Would you like a book club author visit?
What a lovey dinner, wine and talk I enjoyed with Carol, Sue, Allison and Missy, at Bella Bru in Carmichael. [...]
TOMBOY: Strand Magazine’s 25 best mysteries of 2022
The Strand was the very first magazine to publish Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories. So I coughed up [...]
Herb Caen: The Sackamenna Kid
I'm thrilled to join Archivist James Scott 12-1:30 December 3 for a discussion about the Sackamenna Kid: Herb Caen. We’ll [...]
Just write
Write it anyway. This week, my artist friend Polly LaPorte (pictured above) delivered a portrait of my Grandpa Bates Jackson. I was [...]
Journalists as protagonists at BOUCHERCON
The Bouchercon Mystery Conference. I just returned from a week in Minneapolis with this observation: the crime-writing community is ridiculously [...]
Fiction, life, history, politics
I retired from teaching in 2021. One thing I really miss is talking about CONNECTIONS between fiction and life and [...]
Queen of Mean: Hedda Hopper
Researching the third Jane Benjamin Novel (Flyboy, November 2023) had me reading quite a bit about 1940s gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. [...]
Who gets to tell the story
I first learned about Betty Reid Soskin (above, in a photograph by Frederic Aranda for National Geographic Traveler) while visiting the [...]
Difficult? Horrible? Badass?
Talking about Tomboy with very good friends. For the past three years I've co-directed Stories on Stage Sacramento with author Dorothy [...]
August 26–Stories on Stage Sacramento
Words come to life on stage this month. It's a thrill to see your work interpreted by a gifted actor, [...]
Libraries from Auckland to Yolo County
I knew I should be working on book three, but I didn't have the attention span for it. So I obsessed [...]
For Writers: Janna Marlies Maron’s curly hair and super-smart writing tips
When I read author, editor and publisher Janna Maron's most-recent newsletter, which I highly recommend you subscribe to at the previous link, [...]