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My Blog
Here's the latest that is going on with me. Keep in touch.

• It Is Fiction
  Since my books are as "bi-regional" as I am, people often ask me which location do I prefer?  I always answer, "It depends on the season." June in Tucson is generally a bad idea or else an acquired taste, depending on your point of view.   And winters in the Pacific Northwest can be a pain--more so this year than in any of the twenty-seven years I've lived here.  (I'm a Northwest transplant dating from July 1981.  I don't generally count the years in the mid-seventies when I was living in Pe Ell west of Chehalis.)But back to writing bi-regional books.  From the questions I'm asked, it would appear that folks often assume that I need to be in Arizona to write an Arizona book and in Seattle to write a Seattle book.  Generally speaking, this is not true.  I can send my head and my typing fingers to the other place even if I can't physically be there.  (Having good maps available as I write is a BIG help!)This week as it happens, I'm in Seattle where there's more than a foot of snow in our yard.  Still.  Close to a week after the first dump of eight or nine inches.  This is NOT typical.  Usually after it snows here, the rains come and snow goes away.  Not this time.And so, while I've been writing, I've also been looking out on a snowbound landscape.  Now it happens that I'm working on the next Ali book--the one for NEXT winter.  I realized this morning, that with my little toes longing for heat, I had somehow forgotten that when Ali drove from Sedona to Phoenix on the last day in May, the heat would have blasted into her face the moment she rolled down the car window.  Fortunately, this morning, I remembered to fix that.And just now, writing this, I remembered something else.  The ninth Beaumont book, Payment in Kind, begins with just this kind of snowstorm--when the city closes the main drag up and down Queen Anne Hill so kids can use it for sledding.  (Locally that steep stretch of street is referred to as the Counter Balance, even though the street cars who used the real  counter balance have been gone for generations.)I actually wrote that fictional snowstorm scene while sitting in a hotel room in Hawaii where my husband's then-employer was holding a September sales conference.  I wrote the scene based on a snow storm that occurred when I first arrived in Seattle in the early Eighties.  I sent the manuscript to New York and it went through the usual several months-long editorial and production process.  A year and a little bit later, the book came out in February.  As it happened, that year we had also had a post Christmas snow storm.I was doing a signing at a Fred Meyer in Lynnwood when a woman came charging up to the table and said, "You're really  fast, aren't you." I must have looked sufficiently puzzled because she tapped the cover of the book and explained, "This snowstorm just happened a couple of weeks ago."People who end up reading that book now--and I do have new Beaumont readers who are just starting on the series--may think I rewrote that book just this past week in order to include our current snowstorm.  Trust me.  I didn't.  I was too busy dealing with Arizona in the summer.
• Winter Won-er La-d
  According the Lerner and Lowe, women's heads are full of "Cotton, hay and r---s." (Rhymes with Hags.)  My head, on the other hand, is full of lyrics.  I'm a person who has always had a song for every reason and every season.  In fact, when we first moved to Seattle and lived in a downtown high rise, I mortified my son by often breaking into song about whatever happened to be in my head at that particular moment.  He found this especially disconcerting when we were in elevators.  With other people.Because of this peculiar mindset, my blog updates often have "familiar refrain" sounding titles.  Which evidently annoys the dickens (Charles, of course) out of the Lords of the Internet (think Flies) who will let the improperly named blog open a couple of times but then, fearing copyright infringement issues, they immediately shut it down again.  That's when blog readers get that obnoxious URL NOT FOUND message.  The Lords of the Internet also have dirty minds.  When we titled a blog entry Daddy's Little G--- (Rhymes with Pearl) they thought it was porn and shut that one down, too, even though it was blog posting about our Golden Retriever, Daphne.And so, right now, please be patient if reading this is more like decoding a puzzle than anything else, while I try to say what I want to say, all the while outwitting the powers that beSo I'm looking out at our snow-surrounded swimming pool lined with some very unhappy snow-bedraggled palm trees and I'm NOT dreaming of a ----- Christmas.  And we're not even IN Beverly H----, LA.  There's a good six inches of snow out on our patio, and the weather people, not to be sexist, are predicting even more snow for this weekend along with very high winds.  Fortunately, Bill gave me a generator for last year's Christmas present.  Between that and our new Verizon air cards we should be prepared for almost any contingency.  In the meantime, All I ---- for C-------- is a very Northwestern rainstorm that will raise the temp to my favorite wintertime reading of 47 degrees.  A properly positioned Pineapple Express would do a lot to get rid of all this pesky snow.  (As you may have already guessed, I am not now and  most likely NEVER will be a skier.)Do I sound like a White -----mas Grinch?  Yes.  I am.  I admit it straight out, and here's the reason why.  Our house in Bellevue sits at the top of a very steep driveway.  And the side road at the bottom of the drive, also steep, has yet to be plowed and/or sanded.  My gimpy knee is still giving me difficulty from the fall I took in Pasadena last week--before the bad weather arrived in California--so I'm unwilling to tempt fate again by trying to drive on icy roadways to reach icy parking lots to reach pretty much unattended book signings.  (Hey, if they closed BellSquare in Bellevue, WA, at 7:30 last night, why should I try to be a retail hero?)  I trust that the outlets I'm missing along with the fans who were planning on seeing me there will forgive me.  Weather permitting, I'm planning on stopping by all those places next week to do stock signings.  Besides, it's not like I'm not working.  I'm writing instead.So it's Beginning to Look a --- Like C-------- will never come.  This is the Sunday is when we usually hold our traditional family holiday get-together, but with another storm expected, that's just not going to work.  The party is off the table.  I don't expect kids and grandkids to risk life and limb to coming Over --- river and ------- the ----s to a party.  This year, in addition to P----- on Earth and G------- to Men, we're concentrating on flexibility.And looking beyond Christmas, What are you ----- New Year's,  N-- Year's E--?
• Home for the Holidays
    When you're standing on the outside looking in, the idea of going on a book tour sounds wonderful.  I remember a time in my life when I was forever taking people to the airport and bringing people home from the airport without ever getting on a plane myself.  But you have to watch out what you wish for because you just might get it.  Eighteen years ago I went off on my first book tour.  It was also my first solo excursion to the East Coast.  I was astonished when, in the face of an afternoon rain storm with possible snow flurries, the media escort in DC said flying was a bad idea.  Rather than driving me to the airport, he put me on a TRAIN to go to Boston.  As a girl from the BIG state West, I was astonished when, every time the train pulled into a station, we were in a different state. That doesn't happen in California or Texas or Arizona or Washington State, either, for that matter.  Since then, I've gone on more book tours than I care to count.  And I'm glad to go, but you need to know that they are hard work.  Physically demanding hard work.  When you stay in a different hotel room every night, it's not easy to remember which room number is yours.  After a while, you tell the dining room folks to check with the desk because you have no idea.  In the beginning, I went on book tours by myself.  For the past seven years, my husband has traveled with me, serving as media escort, and Driving Miss Daisy with the help of Babe, as we call the voice in our dash mounted and portable GPS who moves with us from one rental car to another.  We were early adopters of GPS technology and the Babe had saved our bacon and our marriage on more than one occasion when we've been trying to make it to a book signing or an out-of-the-way radio or television station.  For a while, in the nineties, I learned to do tours with carry-on luggage only, but in the aftermath of 9-11, that is no longer feasible.  All the liquids I need for two weeks on the road definitely do NOT fit in one of those small Zip-Lock bags.  In the face of airport security, we've been fortunate to be able to use fractional jet transportation for much of the travel.  Expensive but convenient.  This last tour was done half on commercial aircraft and half not.  Years ago, my mother complained that I was never in a play or Sunday School pageant or sch