[fourth of MIC blogs] I once wrote that when you put four Alaskans in a room, you have five marriages, six divorces, and seven political parties. Just because I was making a joke doesn’t mean I wasn’t telling the truth, too. Alaska embraces contradiction as a way of life. For example. We pride ourselves on…
[third of the MIC blogs] —– My two first published novels were science fiction, Second Star and A Handful of Stars, about Star Svensdotter, an off-Earther building a habitat at Ellfive and a mining colony in the Asteroid Belt. I had a third novel planned for the series but I was exhausted from the research…
Second of the Minotaur Moments in Crime blogs, published a month ago. —– Excuse me, according to no less an authority than the bellhop at the Vintage Hotel in Portland, Oregon, whose acquaintance I made in the elevator during my first book tour, if you are published, you’re not a writer, you’re an author. Okay.…
My publisher wanted me to do a brief q&a for their website, so I decided to have a little fun with it. Where do you get all your ideas? The idea fairy. What are your absolutely essential, can’t-do-without writing aids? 1.) A telescoping backscratcher, for those itches I can’t reach mid-chapter. 2.) Peppermints, for that…
Okay, we tackled sex (go here to read that post and the umpteen comments it generated). How about religion? I am in receipt of an essay written by a retired Episcopal priest from Kansas, giving me a polite thumping for the view of religion in Play With Fire, the fifth Kate Shugak novel. He writes,…
This is a painting of the Celtic, the 75-foot fish tender I lived on with my mom, off and on (on most summers, off some winters) for five years when I was a kid. Some of you will remember the short story I wrote about that time called “The Gift” (click on the link to…
Alert! Alert! Author sighting, author sighting!!! Yes, I fly out tonight to Kansas City, going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come (also the place everything’s up to date in). This is for the Kansas City Literary Festival, an all-day orgy of readers, writers and books. There are five stages featuring culinary presentations, kids’…
For those of you who have already read Prepared for Rage, you know “gators” is slang for interrogators, and that I’m referring to Bob and Mary in the Gitmo scenes. I was not, repeat not looking forward to writing those scenes. Not big with the torture, nope. I love Jack Bauer but I cringe and…
I was interviewed about Prepared for Rage this morning by a very nice woman named Diana, which interview is to be broadcast on the approximately one thousand (my editor said) radio stations served by Westwood One continually for a month. I’m told this is a satellite broadcast heard all over the West Coast, so everybody…
To my great astonishment, I have just been notified by the Alaska State Council on the Arts that Governor Sarah Palin has chosen me to receive a Governor’s Award for the Arts. I am to be named Artist of the Year on October 26, 2007, at an event in Fairbanks. I’m pretty flabbergasted right now,…
