In conversation with Jasmin Iolani Hakes, HULA, at Capital Books
Friday, 5/19 at 6:30, I'll be in conversation with Jasmin Iolani Hakes at Capital Books about her WONDERFUL debut novel, [...]
Anniversary Sale–Tomboy
She Writes Press is running a one-year anniversary sale for books published in spring 2022. You can get an ebook [...]
Signing Sunday 4/2/23 at Ruby’s Books, Folsom
It's hard to measure the importance of indie bookstores to the ecosystem of books and readers and writers. I like [...]
Ruby’s Books, Sunday, 4/1
Sunday, April 1, 2023, 11:30-1 Pacific. Please drop by a terrific indie bookstore, Ruby’s Books, in Folsom, California for my [...]
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 [...]