of computers, talking to themselves in character, then getting let out and getting together en masse, and there are parties, and a bar?

Okay, well, it's possible that there may be some truth to these cliches.

I had a wonderful time. I have to say, hanging out with the Soho Criminals is something I would love to do more than once a year. What a great bunch of folks all around! I'm only sorry that I missed the bowling tournament. Next time, I swear...

Also, I really enjoyed St. Louis. Let it be known that for all the travel I've done in China, I have barely been anywhere in huge swathes of the United States, the midwest in particular. I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of what I saw — the downtown still shows a lot of signs of economic distress, but they are trying. So many lovely old buildings being repurposed and so many more waiting to be revamped and enjoyed. There are good restaurants and bars—

(this is The Bridge Tap House)

—a wonderful bookstore, Left Bank Books (and while I'm on the subject of bookstores, another great one there is Big Sleep Books)

—the amazing Old Post Office—

—and of course, the Arch!

Everybody told me I needed to see the Arch, and that moreover, I should watch the documentary they show there on the making of it called MONUMENT TO THE DREAM (here's a trailer).

"Everybody," in this case, was right. The Arch impressed me on many levels. I loved the simple, elegant design. Loved the weird, diver-capsule-like elevators that haul you to the top. And the view is wonderful.

The documentary, too, was fascinating, focusing on the tremendous design and engineering challenges the Arch posed, and the impressive work of the builders and crew in meeting those challenges.

Watching it was unexpectedly poignant. It reinforced some things I'd been thinking about, a lot. We no longer seem to build great things in this country, not like that. We don't build factories, universities, high speed rail, infrastructure—we can't even maintain what we have.

We sure don't build grand and beautiful monuments.

In my passing through Saint Louis, especially when I took the train to the airport, I saw so many shuttered factories...beautiful red brick buildings. Empty. Stripped of their useful machinery, the remains of it rusting.

Plenty of people have warned about the dangers of basing too much of an economy on FIRE: "Finance, Insurance & Real Estate," and I'd add to that, "Empire." Our economic crash and prolonged recession/depression would seem to be proof enough, though in truth, if you look at the growth of income disparity over the last thirty years, it's a crisis that's been years in the making. But with the crash, we can't hide from the truth any more, that we're living in an empire in decline.

It's a good thing, to be out of denial, and as hard as the forces of reaction and repression continue to push their "divide, conquer and privatize" agenda, the public dialog has changed, and they know it. We can thank Wisconsin and Occupy Wall Street for that, for giving voice to what so many people have experienced and discussed in private, or even publicly, but without a rallying point to give our voices traction. It's no longer possible for pundits to sputter unopposed about "the left and class warfare" when it's now abundantly clear who has been waging war on whom.

Anyway, I have more catching up to do, but I think this is enough for one post...

Bouchercon!

2011-09-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

But first...

The West Hollywood Book Fair is coming up on Sunday, Oct. 2nd. I'll be there on a panel with some wonderful authors: Dianne Dixon, Tim Hallinan, Ryan David Jahn, and Thomas Perry, moderated by Wendy Hornsby. Our panel, on literary thrillers, is at 11:30, but there are great panels and events going on all day, and it's free! If you're in the Los Angeles area, I hope you'll stop by.

Now, where was I?

Right! The Bouchercon! Bouchercon 2011 is in St. Louis, a city I've never visited. I hear they have great barbecue...

I'm on two panels, the first on Thursday at 4 PM, "SEMPER FIDELIS-Landmark 1,2,3 Crime fiction & the military. Where the two meet. Matthew C. Funk (M), B. Kent Anderson, James R. Benn, me, Martin Limon, Charles Todd," the second on Saturday at 1 PM, "NEVER LET ME GO-Majestic A,B,C Passport to murder. Peter Rozovsky (M), Lisa Brackmann, Roger Ellory, David Hewson, Martin Limon, Anne Zouroudi." My wonderful publisher, Soho Press, is also hosting a cocktail party on Friday at 4:30, to introduce Lene Kaaberbol and Angnete Friis, authors of the international bestseller THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE—I've read it, and it's an awesome book! I'm told there will be ARCs for some lucky guests. I'll also be manning the International Thriller Writers booth from 12:30 to 2:30 on Friday.

I'm so looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting some new—if you're attending, feel free to tweet me!

Now I just need to get Shack By the Sea ready for my house-sitters...

ETA: New Event!

Just added—I'll be at the Paragraph Party hosted by Left Bank Books. Check out this lineup: "Chelsea Cain will be the Mistress of Ceremonies for the evening, and paragraph-reading guests include Cara Black, Tasha Alexander, Eoin Colfer, Deon Meyer, Daniel Woodrell, James Benn, Peter James, Stuart Neville, Paul Doiron, Marcia Clark, Martin Limon, Dana Haynes, Leighton Gage, D.E. Johnson, Lisa Brackman, Gianrico Carofiglio, Judith Rock, and Nancy Means Wright." We'll all be reading a paragraph, just one, from our latest work. And then we'll sit around, sign books, chat and drink beer, because the party's being held at the Bridge Tap House & Wine Bar. How cool is that?

9/11/11

2011-08-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

We’re approaching the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and I’m dreading it. The last few years, I haven’t marked the event. I was sick of it all. I just wanted to forget the date, forget the tragedy, forget about what it did to this country and to the world.

But it’s the tenth anniversary, so I guess there’s no avoiding it.

What did 9/11 bring us? Let me count its gifts:

A decade of wars. Wars we’re still fighting. The sacrifice of thousands of soldiers, I’m not sure for what. The deaths of countless civilians in those wars. Maybe we could have counted them, but we didn’t. Collateral damage. Stuff happens, right?

A society that’s become increasingly militarized, a nearly unquestioning worship of things military and not so much real martial virtues as the virtue of power, of might, of overwhelming force—how much pain you can inflict. Kick ass, baby!

A government that has shredded our Constitution, legitimized torture as an instrument of national policy, deemed indefinite detentions with no due process a necessary weapon in a “War on Terror” that has no end.

An economy where we can’t afford our basic social safety net. Where universal programs that we all paid into are routinely derided as “entitlements.” The social compact that led us to pay our share seemingly no longer valid. Where economic gurus and corporate think tanks have elevated Randian sociopathic selfishness to national policy. The devaluing of all things “public,” of shared resources, of the Commons.

Where we can continue to spend billions on our military but can’t afford to repair essential infrastructure, to encourage domestic manufacturing, to put our people back to work. Unless of course they’d like to join the military. Convenient, that.

Where it’s perfectly okay to force the wages of labor down to levels where parts of the US have become Third World manufacturing centers for First World countries like Germany, where we’ll be competing with China on the global market by 2015—thanks to the cutting of wages and benefits and social programs.

Where we can’t afford a national industrial policy but can continue to rely on an economy built on a financial house of cards, on esoteric stock market betting schemes, on insurance, on real estate, on speculation.

Where it’s also perfectly okay for corporations to be people and buy our politicians, where income inequality is greater than it was than in the Great Depression and in fact more closely resembles Banana Republic levels than many actual Latin American countries at this point. Where the top 1% controls more than 42% of the wealth.

Where the response to the financial crisis and staggering long-term unemployment rates has been to bail out the responsible parties and insist on austerity for everyone else.

We won’t raise taxes on billionaires, or on corporations that ship jobs overseas, but we will cut off unemployment benefits because they “make people not want to get a job.”

Where “we can’t afford it” becomes the excuse to sell off public land and public resources and public institutions and put them in the hands of private entities with no accountability to the public.

(it was almost comical to read of threats to cut disaster aid and hurricane tracking as a monstrous hurricane bore down on the East Coast. You know, “sacrifices must be made”)

Where we’re asked to accept the opening up of every last pristine place, risk countless environmental catastrophes like the Gulf spill and the unleashing of one last carbon bomb in the form of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Where somehow building mass transit to deal with a future where gas isn’t cheap and developing a green economy that could employee millions is “socialistic” but subsidizing dirty oil companies is the free market in action.

Where we desperately need health care reform and instead get an insurance and pharmaceutical industry bailout, and the few reforms in it are fought against tooth and nail, because, again, “we can’t afford it.”

Where people voted for a President who promised them hope and change, and delivers the same old shit.

I look at the fruits of 9/11 and I see fear, selfishness and mindless aggression, except maybe it’s not “mindless.” All of this stuff has been happening over the last thirty years (at least—we can argue about the starting point); the economic policies that have driven it put into play piece by piece, justified by a propaganda machine that has subsumed the great majority of our mass media, gutting our journalistic institutions while encouraging the rise of religious zealotry, ignorance and hate.

But 9/11? That was the final push. The “Shock Doctrine” in action. Everything needed to dismantle the remains of a republic and build in its place a national security state, a plutocracy designed to funnel the wealth of a nation into the hands of a few.

Osama must have died a proud man.

I used to be good at seeing the future. I looked at where we were heading as a society, thirty years ago, and mostly didn’t like what I saw. Unfortunately, I can’t say that much has surprised me.

Now we seem to have reached an endgame of sorts, and I can’t see what’s ahead. Or I don't want to.

We're at that point where it could go either way.

How do we step back from the precipice? Is it even possible?

Where do we go from here?

*******************************************************

Some disclaimers:

I am not reflexively anti-war. I have some sympathy for the liberal interventionist argument, and when a person as knowledgable as Juan Cole makes a case for NATO support of the Libyan rebels, I'm willing to listen.

Iraq? There was and is no justification for it.

I am not anti-military. I believe the highest honor we can pay our soldiers is to not waste their lives in unnecessary imperialist adventures.

I think government could be far more efficient—I believe in the principle that any large organization inevitably develops institutional goals that can interfere with its original mandate. But in principle, in a republic, government is accountable to the people who established it and who elected its officers. Corporations have no such mandate, and the idea that everything has to be subordinate to short-term corporate profits, and that this will somehow result in the greatest good for the greatest number, is ludicrous. There's no such thing as the "Free Market," and capitalism needs to be balanced by social justice and some notion of the common good. You know, "Promote the general welfare" — it says so in the Preamble to the Constitution!

Some links:

If you are not familiar with Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," read this — essential for understanding the times we live in.

The US, where Europe comes to slum...

American income inequality: here, here and here...

On the Keystone XL pipeline—here, here and here.

Disaster aid tied to spending cuts.

Senator Kyle on unemployment.

Finally, for some optimism...

Gear Review! CHINA SURVIVAL GUIDE by Larry & Qin Herzberg

2011-08-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

Given my obsession with travel gear, and the fact that I'm, well, a writer, it makes a certain amount of sense to expand my Gear Review to travel guides. A good one will make your trip immeasurably easier; a bad one is worse than useless—it's like asking directions of some weird old dude who insists your destination is just down the road apiece, right over that way, when he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, and you end up miles from where you want to be.

I was recently asked if I'd take a look at CHINA SURVIVAL GUIDE, by Larry and Qin Herzberg. The first thing you need to know about this book is that it is not a guidebook per se. It won't tell you what sights to see and what hotels to stay in and how much you should expect to pay for them. Instead it's a compact tutorial on China travel basics—important stuff like etiquette, standing in lines, what to expect in hotels, shopping tips, taxis do's and don'ts. And, oh yeah, spitting.

I actually learned a few things I didn't know. The chapter on hospitals I found particularly illuminating. And I very much appreciated the authors' good humor (comparing crossing a Chinese street to a game of Frogger, with the pedestrian as the frog), optimism and overall good-heartedness and spirit of adventure. I think the most useful information this book provides is a sort of basic mindset best suited to enjoying and appreciating your China experience.

That said, I think there is room for a few improvements.

The authors warn that given the incredibly rapid pace of change in China, it's hard to keep information up to date, and that holds true here. Even though this edition is advertised as fully revised, some of the information seems outdated (for example, in my experience you can find ATMs where you can use access your non-China funds just about everywhere, including provincial Guizhou). Some of the anecdotes included to illustrate the authors' points are from over 20 years ago, and while I found those stories interesting, amusing and a way of illustrating just how much things have changed in China in a very short amount of time, I'm not sure that they are the best way of talking about situations that travelers today are likely to experience.

As an example, in the chapter "Mass Protests and General Mayhem," Larry details some of his experiences leading a student tour that coincided with the Tiananmen Uprising. I found this very interesting, but I wondered where the discussion was on the sorts of demonstrations and "mass incidents" one might witness today. There was none, and in a country where there are frequent public protests over things like, polluting chemical factories, illegal land seizures, and general citizen anger with corruption and an unresponsive government, I'm not sure that recounting a Tiananmen experience is the best choice in discussing the types of protests that a foreign tourist could conceivably encounter. The reality is, most foreign tourists won't encounter any, but I think if you are going to raise the possibility at all, then you should be prepared to discuss current Chinese realities.

And this was a place where I felt the book was both very good—the realistic depiction of the sometimes chaotic public environment versus the incredible warmth one experiences on a personal level—and curiously lacking. Two sentences in particular stood out to me:

One benefit of an authoritarian state like China is that this is a government that knows how to maintain the rule of law and public order. There is simply no other practical way to run a country of 1.3 billion people, even if in Western eyes that means greatly curtailing individual civil liberties and human rights.

There are so many problems with this assertion that I can hardly begin to unpack it here, but I'll start with the idea that China has a consistent rule of law at all. It simply does not. China has a "Rule of Laws" that is unevenly enforced, frequently contradictory and twisted to fit the needs of the powerful, and that, at the end of the day, is subservient to the CCP.

Here's the thing: I don't think that a "China Survival Guide" really needs to delve into these controversies. But don't make that kind of statement if you're not willing to devote way more time to backing it up.

Instead, where's the chapter on train travel? Enquiring travelers want to know!

(image from last week's Dalian protest)

(FTC DISCLAIMER: the publisher provided me with a free copy of this book in the hope that I might review it)

Upcoming Events!

2011-07-09T18:31:00.001-07:00

This has been a busy year for me, both travel and event-wise. I just got back from New York (fantastic!) and I haven't even written about my trip to Ashland yet (awesome!). But before I sit down to write anything complicated, here are the rest of July's events (more detailed information on my calendar):

July 14: I'm at the Wiseburn Library in Hawthorne, 7 PM, with a bunch of awesome mystery authors from Sisters In Crime—Eric Stone, Hannah Dennison and Jeri Westerson—authors' books will be on hand courtesy of Debbie Mitsch's wonderful Mystery Ink! We'll be discussing the use of foreign settings in crime fiction, outsider versus insider protagonists, historicals, research, accessibility, and, you know, a lot of cool stuff!

July 20: I'll be discussing SAN DIEGO NOIR at the San Diego Central Library at 6:30 PM, along with editor Maryelizabeth Hart and contributors Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Martha C. Lawrence, Ken Kuhlken, and Diane Clark!

July 22: I'll be at the San Diego Comic Con on a panel discussion of "Crime as modern morality tales" at 12:30 PM with so many authors I don't know if I should even try to list them but what the hell...

"Max Allan Collins (Kiss Her Goodbye, The Nate Heller series), Barbara Collins (Antiques Knock-Off), Jeff Mariotte (CSI: The Burning Season), Diane Clark and Astrid Bear (San Diego Noir), Gar Anthony Haywood (Cemetery Road), Gary Phillips (Angeltown), Paul Malmont (The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown), Lisa Brackmann (Rock, Paper, Tiger), and Gregg Hurwitz (You're Next) explore the dark streets of imagination with San Diego Noir editor Maryelizabeth Hart. Room 8"

And we'll all be signing in the autograph room after that.

Finally, rounding out my July on July 30th, I'll be signing and chatting at the Manhattan Beach Barnes & Noble, from noon till 2 PM? Ish? We get tired? Not sure.

As for August, I plan on sleeping. A lot.

Off to New York!

2011-07-04T13:25:00.000-07:00

My house and cats are in the hands of a sitter, and I'm heading for NYC shortly on a red eye*, the excuse being that ROCK PAPER TIGER was nominated for Best First Novel in the Strand Magazine Critics Awards, and they're throwing a party. I really don't expect to win (I mean, look who I'm up against!) but I'm thrilled to be in such fine company.

This will be my first trip to New York in years, and certainly my first trip as a published author. I figure, I'm getting a bit of a late start on this career, and I want to enjoy every moment of it. Well, the moments that don't involve obsessive angst over comma placement and "like" versus "as if."

I'll be meeting with writer friends I know only from the interwebz, and I hope to visit some of the fine people I work with at Curtis Brown and Soho Press. Plus do a fair amount of strolling and sidewalk cafe sampling.

Can't wait!

(*my eyes are already soooo red from the copy edits)

Writer Friend Tim Hallinan*

2011-06-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

(The latest in an occasional series, *with a HT to the fabulous Rejectionist!)

So a few months ago, I read on one of my regular blog stops that Tim Hallinan was coming over to Soho Press and bringing the next volume in his critically acclaimed Poke Rafferty series with him. I'd long heard of Tim and the series, which is set in Bangkok, but had been incredibly remiss about reading it. Still, I was excited to hear that he'd be a Soho label-mate, because as I've mentioned in the past, Soho is awesome, and it's exciting to have another wonderful author published by one's publisher, because, through the transitive law of logic, if Soho is awesome, and Tim is awesome, and I am published by Soho, then that makes me awesome. Or something.

Tim read my book (I think it came in his "Welcome!" basket from Soho) and then wrote a lovely review of it. And since Tim lives not far from me in Los Angeles, and I'm making it a mission to meet as many writer-types as I can so that I'm not just sitting at home talking to myself (or the cats), we arranged to have coffee. And I was delighted to discover that Tim is indeed awesome, one of the funniest people I've met in years, and also extremely smart, thoughtful, and caring.

Case in point: his remarkable effort in putting together an anthology to benefit victims of the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami, SHAKEN. Go check this out, people. 20 original short stories written by some of the biggest names in crime fiction. I don't even want to give an example, because every single one of these contributors is top-notch. And 100% of the profits go to Japan relief, including Amazon's share. It's absolutely amazing, full of great reads, and for an incredibly worthy cause—and you get all that for $3.99.

But what about Poke Rafferty? Well, I got my hands on Tim's latest, THE QUEEN OF PATPONG. And...

It's wonderful. No joke. I mean, I should not have been surprised that a novel that was nominated for an Edgar Award (and more recently, a Macavity) is a good book, but my tastes don't always run with the crowd, and besides, QUEEN OF PATPONG is a book that sets out to do something with a high degree of difficulty—get into the history and head of one of the continuing characters, Rose, and her journey as a teenager from a countryside village to the bars of Bangkok. There are so many ways that trying to tell the story of a former Thai sex worker could have gone very wrong—I'll mention the tendency of some westerners (okay, some western men) to idealize the lives of these women (and in some cases their own participation in the exploitation), but this long section dealing with Rose's past is so compelling and so believable that I basically forgot about the thriller portion of the story and was in no hurry to get back to it.

But then when I did, well, I have to say, the ending is just killer. I don't want to give it away, but it's one of the most satisfying...er...no, I'm not going to say anything else. Just that it will make a great, great movie in your head! Go read it!

As I reflect on my experiences post-publication, I realize that one of the true pleasures of this gig is getting to meet other authors, and meeting Tim has been a real highlight.

Do check out his work—it's not just good, it's also worthwhile.

New SAN DIEGO NOIR events! And off to Oregon!

2011-06-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a couple more events for SAN DIEGO NOIR — the first at the wonderful Bay Books in Coronado on June 23rd, the second at the Ocean Beach Branch of the San Diego Public Library on June 25—I don't have a time for that yet, but since it's Saturday, I'm assuming during the day.

Two things writing this brief post made me think about...

First, independent bookstores are awesome. You've probably heard me say that before. I had such a great time at the Mysterious Galaxy Birthday Bash—an event like this, where literally hundreds of loyal customers turned out to celebrate Mysterious Galaxy, its role in the community, in bringing authors and readers and books together, really brings home the value of local bookstores. Bay Books is another San Diego treasure—an absolutely lovely store on a charming street that's well-worth a visit and a stroll.

Second, libraries are awesome. And you've probably heard me say this as well. I just did a quick scroll through the San Diego Public Library's events calendar. My event isn't posted yet, but have a look anyway. The incredible diversity of the offerings is something we should all be celebrating. Libraries are repositories of our collective knowledge and aspirations, and they are centers of community—the values and resources that we hold in common. The opportunities that libraries provide all citizens, particularly those who are poor and struggling, are absolutely invaluable.

We're living in a tough time, and it's more than the bad economy. I'd call it an almost spiritual crisis (and I'm not religious). It's a collapse of the notion that we have a commons, places that belong to all of us, that we all support and that support us in times of need. Libraries, parks, schools, wilderness: all these are a part of our commons, things that shouldn't belong to individuals, but to all of us, and to our children and their children to come.

(I'd add in health care, a social safety net and a secure retirement, but I am trying to step off my soapbox, so...)

Er, Oregon. First stop on June 7, Powell's! After that, Klamath Falls, Ashland and Medford! Check my events calendar for information...hope to see some of you along the way...

Strangers on a train...pt. 3

2011-05-31T13:34:00.000-07:00

(Part 1 and Part 2).

Regular readers of this blog know that trains are my preferred mode of travel in China. I like trains because I can see something of the country, because I can get up and move around, read comfortably, use a toilet when I need to.

But mostly, because of the stories I get out of every ride.

Submitted as an example: the trip from Kaili to Kunming.

Richard and I had been stymied in our attempts to take the train from Nanjing to Guiyang and from Guiyang to Kaili. We were determined to at least take the train to Kunming. For that, we were told, we would have to go back to Guiyang -- though Kaili is on the rail line from Guiyang to Kunming and actually closer to Kunming than Guiyang, sleepers were always sold out by the time the train reached Kaili.

Except this once.

The lovely folks at the Kaili China Tourism Office, who had been among those telling us that getting sleepers from Kaili was impossible, had somehow managed to secure two berths for us, so we wouldn't have to double back to Guiyang. Nothing against Guiyang, but, you know, not the most interesting place I've ever visited.

We got to the Kaili train station, and understood why everyone had told us, it was "a little chaotic." The Kaili station is a pretty typical, old-fashioned small town station. You wait for the trains on the upper floor, which was standing room only:

EXCEPT right up at the front of the line, which was a posted "No Smoking" area, and therefore undesirable.

The train arrived. We made our way to our assigned car and presented our tickets to the conductor, a young, pretty woman (most of the conductors are young, pretty women. I am reasonably sure that this is a factor in their hiring).

Her brow furrowed. "Xiao wenti," she muttered. "Buhao yisi..."

There's a little problem. She's so embarrassed.

We have a pretty good idea where this is going...

No sleeper car. There would be berths in a few hours, so we'd have a place to sleep. "Not a problem," I said. "Just give us some place to leave our luggage, we'll go to the dining car and drink beer for a few hours."

This apparently would not do. The conductor asked if we would mine splitting up and staying in separate compartments—we could change to the same one later on the trip.

Fine by me.

I was ahead of Richard in the corridor that runs along the sleeping car, so I said I'd take the further compartment.

Walking in, my first thought was, "Boy, did I make a mistake."

My compartment mates: 3 middle-aged Chinese men.

Now, I have nothing against middle-aged Chinese men (I am pretty much in the "middle-aged" demographic myself) except for one thing, in this context: they snore. I don't know whether it's because so many of them smoke, but count on it—three middle-aged guys in a compartment, odds are overwhelming that at least one of them, and more likely two, will snore. Loudly (I have a convenient Snoring Magnitude Rating system, in which two Category 3 snorers are equivalent to one Category 5 snorer, and so on).

Well, I don't take trains in China for the good night's sleep. I smiled, shoved my bag under the lower bunk, put on my train slippers and tried to look inconspicuous.

That wasn't gonna happen.

This was a very chatty group, especially the fellow sitting across from me, a government official from Hunan. I immediately got hit with the questions: how long had I been in China, where did I learn to speak Chinese, what places had I visited, what did I think about China, etc. etc. etc. Another man joined us, a young guy with shoulder-length hair and a John Lennon T-shirt, from Wenzhou. With his accent, I had a hard time understanding him, which was too bad because he was very interested in talking to me.

The government official had traveled to the United States—either during the time of swine flu or in some capacity related to swine flu (#ChineseFail on my part). He'd been to Boston, to Washington D.C., to San Francisco, even to the Grand Canyon. Had loved the experience! And he'd learned a lot, particularly that, in his estimation, "America is much more developed and wealthy than China. It will take China thirty years to catch up!"

"Thirty years?" the young guy from Wenzhou said with a snort. "More like three hundred years! And do you know why? Because Chinese people have no freedom, that's why! Take your President Bush..."

"Heh," I said. "Yeah. I don't like him."

John Lennon T-shirt wagged his finger. "You see? You are allowed to say this. We can't say these kinds of things about our leaders. You have elections, we don't. That's why China can't catch up to America."

You'd think there would be a lot of argument about this, or fear, or something, but no. Some chuckles, some nods. And then a discussion about my iPhone: which generation is that, third or fourth? How much does it cost in America? That cheap, really? (I tried to explain that the low price for the device came with a commitment to a lengthy contract but am not sure that I managed to get my point across)

I think about 20 minutes had passed before Richard poked his head in the compartment. I gave him the recap: "Official thinks China will need thirty years to modernize, John Lennon T-shirt guy from Wenzhou thinks it will never happen because Chinese people have no freedom. And iPhones are expensive in China." He sat.

A few minutes later, the same conductor who had looked at our tickets in the first place came by. Richard turned to me: "She totally gave me the third degree just now." On certain train routes, conductors will swap your paper tickets for plastic ones (and then back again at the end of the ride), and along with that, ask for your identification and if you're a foreigner, your passport. Her interaction with Richard had gone far beyond that: she asked all kinds of questions, about how long he'd been in China, where he was traveling and why.

Now she leaned against the doorway of our compartment. She saw my hand-made Chinese notebook and asked if she could look at it (it has all kinds of vintage images of Chinese leaders taken from old Newsweeks). Where had I bought that? And my postcards, from Guizhou, could she see them? She examined each image (I hadn't filled them out yet). We decided she was not so much about the third degree as she was curious. And chatty. She was from Kunming and had a lot of ideas about the best restaurants there (she wrote them down in my notebook, with my pen, which she also thoroughly examined).

This was a happy train, overall. Even the surly dining car attendant was giggling when I returned there after hours to buy a bottle of water—there she was, giving one of the train workers, a big guy with a big shaved head, a scalp massage, and she waved in greeting along with the others, wished me a good night when I left. Maybe it's that Guizhou vibe I mentioned, that just passing through is enough to make people weirdly friendly.

While Richard dealt with the world's friendliest, most adorable attack toddler in his compartment (he was fascinated by Richard's bag and glasses), I settled down for the inevitable night of snoring.

Sure enough. The quietest man in the compartment, the guy on the upper bunk who during our conversations had mostly listened, smiled and nodded.

I'd put him at Category 4.

Early the next morning, as we approached Kunming, John Lennon T-shirt came by. "How did you sleep?" he asked me.

"Hai keyi," I replied. Okay/so-so.

A few minutes later, he returned, to give me an energy drink and a pastry.

Gear Review! (second in an occasional series)

2011-05-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

(The PR-5, Skytrain and Tilley, on the road...oh, and my PJs)

I have one more post that I want to put up about my recent trip, another of my adventures on Chinese trains (and if anyone wonders why I love to take trains, in spite of some hassles, it's because I swear, I get a story out of every ride). But first, it's time for...GEAR REVIEW!

Some of you who know me, know that I'm slightly obsessive on the subject of luggage and bags. Okay, maybe more than "slightly." It's just, with all the travel I've done in the last few years and all the walking I do normally, I'm dealing with bags all the time, and they have a big impact on my life. Trust me, you do not want to be dragging an awkward, cheaply made bag on and off Chinese trains and through train stations.

I came to the conclusion that I wanted bags that were functional, sturdy and easy to schlep. For all of those reasons, I went with Red Oxx. I wrote about my experiences with Red Oxx in my earlier gear review. Since then I've added a few new bags (I don't have a problem, I can stop any time) and have had plenty more experience with the old ones.

(Red Oxx Skytrain)
My workhorse remains the Skytrain. It has been with me on many trips at this point and I can't see a sign of wear. I know that a lot of people are partial to wheeled luggage, and I understand why, but a soft-sided bag like this is easier to cram into tight spaces (overhead compartments, under train seats), and much easier to maneuver when trying to stow over your head, get on and off of trains and planes and up and down staircases. Just don't overload it with heavy stuff, because as sturdy as this bag is, it will support whatever you manage to cram in it.

For my second bag, I got the PR-5. This is another maximum-sized carryon, and it holds a ton of stuff. I find the outside end pockets particularly useful for stowing a pair of shoes (in one) and whatever I want quick access to (in the other). This series of bags also has a passthrough pocket, so if you are using any wheeled luggage or luggage rack, it will slide over the handle. It's actually easy to carry for a shoulder bag; the Claw shoulder strap distributes the weight surprisingly well.

(The PR-5)

I took this larger duffle because of the extreme range of climate I covered in this trip and also the possibility that I'd have to dress nicely on a few occasions. It's just a great bag. But for shorter trips when you don't need that kind of capacity, I love my PR-4. This smaller duffle fits perfectly under airplane seats, and again, the handy end pocket is a great place to put items you want to get at easily during your flight.

(the PR-4)

As mentioned in my earlier review, Red Oxx products are made in the USA and guaranteed for life. Yes, they cost more than a lot of luggage, but you will never have to buy a replacement, and you'll never find yourself dealing with a broken zipper at some inconvenient moment on the road. Their bags come in twelve nifty colors, so you can express yourself too!

Least you think all of my luggage love goes to Red Oxx, let me plug a couple of other useful bags.

First, Patagonia's Travel Tote. I have an older version of this bag that has seen many trips and much hard use and was finally showing signs of wear (for a lightweight, packable bag, these things are pretty damned sturdy). So I upgraded to their slightly revamped current model. The major improvement is longer straps so you can sling the bag over your shoulder when you don't want to use it as a backpack. This is an extremely practical, versatile bag that I'd recommend to any frequent traveler—I honestly can't imagine a more useful alternative for a travel utility bag to this.

(Patagonia Travel Tote, with backpack straps stowed)

I'm not a "purse" person nor am I into briefcases, but there are occasions when I need something to fulfill those functions—going to a meeting, a conference, what have you. For this, I chose a custom Timbuk2 Messenger bag. Like Red Oxx, Timbuk2 products are made in the US (in San Francisco), and come backed with a beefy warranty. Plus, they're cool-looking. I customized mine and had a lot of fun choosing the fabrics and features. The small Messenger is just wide enough to stuff an extra sweater and a larger digital camera (with a standard lens) — it's a tight fit, and not ideal (in fact, Timbuk2, if you're reading this, a little bit of extra width on the Small Messenger would be awesome—the Medium is just too big), but I did it. If the trip had been more about photography, I would have considered taking my Red Oxx Gator instead—its width and padded bottom make it perfect for that (as well as fitting under an airline seat). But those same qualities make it less than ideal for carrying around town to meetings or for use as a "purse/briefcase," so I went with the Timbuk2.

(Timbuk2 small messenger bag)
Two more items that have become permanent parts of my travel repertoire: a Tilley hat and an 11" Mac Air.

Tilley's are made in Canada, high-quality, functional and even look kinda cool. Plus, they come with a great warrantee and a secret pocket! I have the Cotton Airflo. Yeah, not cheap, I know. But I walk a ton, and I'm not always as good about putting sunscreen on as I should be (it gets in my eyes), and this hat is about as comfortable and practical as they come.

Finally, the Mac Air.

I write, blog and post photos when I travel, so a laptop really is pretty essential. And, yes, I'm a Mac person. I tried using a Linux-based netbook once, and while I'm sure Linux is just swell, I really didn't want to take the time to learn to use it, plus I wanted to use the same system to upload photos and keep my stuff so it was easily transferrable. Plus, Windows in China is asking for trouble, given the proliferation of viruses and spyware. For a few years, I traveled with an old 12' iBook. Kudos to that thing for sturdiness and long-life—it still works! But it's just a brick. You don't think so, at first, but after a month-long trip with constant travel, it starts absorbing the weight of the road, I'm pretty sure.

Then the new Airs came out. Wow. This is the perfect road warrior for Mac people. It uses flash memory instead of a moving hard drive, so it's sturdier. It's incredibly light. Incredibly thin. And it's a lovely piece of machinery that's a pleasure to work on.

Caveats: I got the stripped-down version, straight out of the box. It does not have a ton of memory or RAM. It does not have a CD/DVD drive. You can get models with more memory (but you have to order it that way, they are not easily upgradable) and you can order a compact exterior DVD drive if you want to have one. For me, none of this was an issue—I wanted a laptop designed for travel that I could use for writing and photos, and it does those things wonderfully well. In fact it's so nice to use that, well, I'm using it right now (light! Amazing screen! Great keyboard!).

Another small item you will want to invest in: the Air has two USB ports and one Firewire port. There's no room for anything else. That means, no Ethernet port. But you can buy a little adaptor that plugs into the USB port for your Ethernet needs. Many inexpensive Chinese hotels offer broadband access in their hotel rooms, but it's via Ethernet. I got my adaptor at an Apple store, but Amazon offers them too.

(one more thing: Mac Airs don't like Adobe Flash very much. I downloaded a simple, free program called "Click-To-Flash" — I highly recommend it).

One final item you will want if traveling to China, or to anywhere where you have reason to believe that internet security/accessibility is an issue: a VPN. Even with Witopia's excellent product and great customer service, China's Great Firewall makes internet access a huge pain in the ass at times. But I wouldn't consider traveling to China without one. When the Chinese government decides that Gmail is subversive and tries hacking into it? Yeah, I want a VPN.

Well, I think that's it for this year's long, somewhat tedious and obsessive gear review. Other travelers, please feel free to add your tips and favorites! I'm always ready to feed the obsession!

A Belated "Congratulations!"

2011-05-16T15:00:00.001-07:00

And an embarrassing one at that, because how many times does a good friend's first book launch? Probably not more than once! Though given that the book is about three kids who trade a corn-dog for a spaceship and accidentally break the universe! I am not willing to totally rule out the possibility of some sort of time-space anomaly occurring in which the launch happens over and over again in an endless loop, except that would probably mean that I'd forget to make the announcement each time, over and over again, and that would be even more embarrassing....

Where was I?

Many congratulations to Nathan Bransford on the launch of Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow, a book for middle-graders that's fun for us above middle-graders too. I've had the pleasure of reading JACOB, and if you like your space adventure with a sprinkle of Douglas Adams and a twist of Roald Dahl (or you think the kids in your life will), then get your hands on a copy, before the universe breaks!

Guizhou Pt. 4

2011-05-08T14:08:00.001-07:00

We went to a number of villages during our stay in Guizhou, but one of the more interesting was Shiqiao, where the speciality is paper-making.

We'd actually stopped first at a cave site some distance away. "This is a good place in the summer," Mr. Ou, our driver, told us. "It stays cool in here."

There were various ramshackle structures made of wood, some holding cloudy water and grayish white fibrous tangles whose composition and potential function I could only guess at. Mr. Ou did his best to explain, but at first I wasn't getting it.

After a while I finally figured out that "shu pi" was not, like, leather something something, but tree bark, and that they were making paper.

After the cave, we made our way to Shiqiao Village. Many of the families here are engaged in paper-making, and each family makes its own. Here are a few photos of the process:

We stopped in at one of the larger operations. I found out later that this is a paper-making cooperative, created to preserve traditional Miao methods, an effort that has made this household the wealthiest in Shiqiao.

They had a storefront of sorts, shelves with stacks of handmade notebooks and sketchbooks and larger sheets of drawing paper, a graying PC and a ledger book on a small desk. Famous artists come here from the big cities to buy their paper, Mr. Ou told us.

"You can try it!" the proprietor, Mr. Wang, urged us, holding out an ink brush. He had sheets of paper laid out on a long table, where other visitors had scrawled their names and countries of origin.

"I have terrible handwriting," I warned. Which is true (I'm left-handed, for one). But I also used to do a lot of art back in elementary and junior high. It was about my best subject.

So, I wrote my name, and for some reason, using the ink brush, I was able to do it neatly, in a sort of grandiose way.

Mr. Wang loved this. So did our female host (I am assuming Mrs. Wang, but I don't actually know for certain). "Draw something!" they urged me.

Well, okay. I drew a cat.

Our hosts seemed to think that this was pretty amazing. I was just glad that I'd managed to draw a recognizable feline.

We went upstairs for lunch. Not a formal restaurant, but an area where guests and tourists could be served. I know that Guizhou is incredibly poor in terms of per capita income, and I'm sure that we didn't see anything close to the real poverty that must exist there. But I have to wonder, a little, because some things about the lifestyle here are pretty amazing. The wooden houses, for example. Basic, yes. But airy, pleasant and in their own way, beautiful.

I was heartened to see that in all the villages we visited, new houses were still constructed in this traditional architectural style—hardly any incursion of white tile disease.

Would I want to be a peasant farmer, working terraced rice paddies in my bare feet, behind a water buffalo? Not so much. And I don't want to overly romanticize a way of living that requires a lot of very hard work and doesn't have a lot of the "mod cons," the connectivity and stimulation, that I myself would not want to do without.

But the incredibly gorgeous landscape, the clean, fresh air, the festivals and celebrations...surely these are worth something on the scale of a good life. When I consider the environmental devastation in so much of China, I wonder if in the long run, the inhabitants of Guizhou will finally benefit from their poor, stunning homeland...

This paper-making household is a regular stop on the slowly developing tourist circuit. There was a group of French people who came in after us for lunch (the French, we were told, are the most numerous Western travelers in Guizhou), about ten of them, with a guide.

(Mr. Ou, our driver, and Mrs. Wang (?), papermaker and one of our hosts)

After a round of homemade wine (yum!) and a few bites of lunch (simple but delicious, one of the best meals I had), the proprietor came upstairs, beaming, carrying a mounted square of blank, handmade paper. "After lunch, you can write your name and draw the cat again?" he asked. "And we can put it on the wall!"

I agreed, a little embarrassed, and told myself I'd better go easy on the rice wine.

Submitted for your approval...my goofy cat:

In return for my efforts, Mr. Wang gave me one of their notebooks. I'm looking at it now, at the beautiful, soft paper made by hand. I'm thinking, maybe I should buy myself an ink-brush, and learn how to draw something other than a cat...

Oregon in June! And San Diego next week!

2011-05-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'll be doing a few events in Oregon in early June, including the world-famous Powell's Books in Portland on June 7. I'll also be in Ashland and Klamath Falls — more details to come, but here's a link to the wonderful organization who is sponsoring my Ashland leg, the Ashland Mystery Readers Group. Events there are scheduled for June 10th and June 11th.

I'm really excited about this! I have never been to Oregon, and it's past time to remedy this situation.

For those of you in the San Diego area, as mentioned, I'll be at the fabulous Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore's 18th Birthday Bash on Saturday, May 14, along with a whole bunch of authors signing Akashic Book's latest Noir release, San Diego Noir. There are signings going on all day, and cake! Mysterious Galaxy is a fantastic indie bookstore, and those of you in the San Diego who haven't been there are missing out—what better time to visit?

(as a p.s., times, addresses, phone numbers and directions to events can be found at my website, on the calendar)

Final count...

2011-05-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

More on Guizhou in a bit, I promise. But for those who follow my Twitter feed, here is a final tally of the hooker cards!

First, an explanation: the Beijing hotel I stayed at is known as a "business hotel" — a popular choice for visiting businessmen. I really would recommend it, overall. Decent rooms, clean, great location, and overall, quiet.

However, with a "business hotel" apparently come certain expectations of a businessman's needs.

Numerous times a day, I would hear a little scratching noise at the door, and then a slither and a soft "plop" as business cards, shoved through the crack in the door, fell to the floor. Coming back to the room after a time out, sometimes I'd find a half dozen of them on the floor. Photo cards adverting prostitutes.

I decided to save them all and see how many I had at the end of my stay.

The grand total: Sixty, three of which are half-sized. Because paper is expensive? Because they are more discreet? Who can say?

Anyway, if anyone out there is doing a sociological study or art project involving sex work in China, let me know, and the cards are all yours...

Guizhou Pt. 3

2011-04-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

Everyone agreed that taking the train from Guiyang to Kaili would not be as "convenient" as taking the bus. The train station was "a little chaotic," the desk clerk at the hotel informed us. And besides, the bus left every hour.

The long distance bus station is on the fringes of Guiyang, seemingly an artifact of some master plan where the current city of Guiyang swells far beyond its current boundaries to some new, "modern" ring of villas and suburbs that haven't yet been constructed, that are only a dream on some central planning commission's drawing boards and the occasional aspirational billboard. The bus station has the same swooping curved roof as just about every Chinese airport constructed in the last few years, modeled after the archetypical Beijing Capital Airport Terminal 3 built for the Olympics. Inside, it's the same dull mat white walls, scuffed and smudged, grilled ticketing windows and truncated tubular crowd control fences, the less citified customers cutting lines wherever they can.

A helpful information officer led us over to the appropriate window to get tickets to Kaili. We were told to "mashang zou,"—our bus was leaving soon.

We made our way out the back, to where the buses waited.

Our bus: the most broken-down bus on the entire lot. Soiled doilies on the head rests. Seats that smelled like someone had spilled a bottle of baijiu on them—they reeked of stale alcohol.

Suspension? Shock absorbers? The bus laughed at such bourgeoise notions.

We traveled through a green, increasingly hilly countryside. The most striking thing to me were the graves. There are graves everywhere: grass mounds, mostly, some covered in gray stone, like Celtic cairns. All topped by flags on poles made of twigs: scraps of banners, shredded by wind, all white, with red bands. Later, we would see graves in the most unlikely places. Once, on the outskirts of Kaili, where autoshops and junkyards had been carved into the hills (the city of Kaili seems to have been created by blasting into granite mountains), there was a tiny copse that had somehow been left, surrounded by piles of auto parts, fenders and doors and stacks of tires, and there were graves there, too many, crammed into that tiny space. And I wondered, where were there families whose loved ones were buried here? Did they come to pay their respects, still? Did they sit on a pile of hubcaps to do so?

Some three to four hours later, we arrived in Kaili.

Kaili is the capital of the Miao/Dong minorities Autonomous Region in Guizhou, described by Lonely Planet as a jumping off point to visit villages without any great interest of its own. I liked Kaili. I couldn't tell you why, exactly; on the surface it looked like any other third-tier Chinese city. But there's something charming about it. Maybe the size: at about 500,000 people, Kaili is a small town for a Chinese city. Most likely, the people. Did I mention that, even though I hate making these kinds of gross generalizations, as a group, Guizhou people seem unusually friendly? I don't know how much of this was because we were foreigners visiting a place that didn't see all that many (we hardly spotted any Westerners our entire time there), or how much was due to the culture. According to the "Tourism Attractions of Kaili" book in my hotel room, around Kaili, "Every day is a festival. Every third day is a major festival." I kind of believe it.

For example: Richard, my traveling companion, had a minor injury that needed attention, and we decided to stop in at the Kaili First People's Hospital to see what could be done. It was close to 5 PM. The reception nurse walked us to the doctor's office. The doctor, who seemed impossibly young, let me hang out in the exam room, and later, took us upstairs to see his boss, who was just getting ready to leave for the day and had his eight year old son in the office. The son and I entertained each other (we determined that he wanted to be a jet pilot when he grew up, among other things), while the father put his white coat back on and attended to my friend. Afterwards, problem treated, he invited us both to dinner.

We declined. You know, stuff like that is awkward. Did he mean it? He seemed to.

So we had our own dinner to figure out. After a lot of fruitless wandering looking for a recommended night market, we finally hopped in a cab and asked the driver if he had any suggestions for dinner. He immediately brightened. "Have you been to the best Miao restaurant? You should try that!"

A short drive and we were there. To the left was what appeared to be banquet rooms for large parties: Miao women in traditional dress lined up at the entrance, along with Miao men holding the huge pipes used to play the old music. We went into the main restaurant. This was the only place in Kaili that we saw other Westerners, a Canadian (?) family with a tour guide. Even so, it seemed like it was still a big deal for foreigners to come in to dine. We attracted a lot of attention.

For example: after ordering (the recommended local beer, an amazing Miao tofu dish, some scallion pancakes, a superb cabbage-based soup), a man in his thirties approached our table and started chatting with us, a younger man trailing behind him.

He was a minor government official in some educational capacity, and at first we thought we were being hustled to take questionable English teaching positions (this happens a lot). The younger man was his fuwuyuan, specifically his driver. I offered them some beer—it seemed like the thing to do.

"I'm being presumptuous," he kept saying, "because I have been drinking. But I saw you and wanted to talk with you."

They sat for a while. He talked and asked the usual questions: Where were we from, how long had we been in China? Refused our offers of food but drank more beer (we kept them coming). Our waitress thought that he was pretty funny — "He likes to chui niu," she said a couple of times, a polite version of a phrase that means to blow your own horn. I didn't think he was really doing that, but it was hard to figure out just what it was that he did want.

Which turned out to be, to buy our dinner, which we found out after he finally did say goodbye.

The next day, we went out to visit some "minority" villages. We'd decided to splurge and hire a driver—it seemed the most effective use of our limited time (a note for travelers: Lonely Planet highly recommends the Kaili China Tourism Office, and they are right. Super-helpful folks). The driver, Mr. Ou, was not supposed to be a guide per se, just a driver, but for us, he was also the perfect guide, explaining just enough without going into some memorized spiel. Throughout the day, as we were driving and would see some spectacular spot, he'd say, "Do you want to stop and walk a while?" (we hired him again for Day #2) In many ways that was the best part of the experience—just walking through this spectacular scenery (I hope the photo essay below gives some sense of what it was like).

The biggest tourist attraction in the area is Xijiang—the Miao "Thousand Household Village." And there are some definite signs of tourist development there:

(ATMs, post office, cell phone cards and services readily available as well)

Still, I'd recommend Xijiang for a visit. The architecture is truly lovely (the top photo in the photo essay below is Xijiang), and I personally am a sucker for the Miao music. And the rice wine...

One last note...

As we left the village, riding in a convenient electric shuttle (yes, this is a fully developed tourism site), an older woman dressed in cargo pants and a baseball cap started chatting to Ou. "Are you their guide?" she asked. "Where are they from?"

"They're Americans," he replied, "and they speak Chinese."

She turned to us. Her accent was a giveaway, but we asked anyway. She was a Beijinger. "I'm traveling by car with my older brother," she explained. "We've been to Xi'an, to Kunming, to Guilin..." She grinned and gave a little shrug. "I'm retired, so why not?"

"That sounds like a lot of fun," I said.

"Where are you going next?" she asked. "Why don't you come with us, back to Beijing? We'll stop and visit Hunan. It's just the two of us; we have plenty of room!"

She seemed to mean it, too. Beijingers are also friendly folks, in my experience.

We'd already booked tickets to Kunming, and besides, it's such an awkward thing, to consider accepting a stranger's hospitality. But it was another one of those moments that made me glad I'd decided to take this trip.

Guizhou Pt. 2

2011-04-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to say about Guizhou, and normally I would write a post and intersperse it with photos. But thanks to the Great Firewall, it took me so damn long to upload all these photos that I don't have time to actually write anything before returning to Beijing, and I wanted to share with you how stunningly gorgeous this place is.

So, presented without captions, here's a little photo essay for you. Keep in mind that the photos don't do the real place justice. You'll have to imagine the clean, crisp air that smells like pine and woodsmoke and flowers, for one...and the taste of the local rice wine!

(Click to enlarge)

Guizhou Pt. 1

2011-04-22T05:42:00.000-07:00

I knew very little about Guizhou before my friend Richard suggested that we visit it this trip. It's one of the poorest provinces in China, west of Guanxi and east of Yunnan, with a high percentage of "national minorities" (the officially favored term) — Miao and Dong in particular. We had also heard that it is spectacularly beautiful and rarely visited by tourists. Good enough reason to check it out.

You'd think it would be easy to catch a train from Guilin to the capital, Guiyang, but not so much. Apparently a new high-speed rail line is in the works, but for now, flying was the easiest option. We arrived in the evening at your basic (decent) Chinese airport, most notable for its extremely orderly taxi line.

From the cab window, Guiyang looks like any other second or third tier Chinese provincial city: lots of strange gray and tan high-rises with fogged mirror glass, shorter, white-tile fronted buildings with blackened grout, apartment blocks with sagging, rusting balconies. And, even in one of China's poorest provinces, a luxury mall advertising Gucci, with promises of Armani to come.

I made reservations at a hotel through a China travel site that I frequently use. There weren't a lot of recommends for Guiyang, but 4 stars at the price of around $30 seemed pretty good.

Of course, there are catches to everything. In this case, the cab driver brought us to the address, which looked like another slightly seedy mall/high-rise from the outside. The sign for the hotel was posted in big plastic letters across the front of the building about five floors up. But there was no obvious entrance. We stumbled around with our excess of luggage, going downstairs to a greasy-smelling food-court, then upstairs on an escalator to the third floor, which at first looked promising but turned out to be a cinema multiplex.

Luckily the locals are very friendly. I'll be saying this a lot over the next few posts: the people in Guizhou are about the friendliest, most helpful people you'd ever want to meet. I hate making those kinds of generalizations, which by and large I think are pretty meaningless, but that's sure how it seemed.

One of said helpful folks pointed us in the right direction and walked us halfway around the corner to be sure we found the entrance. It was about the least likely looking hotel entrance you can imagine, especially for a "four star" hotel (someone was being awfully generous with that star rating).

For example, when we walked around the corner, this building below was what was on our left:

Then, to our right, the actual entrance, with the red lanterns:

The oddest part was, you walk into a lobby that's for the entire building and which has no direct connection to any hotel at all. Then into a narrow narrow vestibule that looks like it should be in the basement of some fairly sleazy, well, I'm not sure what. Faded, cigarette-burned and warped linoleum, torn plastic ads on the three elevators there. And of the three elevators, only one of them went to the hotel, which started on the 25th floor, which instead of being the 25th floor, was labeled "G" (for a Japanese hotel group).

Once you reach "G," which takes forever, with only one elevator that goes up there, you are greeted by an actual hotel-type lobby which really is pretty cute. And then you have to get in another elevator to go up to the next four floors, which make up the hotel.

After all this, we needed a drink, STAT. Thankfully there is a bar in the building. But first you have to ride the G elevator down to the first floor (yes, only one elevator goes to the first floor), get off, and ride a different elevator up to the fifth floor, where the bar is.

The first thing I did was memorize the fire escape stairs. Because you would not want to be waiting for that elevator in case of an emergency.

As for the bar, it was small, smoke-filled and featured fish tanks.

Two Yangshuo views...

2011-04-20T18:28:00.000-07:00

I tried to upload a few more but this looks like what I can get for now...

Just one thing...

2011-04-20T08:35:00.001-07:00

Really hope to be able to post some photos and an account of the time in Guizhou tomorrow...but for now...I leave you with this...

Yangshuo

2011-04-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I'd planned on posting a series of photos showing off Yangshuo's incredible beauty—and I gotta say, I loved it there the second time as much as I did the first—but the Great Firewall right now is frustrating all my attempts to do this. And I have some lovely photos too! Otherwise, I was going to talk a little about how even though it's a very touristy place, it's still awesome and lovely, and how the influx of foreigners has led to some interesting cultural fusions, and how much I love biking around in the other-worldy hills, breathing the clean air, every now and again seeing something like a pretty young woman working the fields wearing a T-shirt that says "Awesome Cutie Honey" and wondering about her life—stuff like that. But basically I didn't have much to say because I was too busy just taking it all in and going, dang, this is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, so here are some photos. Except I can't post them.

So, here are a few photos from my first trip to Yangshuo in Nov./Dec. 2009. Here too.

Right now I'm traveling in Guizhou, which has been super-interesting. I hope to write up something about the experience thus far tomorrow. Only don't count on any photos...

To market!

2011-04-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'd heard that one central agricultural market supplies the majority of produce for the entire city of Beijing—according to this Global Times article, 70 % of vegetables and 80% of fruit (the photo above is an example of a typical city fruit vendor).

I'd also heard that the majority of Chinese agriculture is still conducted by individual small farmers, which is both heartening and scary—the latter due to the difficulty of enforcing regulations concerning pesticide and antibiotic use, and, you know, adding melamine and stuff.

These two things seemed hard to reconcile.

I decided to make a field-trip to said market: Xinfadi in Fengtai, South Beijing.

The photo above was taken at the entrance to the market, a huge dirt lot surrounded by walls that spreads out over a couple of city blocks.

The trucks line up in rings, sorted by the type of produce they sell. Apartment blocks of south Beijing in background. As mentioned in the GT article linked above, the market is due to move out to the 6th Ring Road in a year or so.

Scenes from around the market. As far as I can determine, the farmers bring their own produce in by truck. According to one article I read, the market is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with the busiest time being from 4 to 6 AM.

Random foreigners apparently are not a common site at Xinfadi. You'd think the occasional Western chef would make his way out here to buy for a restaurant, but we didn't encounter any. Maybe they come at the magical 4 AM to 6 AM hour, if they come at all...

Seen near the Drum Tower...

2011-04-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Beijing...

2011-04-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

As we entered the arrival hall of the Beijing Capital Airport the other day, we were greeted by throngs of teenagers and young women holding up signs of a young man, the sort of teen idol who would have found a home in "Lisa Simpson's Non-Threatening Boys" magazine. These fans were decked out. Many wore custom green T-shirts, and some of their signs had flashing diodes. With every new entry into the hall, they surged against the guard-rail, squealing in the manner of teenage girls the world over.

"Who is it?" I asked a bunch of them.

"BIE!!!!" they screamed—ecstatically.

I still haven't figured out who "Bie" is, but when he did arrive, a very slight, young Asian man, the crowd swarmed around him, tossed bouquets of flowers, took countless photos, pressed against the elevator that takes you downstairs, to where the taxi lines are.

It was a strange way to start a trip that in all honesty, I wasn't much looking forward to.

The "situation" here had become, from the outside at least, increasingly depressing. The detention of Ai Weiwei represents a new high (low?) in the government's recent crackdown of activists: an internationally respected figure, a cultural ambassador, who helped design the Bird's Nest, whose father was one of China's most respected poets. All those things only protect a person so much, particularly a person like Ai Weiwei, whose actions seemed designed to provoke the state to reveal its true nature.

It's particularly depressing because many of these "activists" were only "acting" within the boundaries of China's own constitution and laws, which as toothless as they may be, at least represented an attempt to move toward a rule of law. Opinions from those far more knowledgable than I differ on the extent to which this is a departure from recent norms or a continuation of a tightening that's been in place since at least 2006, but what's hard to dispute is that the boundaries of the nascent civil society and acceptable public discourse seem to have narrowed. Witness this editorial from the Global Times, which manages to sound hysterical, incoherent and sinister all at once:

Ai Weiwei is an activist. As a maverick of Chinese society, he likes "surprising speech" and "surprising behavior." He also likes to do something ambiguous in law. On April 1, he went to Taiwan via Hong Kong. But it was reported his departure procedures were incomplete.

Ai Weiwei likes to do something "others dare not do." He has been close to the red line of Chinese law. Objectively speaking, Chinese society does not have much experience in dealing with such persons. However, as long as Ai Weiwei continuously marches forward, he will inevitably touch the red line one day.

In such a populous country as China, it is normal to have several people like Ai Weiwei. But it is also normal to control their behaviors by law. In China, it is impossible to have no persons like Ai Weiwei or no "red line" for them in law.

The West ignored the complexity of China's running judicial environment and the characteristics of Ai Weiwei's individual behavior. They simply described it as China's "human rights suppression."

"Human rights" have really become the paint of Western politicians and the media, with which they are wiping off the fact in this world...

...Ai Weiwei will be judged by history, but he will pay a price for his special choice, which is the same in any society.

I don't know why I was surprised, or if I even was. I've been coming to China for over thirty years, and I've seen this cycle before. But it's hard to reconcile when externally the country has changed so much, when there are contemporary arts districts and hip bars and metal bands and avant-guard architecture. Where teenage girls scream for their latest pop idol.

Most of the reporting on the crackdown attributes it to "Jasmine Revolutions" in the Middle East. Some of my friends are of the opinion that it has everything to do with the upcoming transition of power (due to play out in 2012), the need to look "tough" to the old guard. I'd guess it's a combination of those things. For all the Western commentators who opined that China was in no danger of the kind of unrest seen in the Middle East, the government here isn't taking any chances.

Risk or no, the insecurity demonstrated here is telling.

Anyway, I wasn't very enthusiastic about taking this trip.

But...and yet...

A couple of days in Beijing, after seeing old friends who are so bright and funny and unique...returning to my favorite coffee place near the Drum Tower, where the two young women who work there recognize me and greet me after absences of months at a time...the small interactions I have with people, the friendliness and humor...it's hard not to fall in love again.

It's just the kind of love that will break your heart, is all....

UPDATE: Check out my friend Richard's revealing post about a conversation with a Global Times editor...it speaks volumes about the Chinese government's curious mixture of arrogance and insecurity, to quote James Fallows' just published piece...

Ooooh! Shiny!

2011-03-27T13:29:00.001-07:00

I came home the other day to find an unexpected pleasure in my mailbox: my author copies of San Diego Noir! For those unfamiliar with the Akashic Noir series, each collection of short stories is set in a specific location, generally a city (though there have been some interesting exceptions). The books are a blast, a chance to see a place reflected and refracted into many different views and angles, all through the lens of noir (to push this strained metaphor even further).

I was thrilled when editor Maryelizabeth Hart (who is among other things co-owner of one of my favorite bookstores in the world, Mysterious Galaxy) asked me if I'd be interested in contributing a story. I'm about as newbie an author as they come, with one published book to my credit, and to be placed alongside rockstars like T. Jefferson Parker and Don Winslow (to name but a few of the authors included) was beyond flattering.

Also a little scary. I had not written a short story since college. Which was, erm, kind of a long time ago.

I somehow pulled it off, and you can read the result, "Don't Feed the Bums," when the book hit stores around June 1. If you're in the San Diego area, sooner, at the Mysterious Galaxy Annual Birthday Bash—more on that to come as we get closer to the event.

I've long thought that San Diego was an underutilized setting for fiction, and Maryelizabeth has done a fantastic job assembling a diversity of views, styles, places and subjects —I thoroughly enjoyed reading so many authors' disparate takes on my hometown, and I bet you will too.

Anyway, I had to document the books' arrival. I decided since Ghost did such a great job posing with the ARC of ROCK PAPER TIGER that I'd see what my foster kitty Feenie thought about the book:

(I call her a foster kitty but I don't think she's going anywhere...this is what happens with so-called foster kitties)

Ghost was blase about being in the limelight this time:

Spike is pretty tolerant of the whole thing:

Cats play a role in the story, actually. No, they don't solve crimes. These aren't cuddly cats. They're feral. Because this is noir, yanno?

Another thing I should've made a bigger fuss about...

2011-03-15T01:31:00.001-07:00

Because I am into instant gratification, because I'm also sort of lazy, or distracted, or in a hurry...I've had a tendency lately to announce big news on my Facebook author page. The beauty of this is that it automatically tweets out to my Twitter feed, and yeah, I'm weirdly addicted to Twitter (SEE: evidence of my short attention span, above).

Anyway, it seems to me that major news merits its own blog post, even an abbreviated one. And that selling my second novel to Soho Press is major news.

Here are a couple of announcements about the deal, on Publishers Marketplace (under "Thrillers") and Publishers Weekly.

If you've been following my blog, guest posts, tweets, or eavesdropping on my random conversations, then you already know how much I've enjoyed working with Soho, what a great job they've done with ROCK PAPER TIGER and just how all-around awesome I think they are as a press and as a collection of human beings. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work with them on my next book, which will be published in early 2012.

And which still needs a title, other than "The Book That Tried To KILL Me™" All suggestions cheerfully welcomed!

Writer Friend* Judi Fennell!

2011-02-14T21:53:00.001-08:00

(* with a nod to The Rejectionist and her fabulous Author Friends!)

A couple of years ago, I participated in a writing contest, Gather's First Chapters. It billed itself as "American Idol for Writers," but was really more "Survivor," a fiendish Darwinian social experiment in the guise of a friendly competition. Oh, it was unpleasant. A bunch of us participants were so traumatized by the thing that we started hanging out on threads to vent. And then to socialize. And thus, the Writing Wombats were born...

(re: the Wombat name, it's a long story...some day...)

Of the writers I met through the Wombats, there was one who I was as sure as it's possible to be sure in the crazy bidness that is publishing, would have a career as an author. That would be my friend, Judi Fennell. As I predicted (I really did predict it!) she was one of my first writer friends to score a publishing deal.

Judi writes romance, mostly paranormal—"Fairy Tales With a Twist" in her own words. I'm not a romance reader, but I could tell when I read her entry for the contest that she was already a pro. As I got to know her, I realized that "pro" applied to Judi in every aspect of her career-to-be.

When you wanted to know how to craft a synopsis or a query, you asked Judi. When you wanted to know just about anything concerning the mechanics of publishing, you asked Judi. And Judi would always respond with the utmost generosity, and, well, professionalism.

So let's just say I wasn't surprised when Judi got her first deal with Sourcebooks for her delightful three book Mer series—IN OVER HER HEAD, WILD BLUE UNDER and CATCH OF A LIFETIME, followed by her Genies trilogy—I DREAM OF GENIES, GENIE KNOWS BEST and...TBD? If you enjoy romance, especially paranormal romance with a big dose of humor and word-play, you'll love these books.

I applaud Judi's success for a lot of reasons. For one thing, I like it when my friends do well, and I especially like to see talent rewarded. And I keep going back to this notion of professionalism. I so admire Judi's discipline, the way she looks at her writing as a career and how she interacts with publishers, editors, agents, other writers and readers. If I were still in the position of hiring somebody to do a job, Judi would be really high on my list, because I know she would always deliver the goods.

And another thing? Her seemingly endless generosity to share her hard-won knowledge with her friends and acquaintances and colleagues.

Take a bow, Writer Friend Judi Fennell! I'm one of your fans clapping in the front row.

Writer Friends

2011-02-11T00:09:00.000-08:00

One of the cool things about being a writer is getting to hang out with other writers. I'm fortunate enough to be part of several online writing communities. From these virtual connections, I've formed actual friendships, and over the last couple of years, I've seen many of these friends launch their careers as published authors.

I've been thinking about how I can support these friends of mine, and after a lot of consideration, I'd like to start introducing them here on my blog.

I'm still considering the format—at this point I have so many friends who've been published or who are about to be published that I might group a few together by genre—they write everything from romance to urban fantasy to literary to mysteries to...you name it. On the other hand, if I do them all one at a time, I won't have to worry about running out of topics for posts for a very long time.

In any case, I hope to start this early next week.

At the Circus!

2011-01-29T13:42:00.000-08:00

We have cheese...

Dumfound Credentials Tiger!

2011-01-28T15:54:00.000-08:00

So, if you've ever put out a Google alert on yourself or your work, you've probably encountered strange aggregator sites that pick up bits and pieces of blog posts from around the interwebs and republish them, for reasons that are still unclear to me.

In this one, coming from somewhere in Russia, I think we've found a winner!

Lisa Brackmann's Jar Critique Tiger extract and Q&A : Lisa Brackmann has worked as a signal model directorate and an issues researcher in a presidential electioneer. She has lived and traveled extensively in China. A southern California best, Brackmann in Venice, California, and spends a lot of habits in Beijing, China. Dumfound Credentials Tiger is her first unusual.

I take issue with it being my first unusual, though.

Coming Soon, to an MP3 Player Near You!

2011-01-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to announce that Audible has acquired ROCK PAPER TIGER for a future audio book release. More details as I get them. But can I just say, I am totally entertained by the notion of someone else reading my book aloud?

Hello. Goodbye. Okay.

2011-01-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons that I like to stay in Gulou, around the Drum Tower, is the satisfaction I get every time I take the short cut I know of from the place I often stay to Gulou Dong Dajie, the street you take to get to my favorite bar, which lies on a tiny lane just off of it. I get a weird little thrill, coming back from the bar late at night, by myself, buzzed on a couple of beers, when the traffic has died down and most of the people are off the street, just a few couples and workers here and there, and a random drift of paper blown on the cold breeze. I walk through the plaza, past these, you know, ancient buildings, tourist attractions by day that I have practically to myself by night, and it just gets me every time—how cool is this?

There's a coffee place I like on one end of the square, close to the Drum Tower, and I was heading there my last night in Beijing, just after sunset. The weather had turned bitter-cold again, after a few days of temps in the 40s; the wind had kicked up, and even though I've gotten better at handling cold, that knife-edged wind is something I doubt I'll ever get used to.

I'd just entered the square by the Bell Tower when a middle-aged Chinese woman came up to my side and said, "Hello!"

"Hello," I replied.

"Hello," she said again. She clutched two unwrapped rolls of toilet paper against her body.

I don't remember what I said, something in Chinese, and then she told me that she could also say, "Good-bye!" And "Okay!" And that was all the English she knew.

Meanwhile, an older man had come out of a doorway. I can't remember how we started talking, but he spoke a lot of English. He told me that he was a professor, a teacher, and that he worked restoring historical Chinese buildings, that he'd worked in San Francisco, in Chinatown, doing that work, and that he did that work here now.

"Oh, do you know about the plans for this area?" I asked. Because the various redevelopment proposals are something that very much concerns me.

"I am involved with restoring ancient Chinese buildings," he repeated, not answering me. I'm not actually sure he understood my question.

"This is my favorite place in Beijing," I told him, which is true.

"I want to show you something," he said. He gestured toward the entrance to a building on the square. A "Porcelain Museum," something I'd vaguely noted on occasion but never really paid attention to.

I followed him, wondering what this would turn into.

He nodded at a couple of workers there and we walked past them, into an entry hallway, and then into a large room, almost a hall, filled with examples of porcelain.

"So beautiful," I said, and it really was. I'd had no idea all this was here.

The woman carrying the toilet paper followed us. Was it okay, she asked the older man? He nodded, and gestured that we should continue on. There was another large room, full of porcelain pieces, smaller ones for the most part that later I noticed were for sale. Still beautiful. A workroom, with photos and a sculpted clay head.

Then, an "art gallery."

Cue, "Sense of Mild Dread."

For those unfamiliar, the "art gallery" is one of those, not exactly scams, but opportunistic expressions of Chinese micro-capitalism, as it were. As a foreigner, you'll get approached by a couple of "students" who want to "practice their English," and then show you their classes'/teacher's/uncle's "art gallery." These are exhibits of Chinese paintings that are mostly copies of traditional works, with some peasant folk and countryside realism thrown in. If you're looking for inexpensive paintings of bamboo and birds and goldfish for your walls, these actually can be a pretty good deal, and hey, I've bought a couple of paintings from various "galleries" over the years.

But there is only so much wall space for copies of famous Chinese paintings.

"This is my painting," the professor said, pointing. "This is my daughter's."

"Very beautiful."

"I want my daughter to study more English," he added.

Meanwhile, the woman perches on the stool, clutching her rolls of toilet paper, every once in a while interjecting a "hello!" and then explaining to me that this is all the English she knows.

"My son studies piano at XXXX**." He pointed at a stack of thin papers, each with a stylized character painted in black ink. "Do you recognize that? That one is 'le.' Also, 'yue.'"

"Happiness, and music."

"Yes. I make those." He smiled. "My design. Today I have over 60 visitors from XXXX**. I made this for them. 'Le.'"

The stylized "le" has little loops, like musical notes. He sings: "Do, re, mi, fa..."

He thinks for a moment. "Because it is Christmas. And because I have been drinking no small amount of wine." He laughs and gestures at a tea glass full of dark liquid. "I want to make you a gift."

He takes one of the extra scrolls, asks me for my name, dips his brush into ink, adds my name and "American friend" and "Merry Christmas" to the scroll. Sips his jiu.

"He is very clever," says the woman. "I can only say, 'Hello. Goodbye. Okay.'"

"That's very good," I tell her.

Then, out of nowhere, in English, she says, "Long live Chairman Mao!"

The professor's face freezes. Almost purples. "Do not say that! I don't like that! I don't want to hear it." He shakes his head. "He was a terrible man. Terrible. Like the First Emperor Qin."

I nod. "I heard that a lot when I was in China the first time."

Then he beams, sips his wine. "I like Deng Xiaoping. He was a great man. Did great things for China."

He ssks me for my parents' names, and makes a special scroll for them too. Then, "do you have brothers and sisters?" and he rolls up two more scrolls for them.

"Okay!" says the woman, giving us a thumbs-up.

"She is a little crazy," the professor says, conversationally, in English. "Her family died in the Cultural Revolution."

Finally, he rolls up all of the paintings, wraps them in a newspaper. Mentions again that he wants his daughter to learn more English, and I promise to coach her next time I come to Beijing.

The woman with the toilet paper walks me across the square, past the parked rickshaws. The wind has come up cold. "The professor is really smart," she tells me, "but he drinks too much. My husband drank himself to death. He was only forty-seven."

"I'm sorry," I say.

She brightens,"I will be sixty!" she tells me (sixty being an auspicious age in China).

"Oh, that's very good. You'll be sixty soon?"

"Now I am fifty-three," she says. "I want to show you my house! It's behind the coffee bar."

"Oh, I was going to that coffee bar," I say, as she clutches my arm and hurries me towards it.

"Laoban!" she calls out as we approach the coffee bar. "I'm going to show her my house!" We step over the threshold. "Siheyuanr," she says, the name for the traditional hutong housing. And it's a small wing of a courtyard house. "These are my clothes that I washed." She points to a clothesline, stretched across a window, pants and shirts fluttering in the shelter of the courtyard. "You can look inside. See? See?” I look through the window. A tiny room, painted white, with cartoon characters on the walls.

“I have more rooms than just this one," she tells me.

Then she walks me back to the coffee house, clutching my arm tight, and says "goodbye."

(**Famous foreign music conservatory. Name changed for privacy's sake)

Welcome 2011!

2011-01-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

A belated Happy New Year to all!

I don't know what it was about 2010—maybe it's true what they say about Tiger years, because it was a tough year for just about everyone I know, including me.

I had an awesome year in many ways. The publication of ROCK PAPER TIGER and the successes I've had with that exceeded my expectations (which I always tried to keep in check). But it was tough as well, a real adjustment with which I'm still struggling (NOTE TO SELF: Obsessively checking Google Alerts and Amazon rankings probably NOT the best way to ease the adjustment process).

To sum: a lot of very high highs and really low lows.

This coming year is Year of the Rabbit in Chinese astrology, which if you believe in these things, means we should collectively have a calmer, more relaxing year with a greater focus on peace and diplomacy. Here's hoping. I think most of us could use that.

I have a half-written post or two on my latest China trip, which I'll put up over the next few days—yeah, one of my resolutions is to more regularly update this blog.

Other resolutions? Nothing very interesting. Make better use of my time. Lose ten pounds. Organize my house.

I'm not going to resolve to write another book, because that's just what I do, at this point.

All my best to everyone for 2011!

Season's Greetings from Beijing!

2010-12-19T19:03:00.000-08:00

"No Construction without Deconstruction"

2010-12-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

It’s one of those clichés of contemporary China reporting, at least of the big cities: the only constant is change. I don’t like thinking in clichés, and I like to find the exceptions, in any case. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been so drawn to the Gulou area, the Drum and Bell Tower, one of the last holdouts of old Beijing.

I mean, Qianmen is a joke. A reconstructed Main Street Qing Dynasty Disneyland, with Starbucks and a Canon store and all manner of luxury goods that people may or may not actually be buying. Off Qianmen proper, there are still alleys of sorts, with vendors selling Mao tchotckes and shoes and jackets and toys, but the surrounding hutongs, most of them are gone or abandoned: gray ghosts of half-destroyed buildings, walls surrounding rubble. This surprised me, a little, that there was still the faux wall, the plastic mural demonstrating how the area would be improved and “reconstructed,” which I thought had been put up in haste for the Olympics, to cover up what hadn’t been finished. But there are still vast tracts of destruction that haven’t been replaced by anything.

I’d heard of plans to “reconstruct” Gulou, replacing the hutongs there with something called a “Time Culture City,” complete with shopping mall. If you haven’t seen this area of Beijing, it’s hard to picture just how absurd this plan seems. Most of the buildings are original architecture, or close to it: one story, modest, made of gray brick. A shopping mall? Here? What could possibly be left of the neighborhood after that was done? The Drum and Bell Towers, surrounded by Starbucks, Cold Stone Creameries and Apple Stores?

Preservationists, both Chinese and foreign, howled in outrage. So much of what Beijing once was, is gone forever; was it really necessary to “improve” this one, last hold-out?

For once, the planning agency backed down. There would be no “Time Culture City,” no mall. Just a small museum.

Maybe a line in the sand had finally been drawn.

But a friend of mine who has a house in the area had warned me that the area had already seen a lot of demolition. All those food vendors on the west side of Jiu Gulou Street? Gone.

NOT the yangrouchuanr vendor! I wrote back. This guy made THE best mutton skewers in Beijing. He took pride in his work. Beautiful cubes of meat, heavily spiced, and he cooked them perfectly, turning them just so.

Afraid so, my friend responded. And the squid-on-a-stick guy too.

Still, I wasn’t prepared, when I finally saw it.

I and a friend were meeting other friends at my favorite hutong bar. The friend I was with is Chinese but not familiar with this neighborhood. I don’t think she understood why I started ranting about the destruction, about how angry I was. “Barbarians!” I believe I said. More than once.

Some of this demolition had already happened a year ago, the last time I was there, but the scope of razed landscape has expanded. All along the west side of the street, as I’d been warned. There are buildings behind blue construction walls that had been recently renovated, which makes no sense at all. And on the east side, several blocks from Andingmen south are…gone. Just a pile of dirt, a lunar landscape behind tin barricades.

A few blocks below that, things seemed normal. That was a relief. My alley shortcut to the Drum and Bell Tower plaza was there. And the towers themselves still stood, not that I expected them to be gone, but still, it was a relief, seeing them there, the plaza itself and the surrounding buildings unchanged.

On the southern terminus of Gulou Dong Dajie is another huge mountain of dirt.***

(***EDITED: If I'm reading the GT article correctly, this will be the location of the new "Time Museum." Actually this seems like a good location for it, and I'm hoping that I've got this right)

“Why?” I ranted. Why had they done this? Why do they need to tear down everything, to make it all new? I get building a strong and modern China, but where is all that pride in “5000 years of civilization,” anyway?

Walking down the street toward our destination, I had an even worse surprise.

I’d always noticed the military base on the north side of the street, in the middle of the stretch between the Drum Tower and Nanluoguxiang (a popular redeveloped alley full of shops). It seemed out of place in the neighborhood, but you could pretend it wasn’t there: the gate to it was small, with a single soldier standing sentry, and the little shops surrounding it hid most of what was behind them.

Now, it’s as though the base has nearly engulfed the neighborhood. It’s almost impossible to exaggerate how out of place these monolithic buildings are, with their red seals of government, surrounded by cranes promising even more cancerous expansion. It’s like some bad science fiction movie, where the oppressive imperial invaders have taken over some planet of peaceful locals, their machines and installations looming over everything, promising destruction if the natives step out of line.

Okay, I’m being dramatic here, and I realize that. I’m a foreigner, after all. It’s not my country, not my place. But it breaks my heart all the same. It’s especially painful, not just because of a bunch of old buildings being torn down. As a lot of the people who live in them will tell you, the hutong housing can be pretty grim. Slums, really. There are plenty of hutong residents who would take compensation, if it’s decent, and move to some nice high-rise, with modern plumbing.

But this particular neighborhood is alive with small, unique businesses, cafes, and clubs. It has a bohemian vibe and a vibrant street-life. Why here?

(Apparently many of the people who live and work near the installation are furious with the construction and the disruption it’s caused, and the paltry compensation they’ve received or have been offered to relocate).

“I can’t believe this!” I near-shouted to the friend I was meeting—I’d had to call him because I was so disoriented that I was afraid I’d miss the bar.

“Well, the only upside is that in thirty years, they’re really going to regret it,” he said.

“That’s not really an upside,” I replied, and he agreed that it really wasn’t.

I have to hope that what replaces the rubble is something appropriate to the neighborhood. Reconstructed hutong buildings are far far better than high-rises, and who knows? Maybe they will be an improvement over what was there before. Maybe.

At least my favorite bar is still there. Crowded, filled with a smoky fug from having the windows sealed against the winter cold. The owner’s two cats were there as well, one curled in a chair, which she refused to vacate, the other stretched out on top of a cabinet.

There, with my friends, a mixed group of Americans, Chinese and Brits, I felt what it was I love about coming here: the buzz, the unique mix of excitement and contentment I have when I’m engaged, listening to the stories of people who have something interesting to say, with whom I have something in common. And when I and two of my friends went out to the tiny courtyard, to get some fresh air, the owner brought me his coat to wear, so that I wouldn’t be cold.

It’s easy to forget what’s outside, when you’re in a little hutong bar, surrounded by friends.

Reporting from Swedish Town

2010-12-15T03:18:00.001-08:00

Apologies for the paucity of posts — I have not had access to my own laptop for most of the trip. I have a bunch of stuff to share, and I should be able to start posting it in a couple of days.

Including a visit to Swedish Town! Just outside of Shanghai. Where my friend and I are drinking a "Fetish Coffee."

Beijing, Greetings From!

2010-12-09T00:40:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in a Starbucks in Haidian District, which those of you who've read my book might appreciate. But you know, they have good coffee and internet. Two of my life essentials.

I don't know why it is that I almost always end up in Beijing in the winter, but here I am again. I could smell the coal dust the moment I stepped onto the jetway, which puts me in a nostalgic mood. And makes my bronchi hurt, but oh well...

I hope to be blogging more regularly while I'm here, depending on internet availability. Unfortunately the Great Firewall is in one of its "Blogger is a danger to the Harmonious Society™" moods, so I can only get here when I am on my own laptop or at another computer with a VPN.

In the meantime, I'll be scouring the neighborhood (which I don't know well) for other life necessities such as Kleenex, a China Construction Bank, Yanjing Beer and dumplings...

An Overdue Announcement...

2010-11-19T13:25:00.001-08:00

I mentioned in my post below that I was excited about my new representation without going into any specifics. I wasn't trying to be coy; I just wanted to deal with one thing at a time.

Then I ended up preempting the announcement that I planned here in an interview by the fabulous Jan O'Hara on Writer Unboxed.

So this is way overdue—I'm staying with Curtis Brown, and my new agent there is Katherine Fausset. I've had a great experience at Curtis Brown. They are a class act all the way. And Katherine is not only a wonderful, insightful editorial agent, with an interesting and simpatico client list, she's a cook! Who's written cookbooks! As a non-cook who really enjoys good food, I find this tremendously impressive...

Endings and Beginnings...

2010-11-05T13:00:00.001-07:00

There's a classic Peanuts strip where one of the characters, Linus, I think, quotes: "It's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness." And Lucy scowls, raises her fist to the heavens and screams: "STOOPID DARKNESS!"

I try not to be a Lucy in life. I try to keep a good attitude and to not to spend too much time obsessing on bad stuff. But honestly I'm not the sunniest of personalities. I'm just not wired that way.

One of the greatest things about working with my agent, Nathan Bransford, is that he appreciates the darkness in my work (and there's a fair amount of it), and yet he is such a positive, upbeat and encouraging person to work with. That helped me be upbeat through some pretty tough times and channel the dark stuff into the work, where it belongs.

We've had an amazing creative partnership. For those out there who think that nothing happens in publishing without connections, I'll start by saying that I had never met Nathan and did not have any "in" with him before he agreed to represent me. I just wrote a query and sent it. He liked it, asked to see the partial and then the full, and then we started working together.

He is a hands-on guy, the best editor I've ever worked with, with an incredibly sharp eye for both big-picture strokes and the smallest detail. That didn't mean that we always agreed, but if Nathan saw a problem, there was a problem. Sometimes the problem was with what surrounded the thing that wasn't working. Sometimes I'd take an oblique or even contrary approach to fix what was wrong. And again that was one of the coolest things about our working relationship. He's a tough reader, but not a dictatorial one, and there was never one absolute "right" way to problem-solve.

Not every moment was easy. But overall...

We had fun.

If you're a writer who hangs out on the interwebz at all, then you know that Nathan is leaving agenting and going into a new career. I'm excited for him and to say that I wish him every success hugely understates the depths of my goodwill and appreciation.

Nathan took a chance on me. He took me on as a client, worked closely and incredibly hard on both helping me get the book(s) into shape, selling ROCK PAPER TIGER and negotiating the contract. He was there for every question and crisis, and his optimism never flagged. His faith in me as a writer launched my career and completely changed my life. I could not have asked for a more supportive partner, and I'm so happy that we got to share the excitement of ROCK PAPER TIGER's publication and success.

I'm going into another situation that I'm very excited about and that I think is going to be a wonderful relationship. Change can be bracing, stimulating, and a good thing. And all of this was handled with kindness, professionalism and grace.

But it's still hard, because I am mourning the end of a working relationship that has been one of the most significant of my life.

I'm supposed to be a writer, but I don't have the words to express my gratitude.

Thanks, Nathan. It really has been fun.

Oops!

2010-11-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

To all the lovely people who have left comments in the last week or so (two weeks?), apologies for just now noticing that I wasn't getting the notifications of them. It should be fixed, or I will just have to do it the old-fashioned way, by, you know, looking at the blog.

Thank you for your thoughts!

ROCK PAPER TIGER in Amazon's Best Books of 2010

2010-11-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited to announce that ROCK PAPER TIGER made Amazon's Top 100 Books of 2010 (that's fiction and non-fiction) and is one of Amazon's Top 10 Mysteries & Thrillers. I'm in some heady company on these lists, and I am really honored to be placed among them.

Before RPT's publication, I hadn't realized that Amazon has a team of book editors who read and actively promote titles. And they don't just make safe or obvious choices -- they choose a lot of edgy, interesting and important work. Take a look at the lists, and also, their book blog, Omnivoracious, and you'll see what I mean.

Bouchercon!

2010-10-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

I came home from my first Bouchercon with a bagful of books, a bunch of new friends and a bit of a cold, so forgive me if I keep this brief...

For those unfamiliar, Bouchercon is the Big Kahuna of mystery/suspense conventions. It's a reader-oriented convention, meaning that authors have a chance to interact with fans, and vice-versa. On the author side, every year reads like a list of "Who's Who" in the mystery/suspense world. This year's attendees included Lee Child, Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Laurie King, Kate Atkinson, Gregg Hurtwitz, Michael Connelly, oh hell there were so many people just look here if you're curious...

The point being it's awesome and kind of overwhelming. For every person I got to meet, there were two more I somehow missed who I dearly would have loved to have encountered. There are panels galore, on every conceivable mystery-writing topic and on the publishing industry in general. We had a wonderful hospitality suite run by Sisters In Crime, Northern California, who kept the place stocked with an amazing range of snacks, and most importantly, coffee (Bouchercons primarily run on two things: coffee and booze).

The best part for me was that I got to hang out with a bunch of awesome writers from Soho Press, and a team from Soho Press itself. I'd had the pleasure of meeting a few fellow Soho authors, Cara Black and Stuart Neville, on previous occasions, but this was the first time that I got to meet James Benn, Henry Chang and Jassy MacKenzie. What a great bunch of folks. I know this because we traveled as a pack. Just call us the Soho Criminals. Oh yes...there may be a band...watch out, Bouchercon St. Louis...

Here we are in front of M is for Mystery, preparing for our pre-con kick-off event. I think for many in the audience the highlight was getting to hear from publisher Bronwen Hruska, publicist Justin Hargett and marketing maven Ailen Lujo, who together provided an inside peek at the workings of a publishing house, along with a taste of their real passion and enthusiasm for the business.

On Saturday, we trooped over to Oakland to do a meet and greet at the Northern California Independent Bookseller's Association convention. After that, I sort of strong-armed the group into taking the ferry back to San Francisco (we'd BART-ed over). Okay, look, the ferry is awesome! It just is. Only takes a half hour. And it was a beautiful day.

Here are Cara and Jassy enjoying the cruise.

And here are the Soho Criminals assembled. I was really happy that everyone liked the experience as much as I do. If I lived up there, I'd commute this way as often as possible.

Publisher Bronwen Hruska, Henry Chang and Jassy MacKenzie, at dinner in North Beach.

All of us, post-pasta coma...

Central to all Bouchercons is the hotel bar. It has been rumored that Stuart Neville and I closed the bar one evening. This is not exactly the truth. One Gary Corby was also involved. Gary is a fine author and a great companion. He is also Australian. And a Vegemite pusher. I offer as evidence the photo below...

I will neither confirm nor deny that a tube of the stuff made its way into my suitcase and home to Venice Beach...

To sum, if you read or write mysteries, thrillers, suspense novels, or even strange literary hybrids such as Rock Paper Tiger, you owe it to yourself to get to a Bouchercon. Just watch out for that Corby guy. I hear the Vegemite is addictive...

Eight-Track

2010-09-17T01:01:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, we had an eight-track player in the car. The car might have been a Thunderbird, something like that, I don’t remember for sure. But I remember the 8-track. The way it clicked at inconvenient moments, double-clutching to the next song on the album.

Part of the reason that I don’t remember the car for certain is that my dad liked to get a new car every two years or so. I think the cars must have been leased by then. I only remember two cars of his clearly. The first was a yellow Rambler station wagon that we had when I was a really little kid. I loved that car. I think I cried when he sold it. The second was a yellow Nissan 240Z. He got that one after he and my mom divorced.

I had a more complicated relationship to that car. On the one hand, I liked it — it was cool-looking, and fast. On the other, it was basically a two-seater, so whenever my sister and I were both passengers, one of us would have to ride in the back cargo area, basically lying down, which wasn’t very comfortable.

This was, needless to say, in a time before seatbelt laws.

Better than the cars, I remember the music, the stuff on those eight-track cassettes. My dad was partial to Blood, Sweat and Tears, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash. Other stuff that a few years ago got weirdly hip, and I would kind of feel a little snug for knowing and liking it already. Lounge music. Brazilian Jazz. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

(Okay, I’m not sure if that last one is considered “hip,” but I still love it, and that was the first concert I ever attended, me, my sister and my parents).

Most of these selections make a lot of sense, given my dad. Frank “I Did It My Way” Sinatra? That fits. Johnny Cash’s hard-luck songs of prisons and frustration and temptation—very much my father. Blood Sweat And Tears existential “Spinning Wheel” and “When I Die” – yeah, those make sense.

One of my dad’s favorites was one that I didn’t think to question until very recently, and that was the soundtrack to “Hair.”

Full title: “Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.”

I’m not sure why it took me so long to consider how very strange this was.

My dad was a Korean War veteran who lied about his age so he could enlist in the Air Force and get away from the slums of the Bronx. He was seventeen years old. Too young to go off to war, when you think about it. But then, a lot of soldiers are.

I heard some strange stories about that time, once when he was very drunk and I was a little bombed myself. They came out after a dinner in Ohio, where he and his wife were living during one of his corporate assignments. I’d just come back from China, and though I had been on the other side of the planet, it was my first visit to Ohio, the first time that I’d ever realized my California upbringing might be considered strange or exotic by other Americans.

We’d gone to a restaurant (and like most Ohio restaurants then, the menu was nearly all meat and potatoes, so I was already in full-on California snob mode), gotten into a good-natured argument at dinner, something about Ronald Reagan, whom I predictably loathed and my dad worshipped.

We weren’t fighting at all. We were bantering, really. Having fun.

I can’t remember what set the older guy at the next table off, something I said about Reagan’s use of cheap flag and apple pie symbolism (I was young, okay?), and this man got really pissed off. He told me, and this I do remember clearly: “You’d better shut your mouth, little girl.”

I remember that I had a beer in my hand. I remember that I wanted to dump it on his head. But instead I got up and walked out to the lobby, because if I’d stayed another moment, I would have done it.

My dad was furious at the guy. He got up, and I thought maybe they were going to have a fight. I liked that, in a way, that my dad was actually mad on my behalf, that he was standing up for my right to express myself, even though he completely disagreed with me and we’d had some massive fights about this stuff in the past (and would continue to do so after).

I can’t remember what my step-mom did during all of this. I imagine that she was appalled and tried to calm things down.

What happened was, eventually my dad came out of the restaurant and drove the three of us home.

I asked what had happened. I was hoping, I guess, that Dad had continued to defend me to this asshole. No such luck. “He lost a brother at Pearl Harbor,” my dad informed me solemnly. And I’m like, oh, and this gives him the right to threaten me?

Again, I can’t remember exactly what happened, except that somehow the two of us were drinking and yelling at each other, and eventually my dad broke down in sobs about something that had happened in Korea, something that involved an accident on the plane (a big bomber—he was a radioman) and a guy whose head got blown off.

I really don’t know what to say about that. I don’t know what actually happened, if it even really happened; I don’t know anything more than that, than what he said, and the sobbing.

But I’m telling things out of order, as usual.

My dad was a Kennedy Democrat when he was younger, even though he spent most of his working career in the aerospace and “paramilitary electronics” industries. Sometime after JFK was assassinated and Vietnam escalated, he changed, like many. My mom did not. If anything she got to be more liberal.

This created a lot of tension in the house. My mom had the “Another Mother For Peace” poster. My dad had the faux peace symbol with the B-52 bomber forming the chicken leg and the graphic, “Peace Hell. Bomb Hanoi.”

So, you would think that I might have questioned why my dad loved “Hair” so much.

You know, the Broadway musical about a bunch of hippies dropping acid, making love, and protesting Vietnam.

Rather than questioning, because, hey, I actually was a little kid at the time, I was more interested in the songs my parents would attempt to censor when they clicked around on the eight-track.

One of them was a song sung by the African American cast members, about Abraham Lincoln. The parents would let us listen to most of this and then there was one part they would always turn down. The song that came after that, they’d let us listen to, in which the woman sings of her disgust about how the ideals of the Declaration of Independence are so much empty rhetoric, and at the end she laughs at Lincoln’s assassination, and says, “Shit, I ain’t dying for no white man.”

This upset me a lot when I was nine years old. I didn’t like that the America in this song wasn’t the America I’d been brought up to believe in. More importantly, I didn’t like the idea that people hated me for things I couldn’t change about myself. I’m selfish that way.

But they let us listen to the song where the black guy sings about all the horrible names he’s called. They let us listen to the song about LBJ and “the youth of America on LSD.” They let us listen to, well, everything on that album, about kids tripping and people being torn up by shrapnel and bombs in Vietnam, about “peace, love, freedom, flowers, happiness,” – everything except for one line in the first Abraham Lincoln song.

And one other song, which they would blank out in its entirety.

It’s hard to catch one line though, all the time. So, one time, we were driving someplace, my folks were chatting, and the Abraham Lincoln song came on, and they just spaced out. And I remember the comic lunge of both of them trying to turn down the volume in time for the offensive line.

They lunged. And missed. And we heard it: “Emancin-mother-fuckin-pater of the slaves, yeah yeah yeah! Emancin-mother-fuckin-pater…”

After that, they pretty much gave up on censoring that song. What was the point? We’d heard the forbidden words.

But the one song, the one that was entirely forbidden, they managed to turn that one down.

Every. Time.

This piqued my curiosity.

I think it was one of my best elementary school pals, Anne McDonald, who enlightened me. Her parents had the actual LP. So one afternoon, after school, she got out the album and we put it on the turntable, and we listened until we got to the Forbidden Song.

Before, I’d always heard the organ chord that began it, and that was the signal for my parents to lower the volume. This time, I got to listen:

“Sodomy….fellatio…cunnilingus…pederasty….Father, why do these words sound so nasty? Masturbation….can be fun…join the Holy-orgy Kama Sutra…everyone…”

Sigh. I guess it’s pretty predictable that it all came down to sex.

Of course at the time, neither Anne nor I knew what some of those words even meant. I remember we very studiously put the needle down on the track over and over and over until we thought we’d gotten all the words sounded out correctly, and then we looked them up in the dictionary.

But as usual, I digress.

My dad died at the end of December. It was both a shock and not surprising, and I guess there’s a lot that I might want to say about that, some day, but not now.

I have a really terrible memory in many ways, and I always have. But one thing I remember very well is music. Songs. Words and tunes. Orchestrations, even. Like an eight-track playing in my head.

At some point, shortly after my dad died, I was thinking about songs that he liked. And my sister came down to my place with her boyfriend, and some other friends came over, and we drank a lot of wine, and I did, “the Dad Mix.” All kinds of tunes that I had that I knew he loved. Brazil 66. “Spinning Wheel.” “Come Fly With Me.” “Folsom Prison.”

And that might have been when I remembered “Hair,” which at the time I didn’t have.

A couple days later, I bought the CD. I’ve listened to it a bunch of times since then, mostly while on long car trips, in the dark. I listen to the songs about hippies, and drugs, and “long beautiful hair,” and “two-hundred and fifty-six Vietcong captured.”

“Ripped open by metal explosions.”

I listen to the Sodomy song, all the way through.

And I wonder, what the fuck does this say about my father, the hawk, the Reagan Republican, the guy who worked in the defense industry, whose corporate nickname was “the Hatchet-man.” Who one time called me up, drunk and in despair, because he’d had to fire a couple hundred or thousand people, I don’t remember how many.

Who retired early, rode horses, built wooden camp cupboards modeled after the ones carried on covered wagons: a cowboy from the Bronx. Who certified as an EMT (which I used to kid him about, because I’d done that first), and even said once that helping people made up for a lot of other things in his life. I’m pretty sure he actually said that to me, and that I’m not just making it up, reading between the lines.

I can only guess, because I’ll never get to ask him. But I think I can guess right, guess some of it, at least.

My Big, Giant Head Part 2...

2010-08-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

An author friend of mine told me a couple of months ago that she called the publication process "Crazy Town." As in "You are now entering Crazy Town." I can attest to this.

I think I've said this already, but at the risk of repeating myself, I didn't really expect getting published to be, you know, that big a deal. I mean, I knew it was a good thing. A very good thing. That I'd beaten all kinds of crazy odds achieving this particular milestone. But I figured the book would get published, and I'd move on to the next thing, whatever that would be. That it wouldn't leave any particular imprint on my psyche. All that had already happened. I'd gotten an agent. Gotten a deal. Next!

Well, not so much. This has been an utterly life-changing experience. After years of doing creative projects that generally went no further than me and a few of my closest friends and relatives, of mostly staying behind the scenes, working for other people, all of a sudden, it's me out there. I've been calling it "My Big, Giant, Head." Like, I go to some website, and I mean, something big, like, the LA Times Book Blog, and there it is: My Big Giant Head.

It's...pretty cool, overall. But disorienting.

And, you know, the downside. You get...reviews. Most of which have been really positive and thoughtful. And I totally accept that not everyone is going to like everything that I do. Intellectually, I accept this.

Emotionally? It's not always the easiest thing.

You know, most writers are introverts. A lot of people who know me are surprised to hear me say that I am one, because I can be pretty social (and I used to sing in a rock band and stuff), but I am. I've always kept a pretty strict zone of privacy. My very own Fortress of Solitude. It's weird being public, even on the small level that I am. Weird being judged for things that are pretty intangible at times, or at least highly subjective.

Mostly it's been great. The totally cool part is suddenly connecting with all these people I don't actually know, having created something that they've responded to, that means something to them. That's been really awesome. I am amazed and astounded by the thoughtful book people out there populating the Interwebz, so many that I'm reluctant to start a list for fear of leaving someone out (rapid mumble "the Rejectionist, Moonrat, Kingdom Books, Dirtysexybooks, all the awesome people at BookBrowse, Sia McKye, Danwei, That's Shanghai, That's Beijing, Susan Kason, Crime Spree, Mysterious Writers, Mystery Scene, oh shit I KNOW I am leaving people out, just go to my Facebook Author page, where I post all this stuff!")

...Er, where was I?

Oh yeah. These are folks who by and large do this out of passion for books, because they give a damn about books and readers and the larger world. With the mainstream media's coverage of books shrinking daily, the work these volunteers (and I mean "volunteer" like you guys are the cultural version of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) are doing is vital, and important, and I bow to all of you.

And by this, I don't mean to slight the professional book reviewers, at Publisher's Weekly and the New York Times and the Miami Herald and the LA Times, and...you know? I just can't summarize in a few sentences the value of those people who are hanging in there and fighting the good fight for literature and culture and books and maintaining a space for thoughtful analysis in the face of a business environment that doesn't much value these things.

And then...there are the bookstore owners and workers. Oh, man. I meant to write about my experiences on the mini-tour much earlier. I went to some amazing bookstores. Mystery Books and Book Soup in LA, Village Books in the Palisades, M is for Mystery in San Francisco, Poison Pen in Phoenix, Murder by the Book in Houston. A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego...what these institutions and the people who own and run them and the customers who support them do for authors is absolutely remarkable. They create communities. They take chances. Without them, the literary world would be a much poorer, narrower place. I had such a wonderful time meeting these book people, fellow authors, and readers. Thank you. Every one of you.

I'm not sure exactly what point I'm trying to make here. I guess this is more of a summing up of my thoughts and experiences over the last couple of months.

Right now, I'm struggling through the creation of my next book. And, yeah, I'd heard of "Second Book Syndrome" and all of that, but it's another one of those things that, until you experience it, you might think you understand it, but you really don't. Well, maybe you will, but I didn't.

The irony of it is, the better Book #1 does, the greater the expectations for Book #2, and the greater the pressure. At least that's how I've experienced it.

Book #2 is coming along. I've come to the realization that for me, the writing comes out of some dark places, and as much as I don't want to go there at times, that's where the book is hiding. In dark corners, underground.

Maybe this is why I always carry a flashlight.

************************************************

(Apologies for not providing links to all of the wonderful folks listed above. I'm kind of tired. Please check out my Facebook page for those, or if you want any further details, just let me know)

In which I am too lazy to blog...

2010-07-25T15:13:00.001-07:00

...but I am interviewed by Jean Henry Mead at Mysterious People and do a guest post at Kingdom Books.

To tempt you further, Jean has interviewed an amazing range of authors at Mysterious People (and has a book compiling the best of the pieces published by Poisoned Pen Press), and Beth, the co-owner of Kingdom Books, is an author and member of the National Book Critics Circle, with a lot to say about books, authors and writing—so take some time to explore their sites. Lots of great stuff there!

Weirdly Awesome, and Awesomely Weird...

2010-07-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

I will be honest—I'm pretty overwhelmed by the stuff that's been happening lately, to the point where I'll just report, for those who haven't heard, that ROCK PAPER TIGER was reviewed in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review, and also, made Amazon's Best Books of 2010...So Far...

This is the kind of thing that I barely even allowed myself to fantasize. I don't think that I actually did. You know, keep your expectations realistic and all that.

I had some idea intellectually of what to expect, getting published. I know other authors who've told me how disorienting and crazy it can be. I thought I had a pretty good idea. I didn't get that high or crazy when I got the deal, though of course I was really thrilled. Stay on an even-keel and all.

The last few weeks have nearly capsized my little boat.

So much for calm. So much for sanity. The highs are higher, the lows are lower—it's the biggest, craziest roller coaster I've ever ridden.

I mean, how many times in your life do you get exactly what you've always wanted? The dream come true? The happy ending?

For me, it's a first.

Writer's Little Helper

2010-06-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

So one of the things you do as a published author is sign books.

I have absolutely terrible handwriting, so this is one of those things I'm having to learn how to do. I mean, back in the days of traveler's checks, by the time I'd gotten through a pack of them, my signature only slightly resembled the one I'd begun with.

So if you end up with one of my books with an illegible scrawl that might say "LisaBr....something," yes, it's from me.

I had a case to do tonight, and here's another reason some of them are less than perfect:

Phoenix

2010-06-18T12:23:00.001-07:00

So, I'm going to Phoenix next week to the wonderful Poison Pen Bookstore for their annual conference. This is something I have really struggled with. Here's why:

I'm a political person. If you know me, or if you've read my book, that's probably not going to come as a huge shock.

I try to keep an open mind. I don't consider myself dogmatic. But I have some strongly held opinions.

I think Arizona's recently passed immigration law, SB 1070, is criminal. I think it's racist. I think it's un-American.

Before anyone pops on here to lecture me on the border situation or the need for immigration reform, stop. I know. I was born and raised in San Diego. I think our immigration policy has some serious deficiencies. I'm not going to pretend that I'm educated or expert enough in the issue to know the full scope of the problem or offer the best solutions. But I am educated enough to know that what Arizona proposes is not the solution, and that for every person who truly believes it's not as bad as it looks, well, it is. It puts a burden on law enforcement to make snap judgments on a person's immigration status -- to decide if a person "looks" and "acts" "American." If that doesn't lead to racial profiling, I don't know what does.

And you want to know how to gauge the real intent of the people behind this bill? Look at what they're planning next -- they want to strip away citizenship from people born in the U.S.A. who have a parent with illegal status.

It's been a while since High School civics, but I do believe that's un-Constitutional.

I mean, I have enough trouble with denying kids whose parents brought them here as children or even infants without proper documentation. Is it their fault that their parents made this decision? And we're going to deport these kids who are raised in the States, who are culturally American, to a birth country they don't even know?

Americans come in all colors and ethnic backgrounds. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I happen to think that's one of the greatest strengths of this country.

But the Arizona law isn't just about immigrants in general. It's about Mexicans in particular, and that to me is one of the most troubling things about the sentiment driving it.

The southwestern United States shares a cultural heritage with Mexico. This was Mexican territory before it was the US. Yeah, the US won, and those are the facts on the ground. But that doesn't mean we should not acknowledge the long, deep ties between our two countries.

Yes, there's horrific violence along the border. Let's look at why that is. It's mostly a consequence of the drug war going on in Mexico, between the various cartels contending for supremacy and the Mexican military. What's fueling that conflict?

Long-held corruption in the Mexican government, yes. Millions of people living in poverty as well.

The other half of the equation is American demand for drugs, a drug policy that criminalizes behavior and increases violence and, most directly, American guns, up to and including military weapons. America is literally arming the Mexican drug cartels. They don't make guns in Mexico. They strictly control guns in Mexico. American guns are smuggled into Mexico every day, just like drugs are smuggled going the other way.

So, we, the US, are great big enablers of this violence, at best.

Anyway. I could go on, but I think I'll stop here and get to the point.

A number of people, organizations and government entities are boycotting Arizona. The three biggest cities in California are either actively boycotting or have condemned Arizona's actions. I'm glad. I think it's entirely appropriate for a city or state government to condemn the actions of another government entity. I support the people who've chosen to boycott as well. I get it.

And yet I'm going to Phoenix.

After going around and around and around on this, I've come down on the side of fulfilling a prior commitment, and also, supporting an independent bookstore. I'm not sure how I feel about boycotting small businesses run by good people who had nothing to do with decisions by the state legislature, in any case. But particularly when it comes to this business.

I as an author, a debut author in particular, owe a debt to independent bookstores. They are the ones who take chances on new authors. They are the ones who support small presses. They care passionately about books, and they connect readers to authors in a way that a chain bookstore or online entity never will be able to do. And like much of the publishing industry, independent bookstores are going through a tough time. I owe them, as does every author (with the possible exceptions of James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer -- they seem to be doing okay on their own), as does every reader who cares about books.

(I'll be writing more about my own recent mini-book-tour, where all this was really brought home to me, in the next few days)

So, see you at Poison Pen. I'll be the one wearing a "Do I Look Illegal?" T-shirt.

New Reviews!!!

2010-06-14T20:36:00.001-07:00

I'm cross-posting this news on my website but promise to have a post up soon reflecting on my recent mini book tour...

James Fallows is one of the best reporters out there on contemporary China—and he's reviewed Rock Paper Tiger. To say I'm excited is an understatement:

To add to the list of "good fiction set in modern China," check out Rock Paper Tiger, by Lisa Brackmann. It's a mystery/action novel that pretty much pulls off something I would have thought improbable: combining an account of Iraq-war drama (the emphasis is on Abu Ghraib-type themes), with a portrayal of the urban China of these past few years, complete with overhyped art scene, dissident bloggers, lots of young expats, and constant uncertainty about what the government will permit or crack down on. Along the way, lots about the online gaming world that often seems the main passion of youthful Chinese, especially males.

There's more at the link!

Then, a really nice review in the Seattle Times:

In "Rock Paper Tiger" (Soho, 345 pp., $25) — a remarkable debut by Lisa Brackmann — Ellie, a wounded medic and Iraq War vet, is scraping by in a low-rent corner of Beijing. Her friends, scrappy artists with dissident connections, attract the attention of Chinese and American authorities, forcing blunt-speaking Ellie and others into hiding.

Check out the rest at the link!

And finally, one of my very favorite publishing industry bloggers, the Rejectionist, writes a really thoughtful (and funny) review, picking up on aspects of the book that I am so gratified to have recognized:

Possibly it is not a total secret that the Rejectionist has, like, a soft spot for the tough-but-fucked-up lady-heroine! IT IS DEFINITELY NOT BECAUSE WE SEE ELEMENTS OF OURSELF IN THESE FICTIVE REPRESENTATIONS NO IT IS NOT THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Oh, SHUT UP. Anyway! Also very dear to us is the thriller-as-a-vehicle-for-insightful-social-commentary! So you can IMAGINE how much we like insightful thrillers starring tough but fucked-up lady characters! A LOT. That's how much we like them. And GUESS WHAT? They're kind of hard to find (the operative adjective being "insightful," folks)! All of which is to say, we tore through the fantabulous Rock Paper Tiger with RECKLESS ABANDON AND DELIGHT.

Lots more at the link!

Bay Area Folks!

2010-06-07T00:54:00.001-07:00

I'm in your neck of the woods for the next couple of days. Today, Monday June 7, at Great Good Place for Books in Oakland/Montclair, at 7 PM, and tomorrow, Tuesday June 8, at M is for Mystery in San Mateo, also at 7 PM.

Greetings from San Francisco—and Houston!

2010-06-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

I've had a crazy weekend, flying to Houston very early Saturday AM for an event at Murder By the Books with authors Victor Gischler and Duane Swierczynski.

First, if you are ever anywhere within a hundred, maybe two hundred miles of Houston, go to Murder By the Books. McKenna and David run an amazing store and are just awesome hosts. I'd write another mystery/thriller/suspense-type book just to get a second invitation from them.

That, and meeting ~~maniacs~~ wonderful authors like Victor and Duane made this a truly memorable day. Also, the amazing seafood at that place we went to after.

And oh yeah, the bar fight...

Good times!

I completely spaced out on taking photos, but a part of our talk is available on Youtube thanks to author Bill Crider. I've been too ~~embarrassed~~ busy to watch it yet, but from the opening snip, I look pretty much like a person who didn't sleep and caught a 6 AM flight from LA and arrived at Houston just in time to catch a Supershuttle from George Bush International Airport, get dropped at the wrong Crowne Hyatt on Southwestern Freeway Rd. (I mean, my thinking was, "how many Crowne Hyatts could there be on Southwestern Freeway Rd." Answer: two), catch a cab to the right Crowne Hyatt—a large number of Houston cabbies seem to be Caribbean or W. African immigrants. This cabby was great and had a GPS that played the Racing Fanfare every 15 seconds— and just happened to encounter Victor and Duane in the lobby of the Hyatt, so we cab-pooled to Murder by the Book, and, oh yeah, then we talked for a bit, me on no sleep.

A longer version of our talk, which I'm REALLY scared to watch, is here...

Launch Day!

2010-06-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

It's ROCK PAPER TIGER launch day, and I forgot to post. D'OH!

And now that it's here, I got nuthin'. I'm just incredibly gratified by the response the book is getting.

Some of the stuff that's going on...

The book has been getting some great reviews, which I've been linking to on my Facebook page (it's a "fan" page, so you don't have to have a FB account to view it).

My awesome agent, Nathan Bransford, has the official ROCK PAPER TIGER Chase/Action Writing Contest Extravaganza! up on his blog. You have until Thursday at 4 PM PST to enter your best 500 word chase/action writing sample. The prizes, as usual, are fabulous, so get on over there and check it out!

(and watch his blog for a guest appearance by yours truly)

Finally, I have my very first book signing at the wonderful Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles (Westwood). Details available here!

Oh, and for a look at upcoming events, check out my website under "News." There's a handy calendar there that has all the information.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me along the way. It's been quite a ride!

About that blogging resolution...

2010-05-09T20:46:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, I haven't done very well with that. As mentioned, when I have a big creative project I'm working on, all other writing initiative goes out the window. I'm still working on revisions for the next book (AKA The Book That Ate My Brain), and that is taking up most of my energy.

In the meantime, I'll direct those interested to a couple other things I've done lately.

Here's an essay I wrote for, well, I'm not sure. I think it's Amazon's Kindle blog. Anyway, it's about my first time in China, so be prepared to take a ride on the Wayback Machine. China was a very different place back then.

Here's a more casual post -- ~~me bitching~~ some further thoughts about what it's like to write for publication, and the dreaded Second Book Angst.

Finally, I'd like to invite everyone to check out my Facebook page -- I post one or two links there a day that are relevant to ROCK PAPER TIGER or to upcoming works. I'd love to have you join in the conversation. My thinking is, I'll use the Facebook page for quick, interesting links and the blog for longer posts. Which I will write in the very near future. Honest!

Tick. Tick. Tick.

2010-04-29T18:31:00.001-07:00

That's the mental clock in my head counting down the days to the ROCK PAPER TIGER official release date (June 1 if you don't have this engraved in your brainpan like I do). I got a bit of a jolt today when several friends emailed and texted me to let me know that Amazon is shipping the book about two weeks early. Eek! I guess this is a pretty common occurrence, so we're still going to pretend that the release date is June 1.

What happens after that? Well, a couple of things for sure. First, I'll be doing guest appearances on a number of blogs (details to be announced as I, um, figure them out). Second, I'll be going on an honest-to-dog, actual, non-virtual book tour! I don't mean I'll be blanketing the country or anything (at least not that I know of), but I'll be appearing in venues throughout California and in a few other places besides...details posted as I get them, on the calendar in the "News" section of my website.

(about that Phoenix date...Arizona, you'd better freakin' come to your senses about that awful immigration bill, and that's all I'm going to say about it for now)

My Big Giant Head...

2010-04-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, I haven't exactly followed through on my blogging resolutions (though I have accumulated a few more really cute cat photos for Friday). But it's been a pretty interesting week in my writing life.

I knew PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY would be reviewing ROCK PAPER TIGER. I'd done a Q & A for them a little over a month ago, so I was pretty optimistic it would be a decent review. Still, this is new territory for me—another one of those aspects of being a soon-to-be published author that you can think you're prepared for, but until you experience it, well, you're not. I had a nice review come in from Library Journal a few weeks ago (you can read it here), but this is like, you know how when you go to Amazon or Barnes & Nobel and look up a book and it says "Editorial Reviews" and under that it says "From Publisher's Weekly"?

It feels very official.

The fiction reviews come out on Mondays. I woke up at 5:30 Monday AM and thought, should I look or wait till I'm awake?

I decided to get it over with.

Here's the review...It's a good one...and the little red star matches my website.

(okay, I'm not going to lie...getting the star was really awesome!)

Here's the Q & A, which was surprisingly fun to do. It was a phone interview, and in spite of my nerves and general incoherence, I had a great time talking about the book. I don't do too well when asked, "what's your book about?" but it seems that I can talk about it if someone asks me specific questions.

I found out from my lovely editor at Soho that the print version features a photo of me. A friend of mine had a hard copy and scanned the pages for me. Sure enough, taking up a good chunk of real estate at the bottom of the page is my head shot, sort of floating in the text.

It's weird, in a way. I mean, it's kind of weird to enter that whole zone where your image is something separate from yourself—but that's a part of the deal of being an author in the 21st century, and it's not like I don't have some experience with that kind of thing (I mean, hey, I worked in Film/TV). I guess what's really the weirdest thing about it for me is that this is something I've pursued for such a long time—not having a photo of myself in a magazine, but the whole dream of publication. And, whoah, here it is.

I guess I never thought it would actually happen. Or I never really thought about what it would be like if it did. It wasn't something I could really imagine. Maybe I never really tried.

I've been around creative industries and endeavors for a long time. I've told myself for years and years...don't expect a miracle. Don't believe the hype, the myth of instant, overwhelming success. That's not how it happens. One small success doesn't guarantee anything beyond just that.

So okay, I'm still being realistic here. This is just one step (albeit a big one). I have a lot of work to do on my so-called career. For example, a second book that is doing its level best to kill me that I hope is going to turn out okay. It's a struggle.

It's also more fun than I thought it would be.

As a p.s., the San Diego Padres are in first place in the National League West. Truly, it is an age of miracles!

Writing Method BONUS!!!

2010-04-10T16:56:00.001-07:00

My working method..

2010-04-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

I know I promised that I'd be upping the output here, and I definitely plan on taking up some of the suggestions I've been getting --and please, if there's a topic you'd like me to address, just let me know! Put a quarter in. I'll do my best. But right now I'm still running a little behind and am short a few brain-cells. So I thought maybe I'd talk a little bit about how I work. Because a lot of the writers' blogs I read deal with craft and method and, you know, how they write stuff. The problem is, I suck at talking about it, because there really aren't any grand principles, so it's all about tedious detail.

Perhaps instead, a photographic illustration...

HOW I WRITE:

And for another angle:

Revisionland

2010-04-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

The way my writing has gone lately, my first drafts have been long, drawn out affairs, slow and painful to write. Part of the reason is that because I tend to develop the idea at the same time that I'm writing, my focus is a little sketchy. I'm researching, thinking, writing a bit, researching some more.

My first draft is like a really detailed outline and emotional sketch; it's not generally altogether focused and/or complete. But I can see the framework that I have and work with it, and though I still get frustrated at points, it isn't generally the blood oozing from my pores experience of a brutal first draft, where I don't really know what's happening a lot of the time.

The flip-side is, when I start revising a project that's gone this way, that's when I really get obsessive—when I'm in deep Revisionland, I am pretty useless for just about anything else, except regular showers, and that's only because showers help me think.

I'm okay with side projects if I have a specific deadline and somebody tells me what it is I need to do, but the creative, independent thinking part is pretty taken up with trying to get the current big WIP in decent shape.

I really should be blogging in the weeks leading up to my novel release, but I'm low on ideas. So if anyone's reading after my long hiatus, here's the deal: if you have suggestions/requests for topics, fire away—otherwise I'm going to be posting a lot of cute pictures of cats. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm hanging out at Sia McKye's today!

2010-03-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah, okay, I haven't posted on my own blog for *mumble, mumble* over a week, but I'm guest-posting at Sia McKye's Over Coffee, on some of the more mundane aspects of getting published. Well, maybe "mundane" is not the best choice of words (doesn't exactly encourage a reader to go have a look now, does it?), but I'm talking about some of the things you may have to do once you get that publishing contract. Stop by! Sia runs a great blog and it's always a good conversation.

Book People are Nice People! (the latest in a series...)

2010-03-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

Pardon the double-duty post, but I had to put this in "News" as well as the blog...

I just received the most awesome blurb from author Nicole Mones. This was especially exciting for me because I loved her book, "Lost in Translation," which when it came out, I thought was one of the very few books by a Western writer that presented contemporary China in a way that I believed ("The Last Chinese Chef" is on the top of my To Read list).

I have to put up the blurb here, because it's too awesome not to share:

"Finally a Western writer has taken China’s domestically bestselling genre of wild, louche-life youth and re-imagined it as a highly original expat thriller. It’s a wild ride—but don’t turn the pages too fast. Brackmann’s evocation of China, funny, frustrating, frightening, sometimes tender, and always real, is worth savoring."

- -Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation & The Last Chinese Chef

I can't tell you how truly gratifying it is to have authors whose work I have enjoyed and whose books are on my bookshelves respond to mine with such generosity and understanding.

Jeff Abbott, T. Jefferson Parker, Eliot Pattison, Qiu Xiaolong, and now Nicole Mones, thank you so very much.

I know, I know...

2010-03-06T19:58:00.001-08:00

I have been a Very Bad Blogger. I didn't even manage to do Friday Cat Blogging. I will! I swear!

Things are starting to heat up with Rock Paper Tiger's debut less than three months away. I'm really excited and pleased by all the activity and by the hardworking folks at Soho. I'll have more news to post on that front soon.

Otherwise, hard at work on the new book and fairly disinterested in the Oscars.

The writing process...

2010-02-14T15:02:00.000-08:00

So you know that old joke about the anthropologist who is doing field research in a remote jungle, and one night, across the river, drums begin to play, many loud drums. And the anthropologist goes to the village headman, who tells him, "Do not worry about the drums. Worry when the drums stop."

For days and nights, the drums continue, but no matter how many times the anthropologist asks the headman for the meaning of this, the only answer he receives is: "Do not worry about the drums. Worry when the drums stop."

Finally, late one night, the drums. Stop.

Terrified, the anthropologist runs to the headman. "The drums have stopped! What happens now?!"

"Now comes the bass solo."

Now come the rewrites...

Friday Cat Blogging!

2010-02-12T11:22:00.001-08:00

Spike is a 22 pound male, eleven years old, who loves loves loves little Sorscha (she's around 16 years old). The love is mutual. I frequently find the two of them cuddled together and they love to groom each other as well. It's awfully cute!

Mundane Things I Gotta Do...

2010-02-09T13:01:00.001-08:00

For some reason, no matter how much time I theoretically have (and not working, there's a lot more of it), I still end up with a sort of tunnel vision when I get close to the finish line on a big project. Or in this case, a draft of a big project. I will emerge now and then from my weird writing coma and note that there are bags of paper (consisting of all the mail I've been shoveling into them that I've otherwise ignored, and the bags are a step up from the Random Piles of Paper that frequently occur before the Bags of Paper step), bills to pay, rugs to vacuum, laundry to do and to fold and to hang, dishes to wash...

In other words, I look up and realize I'm surrounded by chaos. And stuff I gotta do.

In this case, aside from cleaning up the aforementioned mess, I need to do my taxes. I have to put a Reader's Guide together for ROCK PAPER TIGER (a reader's guide? I am clueless!). And because I've met all kinds of wonderful writers lately, I really really really need to update my blogroll and links, particularly because the more organized among those folks have already got me on theirs.

At the moment, though, I'm sitting on my couch with two out of the three kittehs, it's RAINING (again!) with intermittent thunder for good measure, and what I think I'll do next is...continue to sit here a while...

New commenting system...

2010-02-07T11:36:00.001-08:00

In what was one of the more clumsily handled transitions in recent interwebz history, Haloscan was phased out and replaced by something called Echo. We had the option of taking Echo or...nothing! that is, losing all our old comments (they could be "exported" for import into some future theoretical commenting system by a means that didn't yet exist). Anyway I didn't act on this so my account got ported to Echo. And it sort of works, but for some reason the comments aren't showing up on the main page today. You can't get to them by clicking "comment" either, but you will if you click on the title of the post in question.

I'm hoping they will magically fix this but I suppose I need to go complain to someone...

Enjoy the game, those of you who are watching! (I will be)

ETA: Comments are back -- it seems to have been a widespread problem.

And...GEAUX SAINTS!!!

ETA 2: Oopsie. Comments are gone again. Sigh.

Take THAT, homicidal WIP!

2010-02-06T13:28:00.000-08:00

I typed "End" on the draft at about 3:30 AM Friday. Oh, wait, I actually didn't remember to type "End" till later in the day. But the draft is done, in spite of the sneaky little bastard of an MS trying its best to shorten my life through anxiety-provoking, non-cooperative behavior. Those of you who have had similar writing experiences know what I mean. The rest of you will just have to take my word for it -- the story was out to get me.

Now I need to name it.

On The Job Training...

2010-01-25T20:15:00.000-08:00

So today I had kind of a shock...a good one...a Google alert pointed me to a Publisher's Weekly article listing upcoming Spring 2010 fiction/first novels -- one book per publisher -- and ROCK PAPER TIGER was the pick under Soho. I don't know if this is any kind of big deal or not, but it felt a little...weird.

I realized that for all the years I've been writing and pursuing a creative career, I've never actually thought much about what it would feel like to have some small success. I'm still not sure what I feel, to be honest (and it's too early to be making pronouncements about "success" in any case). But I seem to be spending a lot of time reflecting on writing as a career and what it means to be an author, on how I'm handling it and what I might do better.

Writers talk a lot about the passion they have for their work. I'm not sure if passion is what drives me. Passion implies an excitement, a thrill, and though I'll hit stretches when everything flows and I'm feeling some of that, I can't count on passion to get me through an entire novel. Novels are, you know, long. Very very long. And they have to be rewritten a lot. And when you sell them, there's even more work involved.

What I count on instead is a certain pride in craft, consistency and the small amount of discipline that I possess. And patience. Patience that I'm going to be able to solve the next problem in front of me. Patience to not get too freaked out when it isn't coming or it's coming really slowly. The importance of patience is something I'm just now figuring out.

So what does this have to do with my odd reaction about having my book featured in a PW article? (which though hard to define, I'm guessing might have something to do with shyness, embarrassment, a fear of exposure...)

I think, maybe, this is connected to my desire to do a good job. Because at a certain point, namely, the point where people are paying you for your work, it is a job, not just a passion. And right now, one of the things I'm feeling is that I'm not working hard enough at improving my skills, at doing a better job.

I need to read more good books, books that can teach me something about craft. I don't mean books about the craft of writing, but books that illustrate it. I want to read great stories, beautiful language, rounded, developed characters.

Suggestions, anyone?

Bad blogger...

2010-01-21T22:58:00.000-08:00

No donut. Hell no. I'm having a glass of Rioja...

So far the end of last year and the beginning of this one have been kind of tough. I'm rooting for a positive change when the Year of the Tiger rolls around on February 14th.

Anyway, I'll be back with a new post in a day or two, and hell, I might even do one about writing. Yeah, that.

Friday Cat Blogging!

2010-01-15T01:04:00.001-08:00

Ghost and ARC!

Please consider a donation for Haiti

2010-01-13T12:22:00.000-08:00

The news coming out of Haiti is beyond horrific. So many people already living on the razor's edge; now this.

Nathan Bransford has links to Doctors Without Borders on his site -- they are a fine organization. You can also text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross relief efforts in #Haiti. It is that simple. Learn more here.

I know these are tough times, but every little bit helps in the face of something like this.

UPDATE: The text messaging campaign was set up by the State Department, which is coordinating the massive relief efforts underway. They've already raised three million dollars that's going for immediate needs on the ground. Keep it coming, folks. And you can't go wrong with Doctors Without Borders either. Oxfam is another good choice.

Laura Hruska

2010-01-12T14:08:00.001-08:00

This is not the post with which I wanted to return to blogging, but so far this young year seems to be marked by loss.

Laura Hruska, publisher and editor-in-chief of Soho Press, passed away this weekend. She was a cofounder of the press, profoundly shaping its strong and idiosyncratic vision.

I never got to meet Laura. I was hoping to do so this summer. What I know about her is that she helped create a publishing company with real vision and guts and integrity. That she took chances. She took a chance on me and my book, and I will always be profoundly grateful for that.

Another thing I know about her: not long before her death, she did an interview with the Houston Chronicle about Stuart Neville's wonderful GHOSTS OF BELFAST, in which she managed to not only promote the subject of the interview but get in plugs for a whole range of upcoming Soho titles, including mine.

Now that's a publisher.

She will be missed.

Here are some links to articles about her...

Idiosyncratic Mind

Stuart Neville's blog

Shelf Awareness

Houston Chronicle article

Welcome 2010...

2010-01-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

It's a new year and a new decade. I've had some things going on that have made posting impossible for the last two weeks. I'll be back on it soon, with a few more posts about my China trip, among other things...

Wishing everyone the best for this new beginning...

Cat people

2009-12-18T13:39:00.000-08:00

There's a Cat Lady in the Beijing compound where I was staying. Old, round, bundled up in layers of quilted, padded clothing, hunched over a wheeled cart she fills with kibble and canned food for her charges, the outside cats who live on the grounds. Apparently they have different food preferences, and she is very concerned with making sure that each gets what it wants. She has her own tribe of cats too, indoor cats, "four or five," she told one of my hosts, as if she weren't sure.

I had a chance to talk to her briefly, as she made her rounds. I stayed at a distance but still frightened the orange and white kitty she was feeding, though she told me that he ran off when she tried to give him medicine for his ear: "he has a hole in his ear," she explained. "The first time I gave him medicine, he wasn't afraid, but the second time, he was." I wish I could have understood everything that she told me, but I did get that much.

I saw one of the cats she feeds as I was leaving for the airport today, sitting in a box against the wall, a little shelter against the bitter cold of the last few days. He is a big orange cat, regal, wonderful coat, and if anything, slightly overfed, and he sat there with his eyes half-closed looking content with his box and his world.

I like that there are cat ladies in Beijing. I like that this elderly woman gives care and attention to these cats and receives affection and satisfaction in return. Pets were considered a "bourgeois" habit in the past, and though you can always make arguments about the morality of caring for pets in a country where millions live on the razor's edge of poverty, to me, it's a sign of humanity allowing to shine.

My favorite Beijing bar is a little place on a hutong off Gulou Dong Dajie, owned by a Mongolian. He recently took in two kittens -- I saw them in July when they were tiny, and again in November, at the beginning of my trip -- two adolescent females with the run of the bar, climbing on the laps of patrons and up and down the tree in the small courtyard. The owner lavishes considerable attention on these kittens. They have their food (good quality) and their litter and if you ask him about them, his eyes go all soft. Apparently this is a change from his former persona: "He used to be a conquerer of the steppes!" a friend told me. I always thought he seemed friendly enough, but apparently he was somewhat of a hard-ass. No more.

My last night in Beijing, I stopped in at the bar to meet that friend for a drink. The kittens were not there. The owner had taken them in to get spayed the day before. We asked after them. The owner explained: "They are at home. They need to xiuxi" - to rest.

A souvenir in questionable taste...

2009-12-13T02:53:00.000-08:00

I mean, okay, the Red Guard, that's one thing. But the victim of a struggle session? That's a little dark even for me...

The privatization of everything...

2009-12-11T02:50:00.001-08:00

To anyone paying close attention during the criminal clusterfcuk that was the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraq War, this will come as no surprise. There was plenty of evidence for private contractors' (AKA mercenaries) participation in interrogations such as those that took place in Abu Ghraib. Still, here's another emerging piece of evidence illustrating how deep and how pervasive the corruption was...and I use the past tense here advisedly. From the NYT:

Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

Yeah, it sure does raise some questions. Here's one the article doesn't ask: why did the United States government empower a private firm owned by a right-wing Christian militarist, involving it in the most sensitive clandestine missions and not incidentally enriching its coffers by lord knows how many millions of dollars?

Will we ever know? Not if the Obama Administration persists in its enabling by continuing Bush-era policies and protecting Bush administration officials from prosecution*, and continues to insist that we "look forward," forget about the past, nothing to see here...

*and my posted link is by a pundit trying to give Obama the benefit of the doubt...

What a country...

2009-12-08T01:43:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Beijing, where I plan to take Chinese classes (already signed up, had my first session today) and do all the writing I'm supposed to be doing (er...yeah. That). Yesterday I had the great good fortune to meet author and long-time Beijing resident Catherine Sampson -- I highly recommend her most recent novel, The Slaughter Pavilion , an insightful look at modern China and a great mystery too!

We met for coffee at one of Beijing's best known foreign language bookstores. I'm used to finding officially censored materials in Chinese shops -- I find a lot of that in DVD stores. But I honestly was not expecting to find this displayed prominently by the cash-wrap.

Some things I don't even try to understand any more...

Awesome...

2009-12-04T06:22:00.001-08:00

I have no explanation...

2009-12-04T05:33:00.000-08:00

If it's Tuesday, it must be Yangshuo...

2009-12-02T04:43:00.000-08:00

I'm staying in a small village outside of Yangshuo, on the advice of guidebooks warning that Yangshuo proper, with its "West Street" filled with bars, backpackers and banana pancakes (apparently backpackers and banana pancakes go together like, I dunno, white on rice) was hardly the peaceful retreat that I craved after the urban overload that is Shanghai (even if I did spend most of the time lounging on my friend's couch). This village is awesome. It features several inns, including one with a rooftop Italian restaurant and a full wine list, and a cluster of "farmer's restaurants," dishing out the famed local specialty, "beer fish." And what could be wrong with beer fish? Nothing, I tell you. I had some, and it was delicious.

Apparently it was primarily these farmer's restaurants that transformed this village from a poor backwater to a prosperous little place whose residents are busily competing to see who can build their house the highest (I'm told that no one even occupies the upper floors; it's all for show). The restaurants attract busloads of Chinese tourists, every day. The food is cheap and good and they've cut some deals with the tour operators.

Chinese tourism is a pretty recent phenomena, and it feels that way, reminding me a bit of post-war American tourism, with its packaged tours, busses and guides waving flags to lead their charges to the next historic location ("We're walking, we're walking, we're walking..."). It can be a little depressing at times, seeing these large groups go here and there, wearing identical baseball caps, pausing in front of the designated scenic site to pose for photos, then onto the next in obligatory fashion, not seeming to take in much about the actual site at all.

Other times, I watch the tour groups, and I feel completely charmed by them. A lot of these domestic tourists are older, and I think, if you'd asked them thirty years ago if they ever thought they'd be touring their own country in air-conditioned busses, posing for photos with their loved ones, enjoying the scenery, they would have considered the notion highly unlikely, if not completely absurd.

And more and more I see Chinese travelers who take a more independent approach. Around Yangshuo, the favored form of tourist transportation is bicycle. This is a great area to bike. The traffic is light on the main road, and the side roads take you through some of the most staggeringly beautiful, unearthly landscapes I have ever seen. There's a silence here that's rare in China, when you are out on your bike, just the birds, the flowing water, the wind pushing against the trees and the earth. I see a lot of younger Chinese travelers, mostly in pairs, sometimes in small groups, on rented bikes, exploring the countryside. What a different experience this is from following around a guide reciting her memorized spiel through a distorted bullhorn.

Chinese tourists, stop uniting! You have nothing to lose but your chains...

Scenes from my walk today...

2009-11-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

(you have to click on this one to see the whole sign and why I shot it)

(this is a goof on a wide-spread Chinese internet meme from earlier this year -- pretty funny!)

The view from my window...

2009-11-29T04:30:00.000-08:00

And these don't really do it justice...

Strangers on a train...pt. 2

2009-11-27T07:25:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a long trip on a Chinese train is a better concept in theory than in actuality...

I do like the train. I really do. I like the rattle of the rails, the mournful horns, the sense of distance and the time it takes to travel. I like having my little bunk surrounded by my stuff and a book and the feeling that I'm wrapped up in the quilt in this weird mobile cocoon. It reminds me when I was a really little kid, how I used to love to fall asleep in the car, in the dark. There's just something wonderfully comforting and soothing about the movement and the sounds of it.

Except for the fact that, you know, I rarely sleep when I'm actually on the train. There's the cheesy guangbo -- in the olden days, patriotic anthems and Chinese renditions of "Do Ray Mi" and "Home on the Range." Nowadays, it's more likely to be a video screen (which you can't turn off) showing whatever lame history soap is on tap, preceded by endless safety recitations. Lately, I seem to suffer some respiratory ailment every time I'm on a train for a long haul, which I'm guessing has to do with the cigarettes smoked in the vestibules and occasionally sneaked in compartments and hallways.

Then there's the food. I've never really gotten a handle on the dining car routine, and sometimes the quality of the food makes stocking up on snacks and fruit a better proposition. Kind of like flying United across the Pacific. Eating is just problematic.

There are the bathrooms, which can get pretty scummy pretty fast, and the competition for the washing up room -- well, this really only happened on the Beijing to Shanghai overnight train (insert your Shanghai jokes here), when as we were due to arrive in Shanghai, I waited behind several passengers who performed entire elaborate hygiene and beauty rituals at these shared facilities, and I mean tweezing and exfoliation level here, in spite of the fact that there were about a half dozen of us waiting to just do a simple teeth-brushing.

Plus there's the reality that most train stations are, well, pretty grungy, that getting on the train feels like you're an extra in a mob scene out of an escape from Nazi Germany movie, that finding a taxi when you get off the train can be problematic (today in Guilin, all of the legal taxis refused to use their meters, wanted to barter for the rate and when I finally settled on one, she spent the entire ride trying to talk me out of the place I'd reserved and into the "best hotel in Guilin, the most luxurious, the most peaceful, not too expensive!").

But the real weirdness of long train trips inevitably comes down to your compartment mates. I offer as an example my two day marathon from Chengdu to Xinjiang. After that epic misadventure, 22 hours from Shanghai to Guilin seemed like it should be a breeze.

And it really was, except for the aforementioned sudden onset of sneezing and nose-blowing and trying to do all this quietly in an upper bunk. And the inevitable eccentric compartment-mate.

The first guy in after me was a young man on a business trip, hauling a dolly stacked with some kind of, I'm guessing, electrical components housed in hard plastic cases. Naturally this couldn't fit in the overhead compartments or under the seats so it just squatted there on the floor. He was a nice guy though, friendly, and we bonded over our mutual loathing of the video that couldn't be turned off.

Next was a middle-aged woman, trim, energetic and loud. She came in hauling a large suitcase, a laptop and several shopping bags (she'd been on a shopping trip for clothes in Suzhou), and after she sat down, the first thing she did was get out a kleenex and blot her forehead, saying that she was "Re si le!" "Hot to death!" from her exertions. The second thing she did was pull out her cellphone and start up a loud and complicated conversation. Third, she grabbed a cigarette, lit it in the compartment and stood outside in the corridor smoking and chatting, until one of the train workers shooed her toward the smoking area -- "Ah, wo re si le!" she exclaimed again, by way of explanation for her scofflaw behavior.

Not more than twenty minutes into the trip, she was replaced by another man, who had asked the train workers if he could switch compartments. I didn't hear the explanation for his request, but whatever it was, the woman agreed, and with the help of one of the attendants carried her stuff into her new compartment.

Our new roommate had a small backpack and two small plastic grocery bags that looked much used. Thin, with sunken cheeks and a thick wedge of hair. He spoke in a quiet, near-mumble, at least he did the only time I heard him speak, which was to ask the young businessman that the compartment door be kept open part way, because it was more comfortable. He did not make eye contact when he asked this. At some point in the evening, one of the attendants shut our compartment door for the night, and that was the end of that.

He spent a lot of time outside the compartment sitting on one of the jump seats in the corridor. When he was in the compartment, for a long while he sat hunched in the corner, head bowed, forehead resting on hand, as though he'd been crushed by some terrible news. Actually, I think he was just dozing. He sat like this even when the lights were turned off and it was time to sleep. Finally, he did lie down, face down, arms and legs splayed out like a corpse. He never used his pillows or his quilt. Though the next day, he spent a good five minutes rubbing at a spot on one of the pillows with a wetted cloth.

The next day, I wanted to offer him one of my bananas, but as mentioned, he wouldn't meet my eyes. I thought maybe he was uncomfortable having a foreigner in the compartment, though he hadn't spoken to the young businessman either, other than that initial request to leave the door open. He spent an hour or so making notes on a folded square of paper, crossing out characters and writing in new ones. I decided he was composing poetry, though I have absolutely no evidence of this.

About three hours before we arrived in Guilin, his hand darted toward me with a square sweet neatly wrapped in cellophane -- "Hao chi," he near-whispered, ducking his head and looking quickly away.

I thanked him, offered him a banana, which he did not want, and ate the sweet -- mochi and bean paste.

Both of us dozed the final two hours of the ride. When we pulled into Guilin, he was still asleep, head the wrong way on the bunk, feet tucked under the pillows.

Sinister Kitsch

2009-11-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

I've been traveling to China for a long time, but there are some things I will never claim to understand. The above is one of them.

Okay, China has changed tremendously over the last few decades; citizens are pretty much free to lead their lives the way they want, as long as they don't cross that invisible red line and get involved with politics or organizing.

But we're still dealing with an authoritarian state here. And portraying your police officers as refugees from the Cartoon Network does not really make them cuddly.

Then there are things like this:

Behold, "Haibao," which means, "Treasure of the Seas." Or as I like to call him/her/it, "Blue Gumby." Haibao is the official mascot of the World Expo 2010 Shanghai China. You cannot escape Haibao. Haibao is everywhere. Haibao does "hip-hop dances." Haibao is just a little creepy.

My all-time favorite, however, is this:

Heading to Shanghai

2009-11-17T23:33:00.001-08:00

I'm leaving for Shanghai tonight, and I kind of wish I weren't. No offense, Shanghai. But having settled in so nicely in Beijing, I'm more in a mood just to stay here and get some writing done. Take Chinese lessons (my Chinese really sucks, and that bothers me). But this isn't the way the schedule worked out, so my pal Richard (AKA the Peking Duck) and I are taking the sleeper train to Shanghai, followed by a week or so of travel. Sigh. My Februrary/March trip here was a near solid month of travel, and as much fun as I had on that trip, I think I might still be tired out from it.

But at least I'll be staying with my good pal, Shanghai Slim, for a couple of days, and once we head south, maybe we'll run into some warmer weather, which would be nice. I plan on seeing some places I either haven't seen in years or never visited at all, and that's something to look forward to.

A random, ceaseless churning...

2009-11-16T20:49:00.000-08:00

I'm staying near the Drum Tower, probably my favorite area in Beijing -- in a city that's become a massive monument to China's massive global aspirations, it's one of the few neighborhoods that's still built to human scale. Even so, Gulou is still characterized by the same seemingly endless construction and remodeling that goes on throughout the capital.

For example, the entire Drum Tower/Bell Tower plaza and surrounding hutongs (lanes) are totally torn up. The pavement has been jackhammered or pick-axed away, fresh asphalt laid in places though most of the lanes and plaza are still exposed, rutted dirt (making the efforts of huge tour busses trying to squeeze down tiny allies even more absurd and amusing than usual). There are stacks of gray paving stones everywhere. I have no idea what any of this is for, if it was needed or what the end result will be, though I expect I'll see it before I leave in mid-December. Walking down Guloudong Dajie (Drum Tower East Road), I navigate similar obstacles of torn-up road and sidewalk and stacks of gray brick. Workers at all hours carry beams and wallboard in and out of little stores in the process of remodeling.

There's simply so much activity here, always, all the time, in a city with thousands of years of history that never stands still.

Mysteries of the Narita Aiport...

2009-11-14T02:02:00.000-08:00

I hadn't flown through Narita (Tokyo) in years, not since United got direct routes to China. But because I was using miles and because I had a lot of stuff to carry and didn't feel like trying to get me and all of that to LAX at 4:30 AM to catch UAL 889, I decided to go via Narita.

Interesting facts about Narita:

1. They still care about having sundries in a Baggie.

2. But you get to keep your shoes on.

3. My tri-band phone could not get any service there. (I was afraid it had finally died but it perked right up again once we landed in Beijing)

4. You can get all day internet access for six bucks by signing up with a service called Boingo.

5. Most of the toilets come equipped with bidets, and the bidets include a pre-recorded "flushing sound."

Now, I actually would love to have one of those toilet-lid bidets. I think bidets are a fine idea. What I can't figure out, though, is the purpose of the "flushing sound." It's the button on the far right with the green eighth notes. I of course had to try it. It's a very loud, somewhat distorted recording of a toilet flushing. Is this to cover up the noise of bodily functions, maybe? But why would the sound of actual peeing be any more embarrassing than an over-amped recording of a flushing toilet?

Enquiring minds, etc.

Greetings from Beijing!

2009-11-13T09:10:00.001-08:00

And look! I'm on Blogspot! Oh for the heady days when I could just, you know, go to Blogspot and Twitter and so on while in China, without having to do anything special. But I have to say, Witopia rocks! So far it's fast and easy. Thank you, freedom and privacy advocates!

FTGFW...

2009-11-12T02:36:00.000-08:00

Grrr...so far my attempted proxy solutions are bringing me no joy...I hope to have this worked out while in China but if not, posting, Tweeting, Facebooking, all those lovely little social networking activities will be severely limited.

Grumble...

UPDATE Commenter Nicki tells me that Hotspotshield is working -- I'd heard it was blocked. I've used that in the past so fingers crossed on that one. Plus the lovely folks at Witopia are working on my issue as well...

Bad blogger...

2009-11-11T01:46:00.000-08:00

No donut. Thankfully, I don't like donuts.

I'm getting ready for another China expedition, and in all honesty, I'm not sure why I'm going this time. Well, there were some good reasons, but those changed. And yet, I'm still going.

I'm hoping to have the whole proxy server issue worked out so I can post while I'm gone, at least part of the time. In all honesty, this lack of access to information is one of the main reasons I decided against settling in China for the long term. I know that there are ways around the Great Firewall, but it bothers me that I have to find ways around it, and I have to wonder about the long-term prospects of a system so fearful of the free exchange of information. Not that people in the US necessarily take advantage of that freedom. And I'm concerned that the dysfunction in our political system has reached a point where we may not be able to make the changes we need to make in time to get ourselves back on the right track.

But I'd rather be able to make that choice, as feeble as it might be.

Is it possible?

2009-11-02T00:34:00.000-08:00

I might actually be done with my galley proofs. Which means...

I might actually be done with this book.

I mean, I know, if all goes well, that I'll be promoting it and doing my best to sell it and that it's going to be a big part of my life for the next year or so. But once I hand this bundle of pages and Post-it notes in, that's it. It's locked. No more agonizing about the status of iPhones in China or Xiali taxis in Beijing or how many minutes it would plausibly take to buy a train ticket at the Beijing train station and make the departing train. Or whether words should be italicized. Or whether I left someone out in the acknowledgments.

It kills me that a person as messy and disorganized as I am in most regards can be this absurdly anal in this one particular area.

I'm sure even after all this fretting that I will have made some mistakes. China has changed and continues to change; my knowledge is incomplete and if I were writing this book now...well, in some ways I'm sure it would be a different book. But you can only do what you can do.

Mostly, I hope I did a good job.

Bad television...truly bad television...

2009-10-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

One of the things that's nice about not having a day job--actually, everything is nice about having a day job, except for the lack of money part--but I digress...

Anyway, I have more time to devote to writing, and with getting my book ready for publication, I've needed it. But it's not like I'm taking all of this additional time and being productive with it. I find my lack of productivity frustrating at times, to be honest. Sure, I've been able to do some things more quickly-- I just finished a screenplay draft in pretty much record time (and had a blast doing it). But back when I worked full-time and was really in a rhythm, I used to crank out hour-long teleplays in a couple of weeks--at night, after work. I'm not making any claims that they were brilliant, and it's not like I made money on them, but I sure was able to put out the pages.

Now? I mainly feel like everything...has...slowed...down....And I like it.

I like having time to walk everywhere instead of driving. I like being able to have dinner and drinks with friends and not worry so much about all the work I need to do before I fall asleep. I like being able to sleep and not have to drag myself out of bed the next day feeling like cat-food. I like being able to mindlessly surf the interwebz and only feel somewhat guilty about the time suck.

And you know what I really like? Watching television.

Oh, man, I have been watching a lot of television. Lots of football (both pro and college). And...just bad television.

I mean, it's one thing to spend your time watching MAD MEN and BREAKING BAD. These are genuinely good shows. No, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about "My Secret Shame" level of stuff.

THE BACHELOR. And THE BACHELORETTE. Oh yes. And AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL. And BIGGEST LOSER. Though I can tell myself that the last one is about, I don't know, personal transformation, the Bachelor/Bachelorette is all about the train-wreck, baby! Don't look! Cover your eyes!

Hah. Made you look.

Then there is the world of Bad Hour Long Dramas. Now, some stuff I just cannot watch. All of those CSI/LAW & ORDER shows? Not interested. Medical shows, I want to like, but when they are bad, they are so bad. This new one, THREE RIVERS? Unwatchable. Even with former Vampire Detective from MOONLIGHT and hot-regardless-of-your-sexual-orientation former lesbian hairdresser from THE L WORD--which, by the way, is a candidate for my own personal Hall of Camp Fame. Wow. The one where Cybill Sheppherd comes out...dreadful. Classic.

See, it can't just be bad. It has to be fun bad. I'm not really sure what the line of demarcation is, but I know it when I see it.

Do I watch a double-bill of GHOST WHISPERER and MEDIUM on Friday nights? Why, yes, I do! Are either of these shows good? Well, I'd argue that MEDIUM is better quality -- Roseanna Arquette is great, and she might actually be in double-digits, size-wise. It's refreshing -- but MAD MEN good? Not really.

(and by the way, last week's episode of MAD MEN -- "The Gypsy and the Hobo" -- that had to be one of the most riveting episodes of the series thus far. Sooo tense! I was freaking out -- "she's in the car! She's in the car!" If you saw it, you know what I mean)

Do I actually focus my full attention on these shows? Nope. I use them as backdrop for cooking, laundry, proofing, surfing...I don't even have a TiVo, so it's live or nothing.

And then there's my latest, "Wow, I can't believe I'm watching this!" candidate -- EASTWICK.

Let me just say, EASTWICK is not a "good" show. It's been described as DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES meets BEWITCHED, which kind of covers it. The first episode was...pretty bad (and not good bad). I will say that it's improving. And EASTWICK has one thing that makes it a must-watch for me: Paul Gross.

Oh. My. God. What is it about these Canadians? Paul Gross plays the Devil, or something. It's not clear, and I don't care. He is hilarious. Smarmy-licious. Practically Shatnerian in his self-aware, nudge-wink side-of-ham performance. I'm considering a TiVo just to fast-forward through all the parts he's not in.

Yes, I am a fan.

I expect this period of television immersion is not indefinite. I'll probably get tired of it pretty soon. Maybe even tonight. I have a stack of books to read, and you know...

I just can't get into GREY'S ANATOMY...

UPDATE: THE MENTALIST? Not feeling it...

SECOND UPDATE: Several readers have left comments naming their own Television Secret Shames. I'd like to propose that those prepared to confess their embarrassing TV habits do the same. Who knows, we might get enough for a poll!

Okay, this is Paul Gross in SLINGS AND ARROWS (a show set backstage at a more than usually dysfunctional theater company), which I think I need to Netflix. Which means I need to get Netflix...

A Flock of Writers...

2009-10-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

Anybody who follows publishing industry news is aware that this last year and a half, two years, has been one of the worst times for new writers to break into the business, to get that first deal. Publishing is changing in ways that no one can yet predict and the overall economic crisis has compounded pre-existing structural problems in the business. There are so many commentators who are more expert than I am, and I'll direct you to this post by my amazing agent, Nathan Bransford, for just one example of the seismic forces at work here.

But that's not what this post is about. Instead I want to talk about beating the odds. Yeah, this is a happy story.

My novel will debut from Soho Press next year. But it's not just me. All kinds of people I know have sold, gotten agents or otherwise achieved some publishing success during this very tough time. I'll name a few names: Judi Fennell (who sold her first three book series in 2008 and just sold a second), Elizabeth Loupas, whose historical mystery/romance will debut in 2011, Bryn Greenwood (agented, on sub), Dana Fredsti (on sub), Jenny Brown (sold three book romance series), and Nathan Bransford (already a publishing pro and now an author whose middle-grade novel comes out in 2011). I recently started hanging out on a forum at Absolute Write, where in the last couple of months, more writers than I can count have gotten agented and/or sold.

And finally, just two days ago, another writer friend scored a multi-book deal (I'm leaving that announcement to the writer in question).

I'm trying to figure out what the lessons are here, that so many writers I know are achieving career milestones during what is arguably the worst period in publishing since the Great Depression. I'm concluding two things: that serious-minded people flock together, and that a sort of positive group-think emerges, one that is oriented toward success and encourages the success of others in the group. My own progress I attribute in large part to the people by whom I'm surrounded -- I don't know that I would have known how to scramble up to that next level without the knowledge and enthusiasm of writer friends who in many cases were ahead of me in their own career progression, or at the very least certainly had a better idea of how to go about it than I did.

So, the take-away? Surround yourself with serious-minded writers. People who have the same commitment to excellence and success that you do. You'll boost each other up, and you'll fill in the gaps in each other's knowledge and experience.

I know that sounds suspiciously like management-speak (especially that "commitment to excellence and success" part), but you know what, it's true.

Plus, you know, maybe there's some kind of weird quantum physics at work here. Success reinforcing success, blasting out success waves...or something.

Okay, maybe not.

Junk mail that made my day...

2009-10-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

You know those solicitations you get from shady companies wanting to refinance your mortgage? The ones that say "OFFICIAL US MAIL!" "DELIVER TO AUTHORIZED ADDRESSEE ONLY!!!" and of course it's a load of crap because it's just a piece of junk mail? I got one from Geico, the auto insurance company, that says, first in red letters:

IMPORTANT!

Followed by:

Do not deliver to the wrong addressee!
Do not bend, fold, spindle or mutilate
Do not lock your keys in the car
Do not wear brown shoes with a navy suit
Do not forget your mom's birthday

AND DO NOT PAY TOO MUCH FOR CAR INSURANCE!

Okay, it made me laugh. But the gecko, guys? Still not feeling it...

ROCK PAPER TIGER available for pre-order (!)

2009-10-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

I was going to post something else today (a post about my vaguely embarrassing television habits, and I promise I'll do that tomorrow), but something came up, and even though I posted it as a news item on my Lovely New Website, I figured I'd better repeat it here...

So, yeah, I've been checking Amazon occasionally (daily) to see when my book shows up for pre-order without really expecting it to be there. I figured it would appear around the same time as the Soho catalog for Spring/Summer 2010, which I think is November. Tonight, as I was chatting with two friends in two separate chat windows, I idly surfed on over to Amazon for my routine search (because two chats is not nearly enough multi-tasking for my attention-deficit-addled brain) and, whoah...

There it was...

There are all sorts of moments that stand out in this journey to publication, some of which are pure joy and validation (getting an agent, getting the sale, seeing my cover), and others that are joyous mixed with..."Oh. Weird. That's my book."

Oh. Weird. That's my book.

Hey! Look over there!!! ----->

2009-10-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

At my new website! It is very nifty, thanks to the amazing design job of Ryan of Dao By Design, whom I highly recommend. Take a look -- I think you'll agree with me!

UPDATE: and I absolutely must give a shout-out to graphic designer Kerrin Hands, who created the awesome cover for ROCK PAPER TIGER! (the design of which you'll see reflected in the overall look of the website). I should have thanked him by name way sooner -- I feel so fortunate to have my book represented by his work.

Book People are Nice People!

2009-10-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

I forget what book person's blog I read that on, but it's true. I now have four very nice blurbs for ROCK PAPER TIGER from four very successful, busy authors. I don't know many other professions whose members overall are as generous with their time and willingness to help out newbies.

I'm getting ready to launch my new website (this blog will be a part of the site, no worries) and now I am faced with the enviable problem of having to rethink where I'm going to put all of these kind words...it's a nice problem to have!

Okay, that's my brag of the day. But it's also a reminder to myself -- if I achieve any level of success, I owe it to the Book Universe to pass the generosity along...

Today's Rant

2009-09-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

I really should have "rant!" as a category - I rant far more than I talk about, oh, writing...but I promise this will be short.

I recently started riding a bike again -- sadly, not the beauty pictured in the photo above (someday...), but my old Diamondback. The area where I live, Venice, Santa Monica and Playa Del Rey - is a great place to ride bikes. In Venice, I sometimes think the bikes outnumber the cars.

But there are still too many cars, which I really don't like (a topic for another rant), so when I'm on my bike, I try to find routes that have as few cars as possible. This means the bike paths, which around here run up and down the coast, in and out of docks and past the Ballona Channel -- some truly gorgeous scenery.

I've learned to accept that pedestrians will use the bike paths. Even with the big signs on the cement that say: "Bike Path - Bikes Only!" You know, you have your tourists, your non-English speakers, and your "Special" people who don't feel the need to pay attention to such things.

What I don't understand are the folks who not only walk on the bike paths, but who just. Stand. There. In the middle of the path. Sometimes with baby carriages.

Look, people (especially you "Special" people)...I'm not that skilled a bike rider. If you do something really dorky like, unexpectedly walk in front of my bike, odds are good that I'm not going to be able to avoid you, and I may hit you.

This is something I've never understood. I get that some people are going to do what they're going to do, that they live in a bubble, or whatever. But what I don't get is, why do they trust other people to be paying attention? I sure don't.

/ rant.

The Bug Man Cha-Cha-Cha!

2009-09-22T21:56:00.001-07:00

I, I, I...okay, first I have to apologize for not actually posting, you know, a post lately, but I'm working on a couple of different projects that are eating my brain. In the meantime, I have to share this...I'm not sure why...

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on DANCING WITH THE STARS...

I blame Jeralyn at TalkLeft for bringing this to my attention...otherwise I would have been safely ignorant in my Dancing With the Stars-free household...

Friday Cat Blogging!

2009-09-18T13:35:00.001-07:00

Yeah, it's a little Ghost-heavy lately, but she just insists on doing cute things...the bag was totally her idea...