Peter May Live

New Blog

2010-12-13T13:04:00.002+01:00

Please note that this blog has now been transferred to a new, more colourful site at http://maypeter.wordpress.com/

Follow the link for all my latest news and thoughts...

Extraordinary People (of the worst kind)

2010-07-27T20:47:00.002+02:00

I don't usually involve myself in political comment. But I am moved by incredulity to condemn, without qualification, the actions of the overgrown schoolboys who currently run the UK, in withdrawing funding from the British Film Council - effectively bringing about it's demise, along with the demise of the British film industry itself. In concert with wielding the axe on the Health Protection Agency (vital to tracing the sources of infectious diseases - I am publishing a book, shortly, on the subject), these morons demonstrate at every turn their unsuitability to govern.

Here is an interesting article on the subject of the importance of the British Film Council

Of Mice and Men

2010-06-09T22:19:00.000+02:00

I am moved by momentous events to write an extra-curricular blog.

After having successfully (well, almost) negotiated two months of events throughout the US, and a hectic French schedule in Lyon, we ended up yesterday in the delightful Romanesque Mediterranean town of Frejus for an event at the Librairie Charlemagne - a prestigious local bookstore.

We were met by the delightful Valerie Mouton, a former radio journalist who was going to host the event, and lunched in a local restaurant before visiting the oldest cathedral in Europe.

When we turned up for the event itself yesterday evening, the bookstore owner hurried out to let us into the store's private parking area, just off the main street. To do this he had to lower a two-foot high, nine-inch diameter post sunk into the sidewalk. This was a highly sophisticated process that involved jumping up and down on it until it stayed down.

With traffic piling up behind me I waited patiently until it was down, and I was waved forward. Unfortunately, as I passed over it, the damned thing suddenly took it into its head to rise up again. There was a terrible crashing and grinding, and I jammed on the brakes, effectively to find my car impaled from below on the pillar. No way to get it off.

And I had an audience awaiting me in the store!

Mindful of the fact that I had a meeting with my French publisher two hours away at Arles at 9am the following morning, plus twelve hours of driving over the next two days to get me to the book festival at Le Havre, I abandoned my poor, impaled Renault Scenic, to do my duty in the store.

As I spoke of research and inspiration, a mechanic arrived to raise my car up on two jacks, while simultaneously inserting a third between the pillar and the underside of the vehicle to force the pillar down. It took him an hour-and-a-half to free it. My concentration was less than perfect - a little like my French!

Now I cannot take to the road this morning without having the car checked for damage and safety. Even assuming all is ok, I will be several hours late for my appointment at Arles, and the leisurely overnight I had anticipated at home to break the two day drive that lies ahead, will be reduced to a handful of hours.

If there is a problem with the car, God knows how it will go...

In the words of a famous Scot: The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley.

A certain Anglo-Saxon word of mediaeval origin comes to mind!

Homeward Bound

2010-05-28T09:25:00.001+02:00

A little over two months ago I was sitting on a bench on the platform of the railway station ten minutes from my home in south-west France. It was cold, it was wet, it was still winter. I was excited, stressed, depressed, all at the same time.

I was waiting for a train that would take me to Paris, and from there to the United States, where ahead of me lay two months of touring, talks and travel, to promote three new books which had come out at the start of the year.

I was daunted. And, to be honest, if I could have turned around there and then, and gone straight back home, nothing would have made me happier.

A song kept going around and around in my head.

I’m sitting in a railway station got a ticket for my destination...
... And every stop is neatly planned for a laundry and a one-night stand...

Homeward bound, I wish I was... homeward bound...

Ok, so I amended the lyrics a little, but you get the point.

Two months on, here I am sitting at Gate B41 at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC. I have given more than 20 talks at events in bookstores and libraries all over the country, culminating at Borders at Bailey’s Crossroads just outside of DC, and the LaPrade Library in Richmond Virginia.

I find it hard to believe that it was eight weeks ago that I flew into Minneapolis, jumped into a rental car, and drove immediately to Uncle Edgar’s bookstore to sign the piles of books that Jeff Hatfield had waiting for me. Since when I have lost my coat and found it, lost my cellphone and (miraculously) found it, lost my voice and found it, and lost my heart to a dog called Odin. I also lost my way in the dark of southern California, and almost got shot. In the end I very nearly lost my sanity - and I’m still looking for it.

But here I am, finally... homeward bound. And I have that song going around and around in my head again. As they call my flight...

Powerfully Close

2010-05-24T16:32:00.004+02:00

Okay, so where was I? Oh, yes, Connecticut. So where the hell am I now? Damned if I know!

Wait, let me take a peek out of the window. Draw back the curtains just a touch. Ohhhhh, yes. I remember now. I’m in Oxford. No, not Oxford, England. Oxford, Maryland. On Chesapeake Bay. Just about 40 miles from the White House in Washington DC.

The British (or, “you”, as someone put it to us yesterday) sailed into Chesapeake Bay just over 200 years ago on a fateful expedition to set Washington alight, igniting the war that would wrest North America from colonial hands and establish the United States.

But this quaint backwater, with it’s English overtones (and undertones), could hardly present a more different face of modern-day America. The Oxford Inn, where we are staying, is like an old-fashioned hotel in the Scottish Highlands - from its squeaky floorboards, to its village pub filled with local worthies spilling beer and stories.

Just down the road is the Scottish Highland Creamery, which produces amazing ice-cream from traditional Italian recipes. The owner is, of course, a Scot. From Edinburgh.

There are hundreds of miles of coastline following ragged inlets in and out of bays and creeks. The roads are all inland, long driveways leading off into trees on either side towards hidden houses which face on to the water, each with its own private jetty, and a curious veil of anonymity. People who live here are, for the most part, either very rich, or very private.

As someone said in the bar last night, about forty percent of the population is probably on the witness protection scheme.

But it is also an artistic community, with writers, artists and poets settling in large numbers in search of inspiration and peace.

Among them is Kathy Harig, who recently moved her delightful mystery bookstore down here from Baltimore. Which was where, yesterday, I chatted with customers and signed books, on a damp, quiet Sunday.

Seven days ago we were in upstate New York, since when I have driven nearly 1200 miles, stopping in Connecticut, New York City, and Pittsburgh, PA. There, on Saturday morning, I gave a talk to a full-house at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont.

Owners, Mary-Alice and Richard, had laid on breakfast for their regular customers, who filled all the available table space, nibbling muffins and sipping coffee as I talked about my books. We had a lively and fun session, culminating in the signing of many books.

We left at midday, to pick up a take-away pizza, and get on the road for the six-hour drive south-east to Chesapeake.

I have to confess to a serious dose of fatigue. I feel (and probably look) as if I have aged ten years on this trip. Careful dieting and serious exercise will be necessary preparation in the weeks ahead of ever doing this again. But right now, for the purposes of recovery, all I want is to sleep - in my own bed!

But wait. Again. It’s not over. Today is a “day off”. A chance for some relaxing tourism, to take some fresh air and seafood. Then tomorrow it’s off to DC, an event at Borders at Bailey’s Crossroads, and an overnight at the home of our friend Barbara Busch. Before moving on to Richmond, Virginia, for a speaking engagement at the LaPrade library.

Then, and I hardly dare to believe it, we climb aboard an airplane at Dulles Airport and fly home to Paris.

But for now, that is a thought that I will push to the back of my mind. The game is not over till the fat lady sings.

Tonight, I will go to bed again, knowing that the President of the United States is slipping between the sheets less than an hour’s drive away. Tomorrow night I get a little nearer. For Barbara lives less than five miles from the White House. And that’s probably as close to the most powerful man in the world as I’m ever likely to get.

Connections in Connecticut

2010-05-21T01:58:00.007+02:00

Dr. Richard Ward is one of the most pre-eminent experts on crime and international terrorism in the United States.

And it was thanks to Dick that I received my introduction to the Chinese police when I started writing my China Thrillers series in 1997, since when he has been a constant source of research and inspiration for all my books.

He has also become a great friend. And it is with Dick and his wife, Michelle, that we are staying these three days in Connecticut. It is my first trip to New England, towns and villages with quaint English names nestling amongst rolling countryside of spring green natural forest.

They live just outside of New Haven, the home of Yale University. Dick is Dean of the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, a part of the University of New Haven. He moved there two years ago from Sam Houston State University, where he was Dean of the College of Criminal Justice for ten years.

During that time he set up a terrorism monitoring organisation, where data gleaned from open sources is analysed by specially designed software to find hidden links between terrorists, terror groups, and organised crime. The data is collected and entered by criminal justice students, both domestic and foreign, at five different locations around the US.

The group is known as ISVG - the Institute for the Study of Violent Groups - and has its own website.

I took advantage of my time here to sit in on some of their briefings, and talk to the guys who are running the show. Fascinating stuff!

A local journalist thought so, too, and showed up for a briefing while we were there. On the table in the briefing room, was a CV of the Times Square bomber, which the guys at ISVG had put together for him. Not realising it was for him, he proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes surreptitiously sliding the CV in amongst his own papers so that he could slip quietly away with it when he left.

Oh how we laughed when he was gone. He figured he had pulled off some kind of journalistic coup, when really he was just stealing from himself.

A further source of amusement came when he briefly left the room with his photographer to take pics of the kids entering up data at computers in the facility. We were all startled by the sudden ringing of a cellphone in the pocket of his jacket which was hanging over the back of a chair - the theme from Mission Impossible (a comment on his own self-image, perhaps?). We half expected the cellphone to self-destruct after five seconds.

Dick also does an hour-long weekly radio show which broadcasts to around 400,000 people, so we spent the next hour in the studio, where he recorded an interview with me for the show.

That was Tuesday, an unseasonally cold and wet day.

Wednesday we took the train to New York City to sign books at the Mysterious Bookshop at Tribeca in lower Manhattan. Afterwards, La Patronne and I met up with Susie for lunch. The weather was still cool, but improving.

Thursday was beautiful, with temperatures soaring to 28C, and Dick and Michelle drove us up the coast to the beautiful historical town of Mystic on the Mystic River, where majestic talls ships are berthed in a sheltered harbour overlooked by the original boatyards and chandlers, banks and immigration offices that lined the dock.

Tomorrow, it’s an early start and a long drive south and west to the city of Pittsburgh where I will give a breakfast talk on Saturday at the Mystery Lovers’ Bookshop, under the heading of “Coffee and Crime”.

At the same time, Dick will board an airplane and fly to Afghanistan.

I think I prefer my itinerary.

Dick and Michelle go overboard in Mystic

When Fates Conspire

2010-05-19T01:13:00.008+02:00

Memories of nice people in Scottsdale - Susan and Jim, who took us to the hottest Mexican in town - literally.

Sometimes it seems (and I am not one of life’s conspiracy theorists) that fate simply conspires against you. And when life is stressful it does everything it can to make it more so.

So there we were. Three-thirty in the morning, standing outside the house in Scottsdale, Arizona, due to check-in for our flight at 4am. And the taxi we have ordered is late.

Not just any old taxi. It was a car from Arizona Executive transportation services, ordered and agreed during an exchange of several e-mails. Price nailed, time double-checked.

By ten to four, there was still no sign of it. Just the hot wind blowing off the desert in the dark. I searched through the yellow pages and called a Yellow Cab. The driver said he would be with us in twenty minutes - and the airport would be another twenty-minute drive away after that.

We waited and waited.

Until finally, the cab arrived, with still no sign of the car from Arizona Executive transportation. Of course, I had already phoned them... and got a recorded ad. for their “services”. No one at the other end of the phone.

As we slipped into the back seat of the cab, and hung on for dear life while the driver hurtled, bumped, and swerved his way along the freeway to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, I vowed that I would advise the world never to order a car from AE transport services - AE clearly being an acronym for Absolute Eejits.

So we arrive late for check-in, scramble through security, walk what seems like two miles to the gate, trailing computers and iPads, when I suddenly remember I have to upload my blog for Type M for Murder. I have two minutes to spare. But fortunately there is free wifi in the airport. Perched on the edge of a seat I log in and upload the blog, which I had written the night before, and make a dash for the plane.

Only to be stopped in my tracks by the announcement that carry-on bags are going to be arbitrarily checked into the hold. Strict limits are being applied. I am carrying two laptops, my iPad, all my electrical equipment, money, passport etc, in three bags. No way will it all be allowed on.

As if I wasn’t stressed enough. I was not going to let my computing power out of my hands. So I secreted one bag beneath my coat, and endeavoured to hide another on the farthest side from the check-in girl. Sweat and heart rate increase as I get closer.

She takes my ticket, looks suspiciously at the one immediately visible bag and... lets me through.

When I finally get into my seat, I should have been sighing with relief and relaxing for the rest of the flight. But no. I can’t get my feet under the seat in front. The guy sitting beside me is all elbows. I seem to be twisted in the seat and can’t get comfortable.

It was just going to be one of those days.

Three hours to Chicago, the clock going forward two. A two-and-a-half hour wait at O’Hare Airport, then another hour’s flight to Rochester, New York - and another hour moved forward.

There we meet up again with Susie and pick up a rental car. First of all the boot (trunk) is so small we can’t get all the bags in. Then the automatic gear gets stuck in low as we try to navigate out of the airport. I make two tours of the damned place before returning to the Hertz garage and demanding another car - which they provide, eventually, with a bad grace.

Finally we get to our hotel, only thirteen hours after dragging ourselves out of bed at 3am, and losing three hours on our day.

Of course, we were there for a family wedding - the marriage of La Patronne’s niece, Suzi, to Joel. So it was quick wash, then head off for the rehearsal dinner in a church hall somewhere. A loooong day.

This was not the limo that failed to take us to the airport - it was the bride and groom's ride to the wedding!

On Saturday I slipped into my pre-ordered kilt to discover that I must have lost weight. Only my belt (purchased for the purpose at the Grand Canyon) holds it up.

I won’t go into details of the wedding, suffice to say that all went well. Suzi and Joel finished the day husband and wife, and we all fell wearily into bed around midnight, only to be wakened three hours later by a fire alarm.

Susie and La Patronne do their imitation of Married to the Mob at the wedding.

The whole damned room reverberated to the sound of it, and a soporific female voice urging us to leave all behind and flee from the hotel by the nearest exit. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to be parted from my computers, even by fire. So, laden with bags, I toiled down four flights of stairs, half-dressed, to stumble out into the car park. There the entire population of the hotel shivered for the next forty minutes until the fire service determined that there was a “mechanical issue”, and that it had been a false alarm.

Having been wakened from a sound slumber, I found it impossible to get back to sleep, and the whole of Sunday was spent in a haze of fatigue - an early morning drive to take Susie to the airport, a wedding brunch at 10am, coffee by the canal at Fairport, sun streaming through the window to encourage increasingly heavy eyelids to close, and a late burger to settle a growling stomach.

Then up at 5, and on the road, south and east, through Massachusetts to Connecticut and the home of friends Dick and Michel Ward, where there is one day to draw breath before heading by train for New York City.

Tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

And tomorrow....

Nae Rest For the Wicked

2010-05-11T22:06:00.006+02:00

And still the sun shines. Relentlessly.

But at least it is cooling down at night, and we can keep windows open and fly screens in and breathe fresh chilled air, rather than the canned AC type.

Arizona is an amazing state. Eighty percent of it is owned by the federal government or given over to Indian reservations, leaving just 20 percent for private development - and this is the sixth largest state in the US!

Two thirds of the state’s population of over 6.5 million, live in the greater Phoenix area. So vast tracts of this state are simply empty. Desert, mountain, high plains, pine forests. The Grand Canyon. It has a stark beauty. Brutal heat in the low desert, ice cold winds and winter snow o n the upper elevations.

Phoenix itself just goes on forever. Since space is not a problem here, no one builds up. They build out. In places you can drive 125 miles to get from one side of Phoenix to the other.

Last Thursday I had an event at the Velma Teague Library in Glendale, on the outskirts of town - it was quite a drive. The library is run by the incomparable Lesa Holstine, who took assiduous notes during my talk and reproduced them faithfully on her blog the following day - along with a terrific review of “Freeze Frame”.

Then on Friday we briefly exchanged the heat of the desert for the humidity of Houston in Texas. After a two-and-a-half hour flight, we landed in temperatures of 35C and 85 percent humidity. A hotel on the edge of the freeway, within striking distance of the Bush International Airport, was home for the next two days. Such is the glamorous life of the writer.

As compensation, we found a great Indian restaurant in a strip mall not far away - it is the only cuisine we really miss in France. We ate there on both Friday and Saturday nights, making up for a long period of abstinence.

The book event, at Murder by the Book, drew a good crowd on the Saturday afternoon. Many books were bought, and many more signed. And then on Sunday it was an escape from the humidity, back to the dry heat of the desert.

The trip was punctuated by my failure to meet my obligation to provide a Friday blog entry for Type M for Murder, exacerbated by the failure of my invited Sunday guest blogger to respond. So in the early hours of Sunday morning, I sat with my iPad on my lap in my hotel room, writing an entry for immediate upload. Thank God for technology.

Back in Scottsdale, it was back to work. Monday saw me break the back of the story for my follow-up to “The Blackhouse” - the second in the trilogy set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. It has been playing elusively around the outer fringes of my mind for some time. But following an hour-long telephone interview with a former “inmate” of an Edinburgh orphanage, combined with some detailed research into “bog bodies”, things finally started falling into place.

Today we had a four-way Skype conference with the French film producers who have bought the rights to “The Killing Room”. We were discussing the first draft long synopsis of the script treatment, and detailed notes will follow in the next two days. A revised version must be produced within the next two weeks. Which will be fun... given that we go back on the road on Friday, and don’t stop till we fly back to Paris from Washington DC in sixteen days’ time.

Then they want a meeting in Paris at the beginning of June. No problem. I only have to fit it in to a schedule that includes three days of promotional events in Lyon, followed by another at Fréjus on the Med., then Le Havre on the English Channel. Not to mention a visitor from Scotland for a week, followed by a research trip to the Hebrides, a promotional weekend in Corsica, and a trip to Hong Kong! I guess I must be the walking, talking incarnation of wickedness.

Anyway. First things first. It’s goodbye to Arizona Friday morning, and hello New York state Friday night. Followed by a family wedding on Saturday.

Ah, well, time to hitch my kilt up around my oxters and get on with it.

A Crack in the Earth

2010-05-03T19:16:00.002+02:00

This was a long and adventurous weekend.

I had an event at the Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, Arizona, on Saturday afternoon, and we left on Thursday to go up and stay overnight with friends, who had offered to take us to the Grand Canyon on Friday.

Sedona is about two hours' drive north of Phoenix - a long climb up to around 4500 feet. We went from 30C in Scottsdale to just above freezing in Sedona, and as we drove up Oak Creek Canyon with our hosts, Pat and Jim, to eat in an incredible log cabin hunting lodge tucked away beneath towering pines and sheer cliffs, there was still snow on the ground from the winter. It hardly seemed possible after the heat of the desert.

Pat and Jim came to one of our writing courses in France eight years ago. They recently moved up to Sedona from Phoenix to build their dream home amongst the spectacular red rocks that rise up out of the plains. And it is almost like a dream being here, with views from every picture window on to stunning scenes of blood red primeval rock formations soaring all around.

The lodge where we ate - Garland's Oak Creek Lodge - was accessed by a perilous crossing of Oak Creek itself, at a ford which is sometime lost beneath torrents of white water snow melt. Inside we were greeted by a roaring log fire in a huge open hearth, and a set menu featuring the most fabulous lamb - the best meal we have had in the United States, bar none.

Friday was a long, slow ascent up to 7000 feet, through the university town of Flagstaff, to the vast high plains of northern Arizona. Here the oxygen had thinned, making breathing more difficult, and the temperature had plunged almost to freezing. It is an extraordinary landscape up there. Endless scrub plains and stunted trees, distant mountains and volcanoes, and clear, luminous air in the bright sunshine.

And then suddenly... this vast hole in the ground. As if the earth had cracked open. You’ve seen pictures of the Grand Canyon. You expect it to be spectacular. But nothing quite prepares you for the scale of it. And you can only imagine how it took away the breath of those early pioneers, crossing this endless plain to emerge from the trees quite unexpectedly on its southern lip. I have taken some pictures, as you can see. But nothing you can catch within the frame of a camera does it justice. Not even being there. It so dwarfs humanity, that even as you stand on the rim and gaze a mile down to the Colorado River below, or fifteen miles across to the north rim, it seems... unreal.

Then it was back to Sedona - itself almost a miniature Grand Canyon, coloured red. But here, people live among the rocks, putting down roots, and anchoring themselves to a geological history that goes right back to the beginnings of time. Another extraordinary place.

A little further up the canyon, Pat and Jim have a log cabin in the woods, tucked away among the pines, and surrounded by cliffs and mountains. They took us on a tour of it, and offered it as a retreat for the writing of the next book. Incredibly generous. And who knows, maybe I will take them up on it. No danger of unwelcome interruptions up there. And so no excuse not the write!

My book event at the Well Red Coyote was the following afternoon. The bookstore is owned by fellow writer, Kris Neri, and her husband Joe. I had met Kris before, when we shared a panel at Left Coast Crime in Denver, Colorado. Unfortunately, Kris was unable to be there, but I was made very welcome by Joe, and we held a one-hour workshop on the subject of taking the skills learned from screenwriting into the writing of the novel.

(I have to confess to making a faux pas after the event. Joe asked me to sign an ARC copy of one of my books, and dedicate it to Kris and Joe. Perhaps it was the large Margarita and two glasses of wine at lunch, but I misheard him and thought he said “Chris and Jill”. Duh! Replaying the moment later, I realised my mistake and wrote to apologise, excusing myself by suggesting that I was either deaf or insane, and probably both, and wondering if he knew a Chris and Jill he could give the book to. Joe wrote back saying: “Chris, no problem. Jill.”)

Anyhoo... after the tasting (for the first time) of some (excellent) Arizona wines (bet you didn’t know they made any) at a local vineyard, we set off on the road back to Phoenix, and spent one-and-a-half hours sitting in a traffic jam on Interstate 17 because of roadworks!

Only to have to get up early the next day to get ready for a Sunday event at a Phoenix restaurant, preparations for which included taking Odin (remember the wire-haired fox terrier that went with the house swap?) to “doggy daycare”.

The event consisted of sitting in the dappled shade of the outside terrace at Lon’s at The Hermosa, an exclusive restaurant on the outskirts of Scottsdale, where the good people of the city gather on Sunday mornings for a rather exclusive brunch. A large pile of my books was displayed on a long table, and I sat talking to the customers as they arrived, and signing the books they bought.

A very pleasant way to spend your Sunday, especially when the restaurant laid on an excellent brunch for us at the end of it (even although it was well into the afternoon by then).

Then to more mundane things - grocery shopping at Safeways - before retrieving an excited Odin from his daycare adventures.

And now, with the diary cleared, at least for a few days, it is time for me to buckle down and do some deep thinking about the second book in the new trilogy. I have a research book to read, a phone call to make, and the internet to scour for relevant info. But most of all I have to dig way down into my imagination - almost as deep down as the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon - to find the inspiration to match the first book, “The Blackhouse”, which still feels to me like the best thing I have ever written.

How do you top that?

Vaulting the Horse

2010-04-27T01:24:00.003+02:00

It’s been an interesting few days of mental acrobatics - tour events, book revision, and now the structuring of a screenplay.

This morning began with editor’s notes on the manuscript of my latest Enzo book - following a reverse route from France to Arizona, instead of the other way round.

Thank God for good editors. And Barbara certainly is one. She offered valuable insights into the book, and made some telling suggestions which will only improve it. So my homework awaits me as soon as I return to France.

Then, in between builders setting off smoke alarms, gardeners nearly letting the dog out, and a jack-hammer pounding ceaselessly through the wall, La Patronne and I began work on the screenplay.

The process had begun with La Patronne identifying and annotating every story development in the book, which is to be the basis for the screenplay. These were then assembled in a piece of software called Final Draft, and printed out. In the meantime, I had been burying my head in detailed Hong Kong research, finding new locations, seeking out new contacts.

I read through the Final Draft printout over breakfast, after digesting Barbara’s notes on the book, and then we cut up the printed sheets to lay out on the dining table - 114 story movements.

What followed were eight brainstorming hours spent re-locating the story in Hong Kong, turning the original tale almost completely on its head, throwing away a substantial amount of story material from the book, and winding up with a running order that, hopefully, is fast-paced and dramatic.

The next step is to reassemble the new structure in the computer, before I sit down to write a dramatic synopsis of the whole, which will go to the producers for discussion.

Just an average sort of day in sunny Scottsdale!

Caption Competition

2010-04-25T18:34:00.002+02:00

I’m sorry, I can’t wait.

Following my daughter Carol’s comment on yesterday’s blog about the photograph of her husband, Chris, with a witch on his shoulder...

... I just had to share it with you!

I simply couldn’t resist taking it. The miniature witch on his shoulder whispering in his ear. The poster on the wall behind him, the red-faced blues singer leaning at exactly the same angle, his hands in the same pose as if he, too, were holding a camera (his lobster face was exactly the same colour as Chris’s after a day in the sun).

Now, here’s a thought. Anyone got any bright suggestions for what the witch might be whispering in his ear?

A prize for the best caption! (I’ll figure out later what that will be.)

Bad News/Good News

2010-04-25T04:01:00.002+02:00

The bad news is, I thought I was in the shade!

We had lunch on the terrace at P.F. Chang’s, on the corner of Scottsdale and Camelback, under the shade of a huge awning stretched overhead. Only, now it seems that the shade was illusory. It was some loose-weave fabric that still let the sun through. And now I have a big, red face (as well as a horse on my head - see the pic).

Grrr!

Lashings of après sun ce soir, and barrier cream every morning from now on.

The good news is, that the fourth Enzo novel, “Freeze Frame”, after receiving starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and the Library Journal, got a great review in the New York Times. You can see it here.

I got word of it, bizarrely enough, from my own study in France. My US publishers, Rob Rosenwald and Barbara Peters, have swapped houses with us - staying at our home in France, while we stay at theirs here in Arizona.

Rob called us on Skype this morning with the news (I knew it was my study, because I recognised the water stain on the ceiling). And Barbara revealed that she was 130 pages into the manuscript of my new Enzo book. What was strange about that was that she was reading it in the room where it was written! I wonder of how many books she could say that?

Stranger still... next week, she and Rob go to eat at the restaurant of France’s top chef, Michel Bras, who very kindly allowed me to spend three days in his kitchen to research my book. It is a story set in the world of French haute cuisine, and I used his kitchen as the basis for the kitchen of the murdered chef. So Barbara will have the chance to “taste” it first-hand.

She certainly won’t be disappointed by the food.

Later in the day, after getting burned at P.F. Chang’s, I went to meet readers and talk about my book at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore. A good and lively crowd turned up, and we passed an enjoyable hour, before I tackled the signing of the piles of books that awaited me.

I met, in the flesh for the first time, one of my fellow bloggers on Type M for Murder - Donis Casey. Sadly we didn’t get much time to talk, but I hope that next time we will.

Then it was off to retrieve Odin from “doggy day care” (remember Odin - he’s the wire-haired fox terrier who takes me for walks every day), before returning through the early evening heat to search for moisturisers and other soothing lotions (not to mention alcohol).

I guess I was lulled into a false sense of security. It has been cool here for the last couple of days. We even - God forbid - had some desert rain! But temperatures have soared again today, so I will cower in the shade all this week (except, of course, when Odin forces me to go out for walks).

Desert Bloom

2010-04-20T18:36:00.003+02:00

It was a week ago today that we left the Pacific coast and headed east into the desert.

It is a dramatic drive through some of the most scorched and arid wastes on the planet. But we were fortunate. It is spring, and the desert was in bloom - albeit temporarily. Carpets of yellow, and green and pink covered this normally barren landscape. Until, as we wound our way towards the valley that cuts a swathe through the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountain ranges, we found ourselves driving through a forest of windmills.

Not the Don Quixote sort. Those tall, elegant, white wind turbines, whose blades turn with deceptive languor in the winds that scour their way between the mountains. Thousands of them. Filling the eyes, like a mirage, vanishing into the fibrillating distance.

We stopped overnight at the home of friends Mike and Barbara Monachino, at Rancho Mirage, a settlement of gated communities somewhere between Palm Springs and Indian Wells. This was an area of extraordinary beauty. A veritable oasis. Rich in blooming flowers and fragrant blossoms, fed from the waters of an underground lake. In the distance, the San Jacinto mountains burn red in the sunset, and in the morning glow gold, cut with deep-veined blue shadows.

And then on again in the morning, leaving California behind, and entering the parched plains of Arizona, the horizon broken only by those bizarrely shaped mountains that used to pepper every cowboy movie. Laid down in strata at the very creation of the earth itself , then fashioned by time and wind. There is something quite primal about this landscape.

At last, almost incongruously, we reach the vast, sprawling conurbation of Phoenix laid out in the desert valley, and our home for the next month in the adjoining city of Scottsdale. This is the home of my American publishers, who have taken a route much further east, across the Atlantic to France, to live in our house during our absence.

Their house comes with a pool, unlimited sunshine, and a dog called Odin. Odin, a lively, intelligent, wire-haired fox terrier, greeted us with initial suspicion. But, as you will see from the photos, he and I quickly bonded, and he takes me out walking for at least an hour every day - which I am sure is good exercise for him, too.

And, so, settled now in this desert oasis, we said our goodbyes to Susie, who headed back to Northern California, and we set up computers to get down to work. For although there may be a pause in the tour, there is no pause in the work schedule. A book to revise, another to research, and a screenplay to write.

Oh, well...

New Moon Rising

2010-04-13T20:45:00.002+02:00

The first phase is over

It was two weeks ago today that we flew to Minneapolis from Paris. It feels like a lifetime. I have completed eleven events, the last of them last night in San Diego at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore.

There, I shared the platform with local author Michele Scott, who was celebrating her birthday as well as “A Toast to Murder”, the sixth in her Nikki Sands Wine Lovers’ Mystery series. There was a lively crowd, and we had a fascinating discussion about the merits or otherwise of changing technology in the book world - e-books, print-on-demand, etc.

Earlier La Patronne, Susie, and I had dinner with Dr. Steve Campman and his family in a nearby Italian restaurant called The Godfather. It was so dark inside I thought I’d left my sunglasses on. Maybe they don’t want us to see the food, I thought. But actually it was good. And a pleasure to see the Campmans again.

Steve is the Medical Examiner in San Diego, and has advised me on the pathology in my books for the last thirteen years. Since our first contact in 1997, when he faxed 40 pages of autopsy material across the Atlantic believing it was three dollars for the lot instead of three dollars a page (!!), we have become firm friends.

(I have come to a secret arrangement with Steve’s daughter, Danielle, to supply me with a photograph of him wearing his prescription autopsy glasses which, apparently, turn him into a facsimile of Mr. Magoo. I will keep you posted.)

Breathing a huge sigh of relief, we head off today into the desert to overnight with friends Mike and Barbara Monachino, before setting off tomorrow for Scottsdale, Arizona, where we can put down roots for the next four weeks and get back to controlled eating and sleeping.

I can’t wait!

Wickedly Resting

2010-04-12T19:45:00.002+02:00

It’s kinda fatal to stop. You lose your momentum. You let fatigue creep in, and you lose the will to go on.

That’s a little what this weekend has been like.

Friday was a coming down day after the long drive on Thursday, and the adventure in the dark finding our condo. Sadly, Newport Beach seemed to have reserved its worst weather of the year for our short stay here. It was cloudy, dull, even chilly.

Lunch at my favourite seafood restaurant, The Crab Cooker, was first item on the agenda. It is always like stepping back into the 50s, a little piece of vintage Americana preserved in aspic. Plastic cutlery, wine out of plastic cups. Simple, unpretentious shrimp and scallops and salmon and crab cakes.

I love it!

A wonderful, cobweb-clearing cycle along the boardwalk, watching the Easter hordes on the beach, was just what the doctor ordered. Then it was on to the home of old friends, Rob and Linda - Susie’s former neighbours from the house at Dolphin Terrace, which featured in my standalone thriller, “Virtually Dead”.

It was their last weekend in their rented apartment before moving into their new home at the exclusive One Ford Road development near Fashion Island. We had aperitifs and appetisers before heading out to a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. We saw them again, just two days later, as they took possession of their new home (which we christened with champagne) - a fabulous three-bedroomed villa with courtyards and decks, and a three-car garage in a street that looked like a set straight out of a movie.

Saturday was tough. I had to wind myself up again for another two events. The first was a one-and-a-half hour drive to the city of Thousand Oaks, just north of Los Angeles, to be greeted Alan Chisholm, owner of the Mysteries to Die For bookstore, and a group of regulars who had come to hear me speak.

After allowing myself to relax for a day it was hard to get myself going again. But once I started it was fine, and I ended the event by signing huge piles of books.

Lunch at Chilli’s, then on the road again to Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Mystery Bookstore at Westwood. Although I was there just for a stock signing, I got into conversation with some die-hard fans. Tim arrived with a huge pile of my books to sign, and to my astonishment was able to quote passages from various novels I had written over the years.

Another fan who showed up was called 50 Winx - her Second Life name. A university librarian, she is a stalwart of the group, Librarians of Second Life, and had actually attended one of my inworld presentations. So I signed the book from Flick Faulds.

Bookstore owner, Bobby McCue, had me sign several piles of China Thrillers, Enzo Files, and Virtually Deads, before we set off again along Wilshire Boulevard in search of the home of our old French neighbours who live in Beverly Hills. A mis-turn led us on to Walden Drive, to be confronted by an extraordinary Hansel and Gretel house on the junction of the street. Turns out it was built for a movie in the 1920s, and has been used as a real home in several different locations since. It was in the process of being prepared for yet another move, and is known universally in the neighborhood as The Witch’s House.

John and Bettie Jensen live on Benedict Canyon Drive, and we met up with them there before heading off to a little French bistro off Sunset Boulevard, with daughter Elizabeth, who had so kindly provided a bed for us in Minneapolis.

Then the long drive back in the dark to Newport Beach, and the best and longest sleep of the tour so far.

Sunday, I never really got out of first gear. The weather was grim. Drizzly dull, the ocean leaden. We ate at Chimayo’s at Huntington Beach, and later feasted on a take-out Chinese meal from P.F. Chang’s that night while watching a movie on the giant TV in the condo.

Today I am having to rev myself up again, write the blog, and prepare for the drive south to San Diego, and an event at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. Before that we will eat with my good friend and pathology adviser Steve Campman, who is the Medical Examiner in the city. I’m really looking forward to that.

Then tomorrow, everything must be packed up again and stowed in the car for the drive east, stopping first at Palm Desert, before heading for Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, and an appointment with a radio journalist from Austria who wants me to do a live interview from within Second Life.

No rest for the wicked!

They shoot prowlers, don't they?

2010-04-10T02:08:00.003+02:00

An hour earlier we had driven over The Grapevine as darkness fell. Behind us, dusk was settling over the breadbasket of California and a dusty seven-hour drive had left us tired and hungry. Ahead of us, the lights of Los Angeles had spread out like a fireflies’ convention along 40 miles of Pacific coastline.

But that was then. Now it was fully dark, and we had just arrived in Newport Beach, our southern California stopover for the next four days. We had an address and a door entry code for a second floor condo and garage.

Betty (of GPS fame), had delivered us to the appropriate address, but try as we may, we couldn’t find a house with the right number on it. There were streetlights on the other side of the road, but our side was pooled in darkness.

I got out of the car and found myself prowling up dark alleyways, tapping the entry code into every door I could find. No luck. And all the time I could hear La Patronne calling from somewhere in the darkness in a loud stage whisper: Be careful! They have guns here!! They shoot prowlers!!!

Stomachs were growling. It was after ten, nine hours since we had eaten. And I had a pressing call of nature.

Finally, I found myself in a gloomy parking area behind what I thought might be the property, and fumbled my way along a narrow alleyway between pressing walls of clapboard siding. I tried one door. Then another. There were no lights and no sign of life anywhere. I came to the third, and last door, with an increasing sense of desperation (for more than one reason). And... BINGO! It unlocked.

Mad dash for the bathroom.

Then a chance to take in our surroundings. The apartment was a brand new conversion, with a TV like a cinema screen. A huuuge kitchen. Comfortable leather sofas. An internet connection. The ocean just two blocks away, and bikes in the garage (it was the following morning before I discovered how to get into it).

La Patronne, Susie, and I wearily unloaded our luggage, then spent the next half hour cruising the town for a pizza joint that was open. We finally settled for a stale-tasting offering from Pizza Hut, washed it over with several glasses of red wine, and fell into a deep sleep.

Today is my first real day off since the tour began. Washed, showered, feeling almost human again, and about to set off on one of the bikes in search of the ocean. I need to feel the sand between my toes, and the cold waters of the Pacific lapping around my ankles.

Breathless

2010-04-08T22:24:00.002+02:00

The same soothing tones that might be employed to induce calm in the event of nuclear holocaust, issued from the front of the car.

A soft, breathy, female voice with hints of both English and American accents. We call her Betty. She is, in fact, the voice of our TomTom GPS system, who incongruously calls the freeway a “modorway”.

Last night, she guided us up through the hills above the San Francisco Bay area to a high point above the town of Berkeley. We climbed, and climbed, then rounded a corner to have our collective breath immediately removed.

For there, laid out below us in all its early evening glory, was THE bay. The entire city of San Francisco, the Golden Gate bridge. The most stunning panorama I think I have ever seen. I might have stopped to take a photo, but it would never have done it justice. Your imagination will do a better job, though even that will never come close to the reality.

In any event, Betty wasn’t allowing us to linger. “Turn right. Then you have reached your destination.”

Our destination was the home of Janet Rudolph, book reviewer and editor of the magazine, Mystery Readers International. She traditionally holds “at-home” events in her house, with a regular group of attendees, and visiting authors from all over the world.

We made our way through a fairytale garden populated by peacocks, to be greeted by Janet herself, an attractive, energetic lady with a fantastic head of thick, curly hair. Others had already arrived. Some I knew - Bill and Toby - whom I had met at Left Coast Crime in Seattle in 2007. Some were new to me, but greeted me warmly with that wonderful, open, Californian hospitality.

We drank wine, nibbled cheese, then sat in a circle to discuss my books, writing in general, research, publishing, genres. We talked for almost two hours, at the end of which I signed the books which everyone had brought. I had brought some copies of The Firemaker, the first in the China series, a taster for the rest.

An elderly British couple, Stuart and Sheila, originally from Northern Ireland, are neighbours of Janet. Sheila came to me at the end of the evening and gave me a copy of The Firemaker to sign. She leaned forward and whispered confidentially, “You know, I’ve been coming to these events for years now. But this is the first book I’ve ever bought.”

A delightful end to a splendid evening, topped off by the gift of a bottle of wine whose label was the cover of my latest Enzo book, “Freeze Frame” - the work of Janet’s husband, Frank.

We headed out into the dark and turned the car back up the hill, Betty still breathing seductively from the windscreen. The lights of the Bay Area opened out like a firmament below us. But again Betty would not let us linger. “At the end of the road turn right. Then take the modorway.”

• I can finally announce, since we signed the contracts this morning, that the movie rights to “The Killing Room”, one of my China Thrillers, have been bought by a French production company. La Patronne and I have been commissioned to write the screenplay, which we will work on during our stay in Arizona. The story will be re-set in Hong Kong, and Margaret will become French. Vive La France!

A Californian Corollary

2010-04-08T00:58:00.002+02:00

Thought this would make an interesting little corollary to our wet Sunday in Sacramento. Susie’s sister, Kathy, and her husband John, had been hoping to celebrate our arrival with a barbecue, and time spent in the garden.

Sadly, the weather precluded that possibility. But poor old John was still sent out into the garden to cook the meat - it’s man’s work, you know! But being a fellow of fine temperament, he took to his task with the relish for which he is renowned - as illustrated below...

Flowers in our Hair

2010-04-07T21:09:00.005+02:00

Where to begin?

Well, I can start by telling you that I am writing this on my iPad. Yay! Picked it up on Saturday night at Susie’s in Sacramento, where I had asked Apple to send my pre-order.

I won’t bore you with it except to say that it is AMAZING!

It was cool in Sacramento, and wet, when we flew in from Seattle on Saturday night. But that was nothing compared to the rain that crashed down on us on Sunday. Like a tropical downpour.

We splashed along the freeway to Davis, and lunch with our old friends Sharon and Hibbard, then back to Sacramento for dinner with Susie’s sister, Kathy, and her family. By the time we got back to Susie’s that night, inches had fallen, and thunder and lightning were crashing all around us.

Then, lo and behold, Monday brought painfully clear blue skies and sunshine, and an interview on the Jeffrey Callison show on Sacramento Capital Radio. Jeffrey is an ex-pat Scot with a mid-Atlantic accent, who has been entertaining Sacramento listeners with his daily chat show for years now. It was my third appearance on his show, and you can listen to it here (scroll forward - I was in the final segment of the show).

Then it was into the car and a two-hour drive south to San Francisco. It was my third visit to the city, and the first time I have seen it in sunshine. It is an extraordinary place - white houses built across the steeply pitched slopes of hills that push up out of the bay, clustering around the skyscrapers of downtown. The view of it from the bridge as you approach from the north is stunning. And on Monday, with the sun coruscating away across still, burnished waters to the misted silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge, it was quite breathtaking.

We drove, then, through the city’s gay area, The Castro, where men stroll hand in hand, finally arriving at Noe Valley, the home of Susie’s daughter, Shannon, and her husband, Tim - just in time to help Tim demolish the entrance to his home to get a new refrigerator through the front door. Proceedings were directed by Susie’s 2-year-old-granddaughter, Madeleine, whom we then took for a walk up and down the city hills, puffing and gasping for breath while she continued to direct our progress - from her pushchair!

Then on, finally, to the evening event at the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore, before grabbing a bite to eat, and driving back through the dark to Sacramento - barely awake as the lights of downtown San Francisco rose up all around us, before dipping away as we crossed the bridge and into the night.

Tuesday was a day of catching up on shopping for all those essential little things you need on a long trip - computer cables, iPad apps... oh, yes, and some toothpaste and stuff! Before Eric the Viking descended on us with his new Volvo to sweep us south again, past San Francisco, still basking in sunshine, to the smaller Bay Area city of San Mateo, and the incomparable Ed Kaufman’s M is for Murder bookstore. There I met up with long time fans Milene Rawlinson and Dennis Sitcler, delivered my talk on Virtually Dead, The Runner, and Freeze Frame, before signing well over a hundred books and staggering off for a late dinner in a nearby Italian.

The lights of San Francisco seemed like a dream seen through nearly shut eyes as they drifted past once more on the drive home.

Tonight another drive south, not quite so far this time. Stopping at Berkeley for an at-home evening at the house of book critic and editor of Mystery Readers International, Janet Rudolph.

I seem permanently tired, but never able to sleep at the right times. Maybe I’ll get the chance to catch a few winks during the 8-hour drive south on Thursday to Newport Beach - as long as I’m not behind the wheel at the time!

Hello Goodbye

2010-04-04T02:25:00.002+02:00

Saturday afternoon. Just over a week since leaving home. Already it feels like a lifetime.

Sitting in Sea-Tac Airport, Seattle, waiting for a flight to Sacramento. We arrived in the rain and we are leaving in the rain. After the dry, clear sunshine of Denver, we flew in yesterday to gale force winds and ice-edged rain driving in off the Pacific.

This town, so like Glasgow - the light, the rain, the seven hills - was alive with fancy-dress kids attending a Japanese anime convention, lending already spaced brains an even more surreal perspective on the world.

Having dropped our bags off at the Renaissance Hotel, we fought against the wind and the rain, mid-afternoon, to the Pike Street fish market where we found my favourite chowder joint - a tiny café squeezed into a corner of the market, where they serve the most wonderful chowders. Sadly they were out of my favourite smoked salmon, and I had to do with southern chicken and corn instead. Large cups of thick, warming, comforting soup.

Neither La Patronne nor I could face another restaurant last night, so while at the market we found a great cheese stall, bought a selection of nice cheeses, some herb crackers, then went in search of a screw-top bottle of wine - can’t carry a corkscrew with us on our flights.

So it was cheese and wine in the room before collapsing amongst the pillows of the king-sized bed for an early, early night.

Of course, I was awake at 5.30am, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and with a morning to kill before my signing event at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. I found a US channel showing the Man U/Chelsea game, which passed a couple of hours before breakfast, then another battle with the elements and the hills to find the bookstore, just off Pioneer Square.

Warmly welcomed as always by Bill and Fran, I signed stock for the shop, and books for customers - one of whom had dropped in looking specifically for a book set in Paris, to get the atmosphere of the city before heading off for a spring holiday. He bought “Extraordinary People” (now renamed “Dry Bones), and I recommended that he make a tour of the catacombs, which he would read about in the book. Before I left I made my own contribution to the bookstore’s blog, which you can read here.

Then we ate in an Italian restaurant, and spent the afternoon feeling sick, and responding to excited e-mails from Susie in Sacramento who was getting orgasmic over an iPad delivery.

The airport has suddenly come alive with people in open sandals and shorts, and winter white skin. God knows where they’ve come from, or where they’re going. It’s the holidays!! Aaaargh!!!

Happy Easter.

Rocky Rugs

2010-04-02T14:56:00.002+02:00

It was a dramatic sky. Bruised black over the plains. Almost white over the Rockies where snow and hail swept down across the mountains. A washed-out yellow in the west where the sun was sinking and breaking through, turning the mountain ranges into paper cut-out silhouettes.

In the far distance I saw the Flat Irons - brooding and dark above the university town of Boulder, where I had gone on every one of my previous tours. But the book store where I had given my talks, High Crimes, had been forced to close its doors - a sign of the economic times.

But its owner, Cynthia Nye, ever resourceful, had swapped bricks and mortar for the internet, from where she is now selling direct to her clients. And making it work.

Tonight we were heading north of Boulder to the town of Longmont, and a rug store where Cynthia now holds her author visits. She had told me that some authors turned their noses up at this event these days, since she no longer had four walls and shelves lined with books. Which made me all the more determined to do my talk for her.

And what a venue she has chosen for her author encounters. An amazing emporium of oriental and navajo rugs - not unsurprisingly called The Oriental and Navajo Rug Company. Most of the rugs are hand made. The walls hang with them. The floors are soft with them. They lie in piles feet deep. There is artwork, crafted jewellery, and a small water fountain that brings the restful tinkle of flowing water and keeps the chi moving in a good way.

It is a wonderful, open, and colourful space for these events, and I took great pleasure in talking to the good folk of Longmont and Boulder who had braved the ever-changing elements to come and meet me and buy my books.

After the talk I got into conversation with one lady whose son lives in Olympia, Washington. I had noticed on the internet that my books were frequently among the top ten bestsellers in that town’s mystery bookstore, Whodunnit. This lady’s son had gone into the store and asked for a recommendation for a book to buy for his mother. The book they recommended turned out to be “The Firemaker”, the first of the China series.

As it happened, this was not a genre which had interested her in the past. She read mainly historical novels. However, something about “The Firemaker” had caught her, and she arrived at my talk with all six of the series for me to sign.

I signed Cynthia’s stock for her, sipping on a glass of soft red wine, and then a copy of “Virtually Dead” for the owner of the rug gallery, Patrick, who had been seduced by my tales of sleuthing in Second Life.

A word to those authors who have declined appearances at the gallery. Shame on you! Everyone who sells our work deserves our support. And I have to tell you that this is one of the best and most unique venues on any author tour.

So, then, it was back on the road. Through the dark to Denver, a glass of wine, a nibble of cheese, and bed. And today? Another airport, another airplane, another town. This time, Seattle. The forecast is for rain. Why does that make me think of Glasgow?

Sick of Heights

2010-04-01T23:09:00.004+02:00

Where was I? Oh... yeah. Denver. Colorado. An hour forward, an hour back? Dunno. Who cares.

To the jetlag I can now add altitude sickness. Been spaced out all morning, breathless after my breakfast walk to Starbucks in this mile-high city, and the first caramel machiato of the tour.

Strange. I’ve been here a few times, but never been this affected before. I picked up, though, when we went with our Denver hosts and good friends, Charles and Marilyn, to the city's downtown spice store. Wow! Never seen so many spices under one roof. The smell as you walk through the door would knock you over (in a nice way), or in this case, pick you up, as it did to me.

I felt even better after a buffalo burger on a bed of mixed greens, smothered in caramelised onions, with a side helping of sweet potato fries. A bottle of dark lager helped, too.

And now to the writing of the blog. Then (hopefully) an afternoon nap, before heading north - an hour-and-a-half’s drive - to a speaking event at a place called Longmont, north-east of Boulder.

So... last night? Well, having flown into Denver from Minneapolis just a few hours earlier, we headed off to yesterday’s event at a bookstore called Murder by the Book. A good turnout of readers in an intimate atmosphere. And, as always, a wonderful cake. It’s a tradition that the bookstore has a cake made with the author’s latest book cover reproduced in icing. I wondered what they would do, since I had three books out this time.

Well... see for yourselves! Three covers on one cake. And it tasted great, too!!

Charles then whisked us back to his condo, where he had whipped up an amazing Indian meal, complete with authentic Thali plates

After the meal, sated, knackered, and all wined out, I lay back in a leather recliner and... fell asleep. Well, it was waaaay past my bedtime!

Lost in Space

2010-03-31T13:18:00.002+02:00

I am floating somewhere lost in space. Jetlag plus.

Monday morning, Paris, 6am, struggling through the cold and dark to drag our cases aboard a tram that would take us to the RER rail line that would, in turn, take us to Charles de Gaulle Airport. I can remember thinking... oh, the glamour of it all!

A nine-hour flight on a cramped little Delta plane dumped us in an unseasonally warm and sunny Minneapolis at 1pm local time (it’s the first March since records began, that there has been zero snowfall here), and it was straight on to a rental car, and a battle with the sat-nav, to find our way to Uncle Edgar’s Mystery bookstore where mystery connoisseur, Jeff Hatfield, was waiting with a pile of some eighty books for me to sign.

As I began the first tendonitis-torturing signing session of the tour, an unexpected visitor dropped by the shop - Ina, the cousin of my Dutch neighbour in France. The world just keeps on shrinking. She and La Patronne went for a coffee while I signed and asked Jeff for some reading recommendations.

These were his tips - hot off the press: “Frag Box”, by Richard A. Thompson; “The Bricklayer”, by Noah Boyd; and “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Apple”, by Alan Bradley.

It was then on to the home of Elizabeth and Tom Carr with whom we were staying overnight. Elizabeth is the daughter of our old neighbours from France, and our frequent host in this Minnesotan city.

By now it was around midnight, Paris time, and I was beginning to wilt. Much coffee was required to keep me on my feet till it was time to head to Once Upon a Crime, the bookstore where I was to give my talk. The store is owned by Pat and Gary, an amazing couple whose tiny, chaotic, book-filled shop is a must on the itinerary of any self-respecting crime writer on a US tour.

It was the first stop on my first US tour five years ago, when only a handful of people turned up. After all, who the hell had ever heard of Peter May? Five years on, and the place was packed Standing room only, and I delivered the first of more than twenty talks that I will give on this tour - setting the shape and form of the others to come.

By the time I was finished my talk, and the signing, it was 3am, Paris time, and a bunch of us set off in the dark to find a little restaurant called The Corner Table. Among the group was my old friend, Carl Brookins - a stalwart of the Minnesota Crime Wave group of writers who tour the country promoting their work. He and his wife Jean are veteran sailors, and have done battle with oceans, seas, and lakes in most parts of the world. Carl writes a highly successful and entertaining series of sailing mysteries, the latest of which is “Devils Island”.

Some food, some wine, and finally I felt myself tipping over the precipice. It really was time for bed.

I slipped wearily between the sheets almost exactly 24 hours after struggling on to that tram in wet and windy Paris, and tumbled into the clutches of a deeply embracing sleep. But only for six dream-filled hours, before waking at 5am (local) to dig out my laptop and write this blog.

An hour from now we will set off for the airport, and an early flight to Denver, Colorado, where it will all begin again.

Will someone please stop this train?

We Have Lift-off

2010-03-29T22:48:00.002+02:00

It’s over. Three crazy, interesting, hard grafting, wine-drinking, face-stuffing days in Paris. A Salon du Livre hit by the financial crisis. Numbers down. People spending less on books.

But still the invitations keep coming - to more salons. I turned one down - Paris in June - because it clashes with one I am going to at Le Havre. Yet another, in July, is sorely tempting - an invitation to Corsica. A three day weekend salon which begins as the ferry leaves Marseilles on the Thursday night.

A Chinese bookseller from Brest - who is really from Shanghai - in France on a ten year visa, begged for my help to get her a holiday visa to Scotland. A dental surgeon, who is an underwater photographer in his spare time, wanted me to contribute to a high-gloss international publication on the environment. I asked if he would be interested in giving me a root treatment.

Sunday was lunch on a houseboat on the Seine, the home of the English editor of a series of books being published in English by a French publisher (does this make any sense?). La Patronne and I each wrote a book (well, actually long short stories) for the series, which comes out in June. The series is called Paper Planes, and the stories - all between 12,000 and 15,000 words in length - use a Latin-rooted vocabulary to allow French learners of English to read comfortably.

I chose to write a story using the characters from my China series, Li and Margaret. It is called “The Ghost Marriage”. And La Patronne wrote one called “Distant Echo”, about a psychotherapist and a life-changing accident.

For the launch, the publisher, Editions Didier (part of Hachette), wanted to film interviews with us to put up on the website. So after lunch with editor, Rupert Morgan, and his wife Karine (I hope I spelled that right), on board their incredible houseboat, we took turns to sit in the salon and record our interviews. A faintly surreal diversion in another otherwise constant flow of non book-buying salon-goers.

Then to dinner that night, just spitting distance from the Senat, with friends Ariane and Gilbert, Jean-Pierre and Jacqueline, and Jean-Pierre (a different one) and Janine (neighbours from St. Michel), followed by a long hike back across the city in the small hours of the morning.

Later that same morning, Monday, after an early rise, we raced across Paris to the giant FNAC computer store to buy me a new laptop bag - the one I had packed to take with me fell apart on the train. And then back to the Salon for lunch and a drowsy afternoon induced by a glass or three of rose.

And before a farewell dinner with my French publisher, a fun hour spent with Fred Bellaiche, who is going to produce a movie of one of my China Thrillers - The Killing Room (but more of that later). He loaded us with movies to watch on the plane and during the tour, while we storyline and write the screenplay - French movies, Hong Kong movies, Italian movies, Korean movies.

But in the end, all creative talk gave way to a much more serious topic - football!

Life is interesting. For the moment, But I am not so sure I will feel the same as I drag myself out of bed at 6am tomorrow for the trauchle out to the airport and the first flight of the great transatlantic adventure.

Next stop, Minneapolis. See you there!

On the Road Again

2010-03-28T10:29:00.002+02:00

Paris, on a cold morning in late March. The first day on a two month journey that will take me all over the United States before returning me to this city at the end of May, older (certainly), wiser (maybe), and warmer (hopefully).

Just over 24 hours ago I sat in a train station in south-west France, watching the rain sweep down across the tracks, the first grey light of dawn breaking in a leaden sky. My first stop on an uncertain adventure.

I hate leaving home. And this time was no different. Depressed, cold, butterflies in conflict in my tummy, I saw the lights of the approaching train and thought: It begins. And I knew that once on the road nothing else would matter. The tour would be my life. Home could wait.

The words of an old Paul Simon song from the sixties popped up unexpectedly in my head:

I'm sitting in the railway station. Got a ticket to my destination. On a tour of one-night stands my suitcase and (a book) in hand. And ev'ry stop is neatly planned for a poet and a one-man band. Homeward bound, I wish I was, Homeward bound.

But four hours on the train revising the manuscript of the fifth Enzo book, and a reunion with old friends at the Salon du Livre in Paris soon banished the blues.

I’m on the road again.

New Blog

2010-03-04T15:22:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since I blogged - been too busy writing. However, from tomorrow (Friday, March 5th), I join the writing team of the award-winning Type M for Murder blog, which has different contributors for each day of the week. The subject of the blog is writing in all its multifarious forms, and the contributors are all published authors, six in total with a guest author each Sunday. So from tomorrow I will be "Man Friday", and you can read me at this address: http://typem4murder.blogspot.com/

In other news, I leave at the end of the month for a two-month book tour of the US, and will be writing daily blog entries on the adventures of a writer on the road. So watch this space.

Win a Free Copy of Snakehead

2009-06-16T08:17:00.002+02:00

S.Dionne Moore interviewed me for her "Novel Journey" blog, and there is a copy of Snakehead available for the person who makes the best comment!

Find the interview here: http://noveljourney.blogspot.com/2009/06/author-interview-peter-may.html

New Interview and Another Live Broadcast Coming Up

2009-04-22T16:07:00.005+02:00

Mystery author and reviewer, Carl Brookins just interviewed me, you can read it here...

Also, I'm doing another live broadcast on the internet so join me if you can for stories and videos from my research, excerpts from the latest China Thriller to be published in the USA (SNAKEHEAD) and a live Q&A chat session. You can find it here:

http://www.mogulus.com/petermaylive

on
SUNDAY 26TH APRIL 2009

there will be two shows, at the following times around the world...

USA:
EST: 10am & 1pm
CST: 9am & Noon
MST: 8am & 11am
PST: 7am & 10am
---

UK: 3pm & 6pm
---

Central Europe: 4pm & 7pm
---

Bangkok, Thailand: 10pm & 1am
---

Beijing, China: 11pm & 2am
---

Perth, Australia: midnight & 3am

Sydney, Australia: 2am & 5am

http://www.mogulus.com/petermaylive
If you click on the above link at the moment you'll find some video clips of the last broadcast. And if you miss next Sunday's broadcast, you'll be able to catch repeat viewings afterwards - you'll just miss the live Q & A.

2009-01-07T08:23:00.004+01:00

Decided to do a live broadcast to launch Blacklight Blue, which was... well, for the full story behind the adventure, why not take a look at La Patronne's blog.

Something New...

2008-04-21T09:01:00.005+02:00

Interesting development - a channel I can use for live webcasts, worldwide. Watch this space for news. You can visit it at http://www.mogulus.com/petermaylive.

DAY FORTY-SIX

2008-03-18T04:34:00.003+01:00

St. Paddy's Day!

Anyone else fed up with the colour green?

I certainly am, and I've only been in New York a matter of hours. To be honest I find a bunch of pseudo-Irish eejits in daft green hats wandering drunkenly around the city streets less than cute.

Especially when I have just spent two-and-a-half hours stuck in a "super" (I use the word advisedly) shuttle, driven by a French-speaking African cruising endlessly around Manhattan in search of streets that always seemed to elude him.

The shuttle from Laguardia to our hotel took more than twice as long as the flight from Rochester to NYC. A flight, I hasten to add, that was already delayed by well over an hour. Oh, and did I mention that our hotel, the Milford Plaza, which is supposed to have wi-fi in its rooms, doesn't? The hotel is undergoing a renovation they told us when I complained. Internet access is hard-wired into rooms on floors 12 to 17. We, of course, are on the 18th floor.

If I sound jaded, it's because I am. And I can't really blame New York. We always seem to arrive here at the end of a tour, and the end of our tethers, with only one thought in mind - to go home. So this is a treading water couple of days, traversing the island on the subway to sign stock in mystery stores, and meet with my agent. To sleep and eat, and while away the hours until our flight to Paris on Wednesday.

This is the longest, most arduous tour we've ever undertaken, and it has taken its toll. Seven weeks on the road, away from home, is far too long. The flu was the straw that broke the camel's back.

After three days in the bosom of La Patronne's family upstate, we will celebrate her birthday tomorrow (Tuesday). Our last night in New York. Our last night in America. And the next bed we sleep in will be our own!

Whoever said writers lead a glamorous life?

Whoever it was...

... LIED!

DAY FORTY-ONE

2008-03-12T06:56:00.003+01:00

It's all over! Bar the shouting.

After nearly twenty events, the US tour of 2008 is over. Sure, I have some stock signings in New York city, but tonight, in Minneapolis, was the final speaking event.

Feeling like hell, and making sure I didn't share the pleasures of my particular virus, sheer adrenaline carried me through what was the best attended event I've had to date at Once Upon a Crime.

It's odd. This was the bookstore where I made my first US appearance back in 2005. Now it was the final venue of 2008. So it had a sense of coming full circle.

The Minneapolis Alliance Francaise, who were supposed to be participating in the event, were conspicuous by their absence. The local organiser also failed to show, pleading illness. The same tactical illness, perhaps, which had led her to be so conspicuously absent throughout the whole process of organisation.

However, store owner, Pat Frovarp, had done her usual sterling job of whipping up interest, and also had huge piles of books for me to sign. She really is a pro, and a lovely lady to boot.

Carl Brookins, whom we had bumped into at LCC in Denver, showed up to introduce me to the assembled (I think La Patronne must have bunged him a huge amount to say all those nice things about me).

Interesting footnote to the event. Two readers, Sherrie and Anita, had been persuaded to come to the event by Pat, because she knew they were visiting France in the summer.

To everyone's amazement, it turns out that they are staying in a town in south-west France, about 20 minutes away from Gaillac. So they bought "Extraordinary People" and "The Critic", and promised to visit Domaine Sarrabelle when they make the trip at the end of June.

So, Francoise, Fabien, and Laurent (whom I know are following the blog), make sure you look after Sherrie and Anita when they come to taste your wines in June!!

Earlier in the day we visited Uncle Edgar's mystery bookstore to sign some stock. The guys had obviously been reading my blog and knew that I was Typhoid Pete - and so kept a respectful distance.

I'm still streaming. Still feeling crap. But maybe tomorrow will bring an improvement. I have a whole day to rest, with nothing else to do, before a crazy two-part flight to Rochester, New York, via Atlanta,Georgia (whoever invented the hub sytem should be shot!).

Then it's a few days' relaxation at Le Beau Frere's, before the stock signing in NYC, and then home.

Honest to God, I really can't wait. It's been waaaay too long!

DAY FORTY

2008-03-11T04:44:00.004+01:00

Okay, it's the flu.

Aching muscles from head to toe, fever, sweating, waves of debilitating weakness. It's about fifteen years since I last experienced anything like this.

I was dreading today's travel. A flight from Denver to Minneapolis, and a 24-mile drive in a rental car to the hotel La Patronne had found for us.

And the day did not start well.

We were up at 5am to pack. An hour and a quarter later we went down to the car park at the rear of Charles and Marilyn's condo to put our luggage into the back of Charles' SUV. Which is when we encountered our first problem.

The handle on one of our suitcases broke clean off - the handle to which airlines attach the luggage tag. If that wasn't bad enough, after we had got all the luggage into the vehicle, we had only driven about ten metres when Charles declared, "I've got a flat tyre."

You could feel the irregular vibration of it on the frozen tarmac.

We then rewound time - forty years back to the ninetreen sixties, when for some reason people tried to cram as many bodies as possible into a Mini. Only this time it was three bodies, two huge suitcases, two large items of hand luggage, and two handbags. There was no way Charles was going to fit into Marilyn's Mini Cooper as well, so he got left behind. And as I squeezed into the back, feeling like death warmed up, a suitcase and carry-on to one side, and another carry-on sitting on my knee, Marilyn revealed that it was the first time she'd ever had anyone travel in the back seat of her car.

As we headed east on the freeway, into a golden dawn, I reflected on the news item we had caught as we packed the bags just an hour earlier.

A new scientific report had revealed that in various states around America, traces of anti-biotic and prescription medicines had been found in the drinking water - and that no amount of personal filtering would remove them.

Colorado was one of those states. If one is just passing through, so to speak, then it probably doesn't matter much. But daily exposure to even trace amounts can accumulate over time. Worrying.

But what made me laugh was the revelation that one of the affected states was California, where traces of anti-anxiety medication had been found in the water.

Oh, well. If I had all that money and sunshine, I might be anxious too.

As it is, I'm cooried down in this hotel room on the edge of Minneapolis, trying to get myself over this bug before the event at Once Upon a Crime tomorrow night. Gallons of water, and coffee, and plenty of sleep, and I'll be fit for it. One way or another.

The show must go on!

DAY THIRTY-EIGHT

2008-03-09T16:29:00.005+01:00

Yay! A taxi driver who knew the route without a GPS, and who took us straight home after the convention banquet - even if he could barely speak English!

That was the good news. The bad news is that the crap feeling I had this morning has developed into something definitely nasty! My throat is sore, my muscles ache, I've developed a chesty cough.

Shit! Just when the finish line was in sight. This is the first cold/flu (whatever it is) infection I've had for nearly two years. I'm usually pretty good at fighting things off. But lack of sleep, the constant travelling, airports, hotels, bookshops, conventions - I guess I'm just run down.

It's our host Charles's birthday party tomorrow, and I think I might have to give it a body swerve - not because I wouldn't want to go, but because I definitely don't want to pass this on. Perhaps a day in bed and lots of fluids will help me fight it off.

But I worry, too, about Minneapolis. We are supposed to be staying with friends, Michele and Bill. But in all conscience, I couldn't inflict my germs upon them, so La Patronne is busy researching hotels in the city, so I can lock myself away and ride this out.

I only have one more formal event - at Once Upon a Crime on Tuesday night - before spending a few days at the home of Le Beau Frere near Rochester, New York, then a final trip to New York City to sign stock in several bookstores and meet with my agent and publisher.

Earlier today we got a taxi into town for my panel, on the subject of "Romancing the Mystery". The panel was moderated by the irrepressible Tom O'Day, who was so tall he couldn't get on to the platform without banging his head on the ceiling. Oddly, I was the only male on the panel. I suggested to fellow panelists, Margaret Lucke, Kris Neri, and Joan Johnston, that maybe it was because I have been known to wear a skirt from time to time!

I was gratified to have a long line to sign books following the panel, after which La Patronne and I paid a visit to Denver's Hard Rock Cafe to quaff a couple of Margaritas and chomp on barbecued ribs.

But gradually, through the afternoon, I began to feel worse and worse. I went to bed, and could barely rouse myself to go to the banquet where we met up with Carl Brookins, a great writer and character from Minnesota. He was kind enough to give me a fabulous review for "Extraordinary People". And in "The Critic", when Enzo is going through the belongings of the murdered wine critic, Gill Petty, he comes across a book the victim had been reading - a mystery written by... Carl Brookins. It was great to see him again, but I didn't want to pass on whatever I had, and in the end, I couldn't even stay for the awards.

The continual time changes aren't helping. We have been backwards and forwards through the hours from California to Arizona to Texas, then back again to Colorado where, tonight, Daylight Savings kicked in and the time sprang forward one hour.

On Monday we go back through the hours to Minneapolis, then back still further to New York at the end of the week. Then, the week after we get back to France, summertime kicks in and the hour springs forward again.

Time! Who knows where it begins, or ends. Or where it goes.

DAY THIRTY-SEVEN

2008-03-08T16:39:00.002+01:00

I don't know if I'm fighting off some winter bug, or whether it's the altitude and the extreme dryness of the air here, but I'm feeling pretty crap. Sore throat. Bloody nose.

I look in the mirror and see deep lines etched beneath my eyes. Eyes that peer back at me, tired and watery.

Jees, I've been on the go without stopping since last Monday. An event every day, sometimes two. A flight from Houston to Denver. The prospect of flying on Monday into the arctic cold and snow of Minneapolis. It's more than five weeks since I left home. Still nearly two weeks to go.

I figure I'm going to be staggering over the finish line.

So stop grizzling, you moaning git, and get on with it!!

Okay. So actually yesterday was a not bad day. I managed to miss the cocktail party laid on by my New York publisher, St. Martin's Press, at the conference hotel. Evidently, they had cunningly concealed it in a place that made it impossible for me to find. Probably I was the only one who couldn't find it. If I was being paranoid, I might think they had planned it that way!

But the truth is, I was kinda glad. I never know anyone at these things. And you end up standing around like a spare whatsit at a wedding, clutching a drink you don't want, forcing smiles for people you've never seen before.

We had another taxi adventure on the way to the Alliance Francaise. Another taxi driver who had no idea where he was going, plumbed the address into his GPS, then proceeded to ignore its every instruction.

In my day, taxi drivers knew every street in a city. Now it seems all you need is a driving licence and a (very) tenous grasp of English. GPS has saved our bacon on a number of outings this trip, but it has a lot to answer for where taxi drivers are concerned.

It was Open Night at the Alliance Francaise, and we had a full house in our small lecture room - standing room only. I began my talk in French, but a lot of those there didn't speak it, so I switched back to English. Then ended the night doing a TV interview in French for a local Denver station, with an interviewer who whispered his questions in a strong Caribbean accent. When you throw my Scottish accented French into the equation, I wonder if anyone will understand it!!

Then it was a trawl along Santa Fe Drive, where young people thronged the pavements, drifting in and out of the myriad art galleries and restaurants that line the street - an event that takes place on the first Friday of every month.

Two huge Margaritas, a beef burrito and a chicken quesadilla, filled the empty space in our stomachs and we headed home to feed Pierre (Charles and Marilyn's cat - they are away for a couple of days to attend a family funeral)(Charles and Pierre in pic).

Today, my final event in Denver - a panel discussing the subject of "Romancing the Mystery". I'm actually quite looking forward to that one.

The gala dinner tonight. If I feel up to it I might wear my kilt. A day of rest on Sunday, then up sticks and on to Minnesota.

My only worry now is whether my taxi driver will be able to find the conference hotel.!!

DAY THIRTY-FIVE

2008-03-07T18:06:00.004+01:00

Wolves, cakes, a long line of fans, and a snail-mail letter that winged its way across the Atlantic to intercept me in Denver.

Oh, and a taxi driver who had no idea where he was going - as well as a GPS sytem which was itching to swear at him (even more loudly than me)!

That was today.

Well, that was part of today. A day in this week that never stops or ends.

I have to tell you, I'm flagging. My eyes sting, my muscles ache, the air is so thin up here in Mile High City that I get breathless walking along the corridor.

But I'm not complaining, even if it sounds like I am. It was a good day that started when I drew the curtains in Charles and Marilyn's Denver condo to reveal the clearest of blue skies, and a city ringed by snow-capped mountains. Early morning sun slanted in through floor to ceiling windows and lifted my spirits.

There followed a brisk walk through sub-zero sunshine to the nearest Starbucks, a 40-minute workout in the fitness room in the basement of the condo. Then lunch with Charles and Marilyn in a cool Vietnamese restaurant called Parallel 17. Best curry I've had for a long time.

Then it was off to register at the Left Coast Crime convention in the Adam's Mark hotel in downtown Denver and get my bearings for my two panels.

This afternoon's panel was entitled: "Mind Games and Manhunts - Psychological Thrillers", and around 60 people turned up to hear myself, Laura Benedict, Christine Jorgensen, and Robert Greer, under the guidance of moderator, Carol Caverly, discuss what makes a psychological thriller.

Now, the form is that when a panel is over, the panelists adjourn to the book room where tables are lined up around the perimeter. Fans buy books and come and get the authors to sign them. I have sat at these events in the past, twiddling my thumbs while some better known author next to me had a long line of readers queuing up across the room.

For once, I was the writer with the long line of readers waiting to get their books signed. One lady said to me, "I've been seeing your name everywhere. I've just got to read your books."

I wonder if that makes me an overnight success at 56?

I was then faced with a hair-raising chase across town to the Murder by the Book bookstore (I know - same name as the one in Houston), for another event.

That was when I encountered the taxi driver who had no idea where he was taking us. I should have known there was trouble ahead when I gave him the address of the bookstore and he said, "Where's that?" Like I would know?

Against my better judgment, La Patronne and I slipped into the back seat and waited patiently while the driver tapped the address into his GPS system. I have to tell you, his girl (whatever she might be called) didn't do nearly as good a job as Betty would. Mind you, it would have helped had he followed her instructions. The plaintive phrase, "recalculating route", became an oft repeated refrain as he missed turn after turn and I watched our ETA get later and later.

Half an hour and 25 dollars later, we finally arrived at the bookstore (just 15 minutes late), where I was doing an informal presentation with two other writers - Louise Ure and Sandi Ault (who arrived complete with cowboy hat and fringed leathers). A small, but lively group squeezed into the store, and we had a fun hour of stories and questions and amusing exchanges.

Bookstore owner, Lauri Ver Schure, had as usual commissioned a cake decorated in sugar with the covers of our three books. And as we drank wine and ate cake, Sandi revealed that she had brought her pet wolf with her. He was out in the truck, and wouldn't come into the shop, but since everyone was curious to see him, she brought him to the door.

I have never seen a wolf in the flesh, and could never have imagined how huge one might be. This one was a sleek silver grey, nearly 200 pounds, and as big as a small pony. Sandi's husband had him on a leash, and he stood patiently on the step in the dark while everyone crowded around to pet him.

A footnote to the Murder by the Book event. As I sat listening to the other writers, I noticed on a clip on the desk in front of me a letter addressed to me care of the store. The address was hand-written, and the stamp and postmark were British. Here was another mystery. Who was writing to me from the UK, c/o of a bookstore in Denver?

It turned out to be from my old boss, former head of drama at Scottish Television, Robert Love. Robert has steadfastly refused to embrace the technology of the computer, and at the time of posting had worked out from my tour schedule just where I might be when his letter arrived. His timing was perfect. The letter turned up in Denver the day before I did!

But it was time to go, to get something to eat, and to get the head on the pillow to prepare for a fresh day tomorrow. Two events: a cocktail party hosted by my New York publisher, St, Martin's Press, followed by an open house at the Alliance Francaise.

To sleep, perchance to dream, and to dare to believe that the finish line of this marathon tour is somewhere just beyond the horizon.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR

2008-03-06T17:03:00.003+01:00

This is the week from hell!

I have an event every night this week, plus two panels at the Left Coast Crime convention in Denver.

Following Monday night's successful talk and signing at Murder by the Book in Houston, last night we braved the Texas primaries and the Democratic caucusers to make our way to the Alliance Francaise for another talk, and a wine-tasting.

Our endeavours to ensure that we had Gaillac wines available for tasting at all our book events have been on-going for more than a year. But last night we cut it really fine.

A case of Domaine Sarrabelle's Saint Andre red arrived - air-freighted from the east coast - just one hour before the event. There would have been more, except that the cost of the air-freighting was greater than the cost of the wine, and compromises had to be made.

However, the wine for the evening was provided by a great Texan character called Bear Dalton, whom we had met during a radio interview in Houston last year. Bear owns the biggest chain of liquor stores in Texas - Specs. There are twenty-four stores in all, and Bear travels to France every year, complete with stetson and cowboy boots, to taste and order wines for his shelves. He is a well-known personality among the vineyards of Bordeaux and Burgundy, and renowned for his excellent palate and knowledge of wines.

But last night was a first for Bear. He had never before tasted a Gaillac wine. And his first sips of Sarrabelle's Saint Andre brought fulsome praise. He told the audience who had gathered at the Alliance Francaise that it was an excellent red, peppery and spicy, with good fruit, and that he intended ordering it for all his stores - because he knew that his customers would enjoy drinking it.

Which is great news for Domaine Sarrabelle!

Bear had also provided a Cahors red, a Mercues - a personal favourite of La Patronne and myself. And particularly apposite, since the hero of my Enzo Files series, Enzo Macleod, lives in the south-western town of Cahors itself - just an hour south of our own French home.

The attendance at the event was good, in spite of a record turnout in the Texas primary. A lot of books were sold and signed, and the wine correspondent for the local paper checked in with me for an interview to write up the event and the wines of Gaillac.

A successful evening was rounded off by a stop on the drive back to Huntsville at a P.F Chang's chinese restaurant with Dick and Michelle - and a chance for me to repay at least a little of the wonderful hospitality we had received from our hosts.

Since it is now official, I can write for the first time about something that was on-going throughout our stay in Huntsville. At age 69, Dick has been head-hunted by a private criminal justice college in Connecticut. The deal was signed and sealed yesterday, and after nearly ten years in Texas, Dick, Michelle, and daughter Sophia, will be uprooting this summer to go and establish a new home in New England. The start of yet another turn in what has been, and continues to be, a very illustrious career.

I can't imagine that publishers will still be hounding me for new books when I'm 69!

As I write this, I am aboard a flight from Houston to Denver, Colorado - where, apparently, it is snowing! And I'm reflecting on our stay in Texas. One of the highlights was the barbecue last Sunday at Dick's ranch. Dick's house always seems full of bright young students who hang on his every word. These are the creme de la creme of the criminal justice students, and it wouldn't surprise me if many of them followed Dick to the north-east.

These guys and girls are not only smart, they're funny too. Razor sharp wit. We all sat around watching Dick's high-def big screen TV during a transmission of CBS's 60-minutes current affairs documentary. They were airing an item about a ray-gun developed by the US military. A huge dish, mounted on an armoured vehicle, can send powerful, invisible rays over half a mile to stop anyone in their tracks. The sensation, apparently, is of intense heat, although no actual harm is done. But it is so unpleasant, no one will advance into the path of the rays.

To demonstrate it to 60-minutes, the military had assembled a group of soldiers dressed as civilian protesters, and fired the ray-gun at them to stop their advance. Unfortunately, they had provided these mock demonstrators with placards that read, WORLD PEACE, and PEACE AND LOVE. Clearly anyone who wanted world peace was a serious threat. After all, if it were ever to be achieved, the military would be out of a job.

The CBS reporter didn't seem to see the irony. But it wasn't lost on Dick's students. Everyone fell about, helpless with laughter. And when the reporter commented that anyone who advanced into the ray would have to be hugely determined, one of the students quipped, "Yeh, he'd have to want world peace real bad!"

What made it even more comical was the reaction of those hit by the ray. They all threw up their arms in bizarre fashion and turned and ran away. Hard to take seriously. And its lack of portability might also prove a problem. The military are clearly still trailing in the wake of Star Trek. "Set phasers to stun", is apparently some way off yet. No wonder they are finding it hard to get funding!

So it's farewell to Texas sunshine, and it's hello to Rocky Mountain snows. And that bolt of lightning that Hillary Clinton was hoping for last night, seems to have come through for her - against all the predictions of the pundits. She won Texas and Ohio and stopped Obama in his tracks.

Television screens everywhere during our trip so far have been filled with election coverage. Wall to wall. And it looks now, as if it will continue through the rest of the tour - and beyond. I don't know about the good folk of America, but I for one am suffering from election fatigue already.

DAY 32 Pt. 2

2008-03-04T06:41:00.002+01:00

With tornadoes forecast, I decided not to wear the kilt today. Well... I'd be a bonnie teuchie with my plaid up around my ears. And I might just have been arrested for indecent exposure!

As it happened, the wind never got above strong. Early morning rain dried up.

But it was cooooold. For Texas, freeezing. After a temperature of 70 degrees farenheit yesterday, it seemed like a chilling portent of colder climes to come.

Betty guided us down the I45, one-and-a-half hours to downtown Houston, and we arrived at Murder by the Book as readers were gathering to hear me speak. Given that the main event is tomorrow night at the Alliance Francaise, I was surprised to find that we had a full house.

Among those who came to hear me speak were James Hamilton and Stephanie Burns - old friends of my former boss at Scottish Television, Robert Love. Robert was Head of Drama at STV for most of my time there as a scriptwriter, editor and storyliner. He also "discovered" La Patronne, when one of her controversial early stage plays was playing at a theatre in Glasgow. He commissioned her to adapt the play for television, and moved seamlessly from facilitator to mentor.

When we were setting off on the tour he asked me to send him a schedule, promising to let his many friends around America know when we were in town. And so it was that James and Stephanie turned up to support me. It was a joy to meet them.

Also at the event was a Scottish girl, Kimberley, from Aberdeen, whose husband's job in the oil business had led them to Houston. Reading that a Scottish writer was to be speaking at the bookstore, she persuaded all her neighbours to come with her, and so a large crowd of women squeezed into the front row to hear me talk.

I also recognised some old faithfuls from previous years, and ended up signing a pile of books at the end of the evening.

We didn't have any Gaillac wines at the event, but the bookstore provided some Calfornian chardonay to whet the appetite.

Tomorrow night a case of Sarrabelle wines will be available for tasting, air-freighted at great expense from Weygandt-Metzler's warehouse in Philadelphia.

My only concern is that the event coincides with the Democratic and Republican primaries in Texas. TV coverage has been endless. The Democratic race is too close to call, but if Hillary loses, then it's curtains for her bid to be President. In Texas there is a vote, then a caucus. The votes take place earlier in the day, but the caucusing begins at 7.15pm - 45 minutes after the start of the event at Alliance Francaise. Whether it affects turnout remains to be seen, but such is the election fever here in Texas, that it wouldn't surprise me if my audience consisted entirely of Republicans.

As long as they buy books and wine, I'll be happy.

As we drove away in the dark in search of the freeway at the end of the evening, a bolt of lighting split the blue-black sky above downtown Houston. A bolt from the blue - which is what Hillary must be hoping for tomorrow.

But the forecast is for clear skies and sunshine, so I'm not sure it will happen.

We live in interesting times.

DAY THIRTY-TWO

2008-03-03T17:25:00.006+01:00

After a relaxing weekend of sunshine, Chinese and Mexican food, a barbecue at the Ward ranch, a movie, and the company of a group of funny and intelligent young people destined to determine the future of criminal justice in the US... dark clouds have gathered.

It is Monday morning. I have an event at Murder by the Book mystery bookstore in Houston at 6.30pm - and a storm is sweeping across Texas.

High winds and rain are already lashing the campus where we are staying at Huntsville, an hour or more north of Houston on the freeway. There are warnings of hailstorms and tornadoes, just at the time we are due to drive south.

Gulp.

Wish me luck!!

PS: A quick footnote to the event at San Mateo ten days ago. Click here for an article which appeared on the internet reviewing the evening.

Topping up with cash at a drivethru ATM. Nobody wants to get out of their car here.

DAY TWENTY-NINE

2008-03-01T06:14:00.002+01:00

Mike Coates is a young man going places. Yesterday he went to Bush International Airport in Houston Texas to meet two bedraggled Scottish writers halfway through a book tour.

But he's going a lot further than the airport.

A post-graduate student at the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University, he is deep into his doctorate, and at the same time acting as assistant to his mentor, Dr. Richard Ward.

It was at Dick Ward's bidding, that Mike picked me and La Patronne up at the airport, handed me the keys to Dick's brand new Chrysler Aspen - a luxury monster SUV - and took us to the university hotel in Huntsville, where he had booked us in for the duration of our stay in Texas.

Mike gets top grades, has given up his free time - holidays and weekends - to work his way into the magic inner circle of Ward devotees. To be one of that inner circle is to virtually guarantee a successful career in criminal justice, because there is no one better connected in the world than Dick Ward when it comes to domestic and international policing and the fight against terrorism.

In almost every law enforcement agency that matters around the world, there are former pupils of Dr. Richard Ward occupying prominent positions. Years ago he set up the OICJ - the Office of International Criminal Justice. In the nineties, he trained the top 500 police officers in China in the latest western policing techniques. He is a world authority on international terrorism, and during his years as Dean of the College of Criminal Justice here in Huntsville, set up the Institute for the Study of Violent Groups (ISVG) - an organisation, run by students who collect open source material from around the world on violent groups, and feed it into a computer database which they designed themselves, to make connections no one ever saw before.

So successful has that been, both the FBI and CIA are clamouring for a direct info. feed from the students and their database.

Dick is something of a mentor to me, too. Without his introductions to the police in China, I would never have been able to write my China Thrillers series. His energy and imagination and pure drive are a constant inspiration.

(Dick and Michelle with daughter Sophia when they visited us in France last summer)

He always looks after us when we are in Texas, and facilitated all the research for my book, "Snakehead". Ingrate that I am, I went on to use his Texas ranch as a setting for part of the book, and he has never forgiven my detailed description of the chaos in his garage. He has spent the last eight years trying to clean it up, and insists on giving me a tour of it every time I visit.

(Huntsville is also famous for its Death House, where prisoners are strapped to a table and given a lethal injection. We visited it on a previous visit)

We are soooo happy to be here after our travails in Tucson. Tomorrow and Sunday we have some free time. Dick, and his wife Michelle, are taking us to the movies to see "Vantage Point". They have laid on a barbecue at the ranch on Sunday, and today we got a privileged insight into the arcane workings of academia, when we were admitted to a couple of presentations by students pitching for their theses.

As for the mystery of the closed doors at Clues Unlimited in Tucson, we are none the wiser. I received a call the following day from my publisher to say that "Chris" from Clues had called trying to get in touch with us. Apparently she had excused herself by saying she was sick and had closed up early.

If that was the case, one would have thought the least she might have done was give us a call (she has our email address, and all our contact information is on the website) - and leave a note on the door for her customers.

But if she was trying to get in touch with us the following day, she never did. La Patronne emailed her but we are still waiting for a reply. No apology, no explanation. Nothing.

DAYS 26 AND 27

2008-02-28T08:40:00.016+01:00

Grrrr. Phhhhht. Phirginnnn@@££****&**. Shhhhttttt@£*&!

Only Blogger's terms and conditions prevent me from using the real expletives. But more of that later.

A young woman called Betty - whom I will never know - saved our lives tonight.

Her cool, unflappable calculations in the face of extreme dysfunction, guided us through dark streets and uncharted waters to an on-ramp to the I10 West from Tucson to Phoenix. Roadworks had closed down eight exits and on-ramps to downtown Tucson in its desert valley setting flanked by purple mountains.

Without Betty we would have been hopelessly lost - our Google Maps printout worse than useless.

Betty is the name we gave to the lady whose voice animates our borrowed Tom Tom GPS satellite navigation system. A rubber sucker holds her to the windscreen. You tell her where you want to go, and the maps that appear are accompanied by Betty's soothing admonitions to turn left, stay on the left lane, and take the motorway.

She has a peculiar hybrid voice - largely English in accent, but with distinct American undertones. "Motorway" becomes "modorway".

She has been guiding us all around Phoenix and Scottsdale - vast distances travelled between hotel and bookstores.

Last night we had a hugely successful event at Barnes and Noble, where I was presented to the audience by my publisher, Barbara Peters, and everyone tasted and appreciated the Gaillac wines of Domaine Sarrabelle.

That in itself was a minor miracle. Without any means of getting the wine from California to Arizona, we borrowed a special wine-carrying suitcase from Susie and checked it in with our luggage at the airport - 12 bottles! The suitcase weighed a ton!! The guy at the desk grunted as he lifted it. "What the hell you got in this?" he growled.

I just laughed. As if it might have been very heavy underwear - or our dirty washing to date.

Then today we signed books at the Poisoned Pen bookstore and lunched at the nearby Cafe Zu Zu in the Valley Ho Hotel. A bizarre lunch punctuated by lookalike Bond villains circulating among the tables and wandering through the hotel lobby. Our attention was first drawn to them by a squat, oriental gentleman with moustache, dark suit and bowler hat drifting past our table.

La Patronne blinked at him and said, "He looks like Top Hat." I took one look and knew what she meant. "Top Hat" was always what my dad called Odd Job, one of the villains from "Goldfinger". Then more villains floated by - Le Chiffre, Jaws, Hugo Drax - furrowing our foreheads in deep frowns before all was explained by the appearance of a celebrity Sean Connery lookalike.

Actually, it wasn't a bad likeness. Although, perhaps, a little too plump.

So Bond was the lunch theme, bland was the food. Oh, well.

One interesting footnote. The waitress who brought our check was called Caress - her name printed boldly on a badge pinned to her left breast. Was it an instruction, I wondered, or perhaps an invitation. I didn't have the courage to ask.

Then into the kilt and off to Tucson. A 2-hour drive through the desert on the traffic-choked Interstate 10, a vast landscape of cartoon cacti and red-baked desert tinted green from recent rains. No rain today, though. A simmering 28 degrees centigrade, every horizon broken by the peaks of distant mountains, the sky enormous, blue, and cloudless. You could understand why those wagon train pioneers gave up in the end and settled in these baking, dry valleys. They stretch in every direction as far as the eye can see, and must have offered very little hope of the lush green promised land those hardy, early settlers had hoped to find.

Nowadays the pioneers are the "snowbirds" from the north and east in search of winter sun, parking up in huge, featureless RV parks with water and electricity, and the haute cuisine of the Arizona desert - MacDonald's, Wendy's, Denny's, Starbucks.

And finally, to the venue for tonight's event. The Clues Unlimited bookstore in Tucson. Except that it was closed. And dark. And there was no one there. A notice in the window advertised my appearance, with talk and wine-tasting. But the store was locked and empty. A Marie-Celeste sort of mystery.

Darkness fell with the setting of the sun. Some people gathered on the pavement outside, but there was still no sign of the owner.

A lady with a notice pinned across her chest approached us. The notice read: I have been sent by Sharon and Hibbard.

La Patronne nearly split her sides laughing. This was the sister of a good friend, Sharon Williams. We had dined with her and husband Hibbard only two nights earlier in Sacramento. But as we introduced ourselves to one another on the sidewalk, it became clear that no one was coming to open up the store. I called the store's telephone number with my cellphone and heard it ringing in the shop. It was 7.20 pm. The event should have begun at 7pm. I left a curt message, and we decided to gift the wine to Sharon's sister before we left to begin the long drive back to Phoenix.

It would be impossible to take it with us. The wine carrier had already been FedExed back to Susie in California. Sharon's sister said she would wait there with the wine until a friend she was expecting arrived. We thought it might be a little dangerous leaving her on her own on the sidewalk with six bottles of wine, and she accepted our offer to walk her to the car with them. She smiled and patted her purse. "I normally carry a handgun," she said. "And I've had training in how to use it. But I haven't got it with me tonight."

We decided it was time to take our leave of Tucson.

And so we began the long, depressing drive back through the dark, guided by Betty, clueless as to why Clues Unlimited had advertised my event, then failed to open up for it.

There may be some perfectly plausible explanation, some tragedy, some unavoidable circumstance. So until an explanation is forthcoming, I reserve judgment. And my expletives remain (for the moment) deleted.

Grrrr. Phhhhht. Phirginnnn@@££****&**. Shhhhttttt@£*&!

DAY TWENTY-THREE

2008-02-25T22:57:00.007+01:00

It was a dark and stormy night...

And no one turned up at the bookstore. Well... that's not quite true. A few hardy souls braved the dire storm warnings being pumped out by the media to come and hear me speak.

The phrase "from the sublime to the ridiculous" came to mind. The contrast between San Mateo on Friday night and Corte Madera on Saturday night could hardly have been more marked.

The one bright spot was that Sarah Weldon, an old friend from France, turned up with a friend, and we were all able to share a glass or two of wine with the storm-bravers and chat about the books.

While the good people of Northern California closed their shutters and huddled down in their homes to brave the blast, we drove an hour and a half through the rain to get to the town of Corte Madera which, in normal circumstances, has a fabulous view of San Francisco across the bay. But on this dark and stormy night, there was nothing to be seen. Not even a twinkling light.

Actually, the thing I really discovered was that the word "storm" has different meanings in California and Scotland. The forecasters here had been predicting heavy rain blowing in on winds of 40 miles per hour, gusting to 60. Which would have been an average February day in Argyll, where we spent our last ten years in Scotland. Winds need to get up to about 100 miles an hour before we would start to get concerned.

But a "storm" here in early January had brought down trees and power lines, and so no one wanted to venture out.

In the end, it wasn't even as bad as the forecasters had been warning, and we drove home through light winds and flashes of moonlight.

The following day was Oscars day. People in the States have Oscars parties. Families and friends gather around their TV sets with plates of finger food and watch a seemingly endless procession of celebrities tripping off and on the stage, shedding tears and thanking their grannies. But not having seen a single one of the nominated movies, it was, for us, a little like watching the Super Bowl. Unfathomable. But a good excuse for a glass of champagne!

Oh, well... Tuesday sees us depart for Phoenix, and with nearly a month still ahead of us, the great cross-America trek will begin.

(It's farewell to Sacramento, Susie, and grand-daughter Madeleine)

DAY TWENTY-TWO

2008-02-23T21:28:00.007+01:00

Wow! What an event. Sixty people crushed into the bookstore, drinking Gaillac wines and loving them, laughing at all the right places during my talk, buying lot of books. I think perhaps this was the best single event I've had in three US tours.

And to top it all, three delightful people - lawyer Mark Radcliffe, his wife Dianne, and their friend Anne - took La Patronne, Susie and I to dinner at a fabulous French restaurant a couple of blocks away from Ed Kaufman's M is for Mystery bookstore in San Mateo.

That was after Ed had wheeled out trolley after trolley of books for me to sign - many of them pre-ordered.

San Mateo is just south of San Francisco, in the beautiful Bay Area. We drove down in glorious sunshine, the jagged peaks of islands and headlands silhouetted against dazzling water, shredding the incoming cloud. And as we drove across the Bay Bridge, we had an extraordinary view of San Francisco itself, climbing and falling around all those steeply pitched hills. In the distance we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, spanning the bay away to the north.

It was nearly midnight as we headed back the same way in the dark, the lights of the city reflecting in the black expanse of water below.

Fifteen hours earlier, I had dragged myself from my bed to do a radio interview by phone with John DeMers for his "Delicious Mischief" radio show in Houston, Texas. Originally I was to have appeared live on the show on Saturday, March 1st. But he will be out of town that day, and so was pre-recording all the segments.

John is a great guy. It was the third time I've been on his show. He makes it so easy just to chat. Here's what he says about the upcoming transmission on his blog:

KILLER WINE Many wine lovers complain these days that one or two wine critics exercise too much power over the wines that get made and marketed. Yet it’s a safe bet most of us have never considered knocking one of these guys off. That is precisely the premise of Peter May’s brand-new mystery “The Critic,” which he joins us to discuss. What’s more, the Scots-born May now lives in France and has done extensive research (a.k.a. drinking) into the wines of Gaillac for his page-turning novel.
 

Today we will try to make it into San Francisco for what's known as the "Crushpad Mashup" - an annual event where you can taste more than 300 different barrel samples of wine from 50 vineyards, alongside the people who are growing the grapes and making the wine. This will be a stop for us, in 3rd Street, en route to tonight's book event at the Book Passage bookstore in Corte Madera - right across the bay from San Francisco.

The only worry is the weather forecast. There's a big storm coming in off the Pacific. Heavy rain and high winds predicted. It could be a dark and stormy night!

* A footnote to the event in San Mateo. A charming lady called Milene Rawlinson, who has become a regular at my events there, arrived with an internet printout for me - a sequence of photographs depicting the current state of readiness in Beijing for this summer's Olympic Games. They made me laugh out loud. So here are a few examples. Enjoy!!

DAY TWENTY-ONE

2008-02-23T09:52:00.001+01:00

The freeway cut sharply through the mountains behind Los Angeles. East and north. In the distance we could see snow on the highest peaks.

This was goodbye to sunny Southern California, and a long road north to Sacramento, which was forecast to have a chilly weekend of wind and rain. Finally, we are on the road. The tour has swung into gear. I feel sad to be leaving the sunshine behind, but no doubt we will encounter it again in Arizona and Texas, before our itinerary takes us to the still frozen northerly climes of Colorado and Minnesota.

Suddenly, the road swoops down through the foothills, and the great plains of the Californian interior shimmer off into a distant haze of ominous cloud and rain. In the very far distance, east and west, the dark lines of jagged mountain ranges fringe what they call the breadbasket of California. Endless miles of fruit trees and grain crops. There is already blossom on the trees.

Our 7-hour journey north is punctuated by pitstops at Starbucks, and I remember yesterday, and my tour of the Forensic Science Service labs of Orange County. A tour guided by the lead forensics investigator, Grant Fry, who took us from the helipad on the roof of the "penthouse", down through every floor to the blood drying rooms in the basement. A fascinating journey through the latest forensic technology, which will find its way into the new book when I sit down to write it at the end of the tour.

The drive also gave me a chance to think about that book. About story developments and characters. It is taking rapid shape, both in my head and on paper.

Tomorrow begins a heavy weekend, with events in San Mateo and Corte Madera, in the San Francisco Bay area, and an email from Ed Kaufman at San Mateo alerted us to the need to bring more wine for the tasting. He was anticipating a crowd of sixty or more squeezing into his small bookstore. "We had a bigger uptake than anticipated," he said. "I did an interview about the event on a local radio show, and the phone hasn't stopped ringing since."

So now I must unroll the kilt from the stocking it travels in, dust myself down, and dive once more into the fray.

DAY NINETEEN

2008-02-20T22:13:00.005+01:00

Okay, I'm standing drinking Gaillac wine, surrounded by French people talking French. So where am I?

Paris? Toulouse?

Actually, just off Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. It seems very strange to be chattering away in French. A young stagiere comes from the Aveyron, just a couple of hours away from where we live, and a stone's throw from my French publisher, Editions du Rouergue. A couple of ladies originate from towns very close to Gaillac, and are thrilled to hear me talk about the town and the wines, as well as to drink them - a taste of home.

This is the Los Angeles Alliance Francaise, and most of the people who have come to hear me speak are either French, have a French spouse, or grew up in France. Everyone speaks French. There are classes held here nightly, and facilities for teaching kids the language from the earliest age.

The event starts at seven, and doesn't finish until after ten. Our Sarrabelle wines were augmented by the wines of another Gaillac vigneron, Robert Plageoles, but it was the Sarrabelles that stole the show. Everyone wanted to know where and when they could buy them.

It was nearly midnight by the time we got home, having left at 10.30 that morning to meet with our former French neighbours, John and Bettie Jensen, at the LA Country Club for lunch. We have eaten there with them many times, and it is always a joy to see them again. We first met them 20 years ago when we bought a small holiday home in the 13th century village of Carennac on the banks of the River Dordogne.

They always told us they could hear us giggling at night, our voices carried across the gardens on the warm summer air, and that it always cheered them up. Happily, we are all giggling still.

Then it was on to the Los Angeles Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, where I signed piles of books before heading off for the Alliance Francaise.

Four events in 48 hours has left me staggering a little, but I cracked off to the gym this morning (Day 20) to get oxygen to my brain for a research trip this afternoon to the forensic laboratories of the Orange County Police Department at Santa Ana (the CSI people) - research for the new book.

No rest, it's true, for the wicked. So I must be ve-ery bad. Cos first thing tomorrow, it's into the car for a seven-hour drive north to Sacramento, and events Friday and Saturday at San Mateo and Corte Madera, right across the bay from San Francisco.

It's at times like this I almost wish I'd succumbed to last year's temptation to buy a little vineyard in Gaillac and spend the rest of my days producing wine rather than words. But it's maybe a little late to change horses now.

So.... onwards! And northwards!

DAY EIGHTEEN

2008-02-19T18:50:00.006+01:00

Patrick and I each had a long day.

Patrick is the bookseller at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego. He was selling my books in the afternoon when I talked to a group of readers and conducted a wine tasting at the store.

And he arrived with boxes of books to sell at the evening event at Le Bouchon French restaurant just up the road in Escondido. He had to listen to me twice, which must have been trying enough, but neither of us finished up until 8pm.

For him, the day would end with a short drive home. For us it was nearly two hours back to Newport Beach, another 12-hour day under our belts.

But 12 successful hours.

During a quiet moment I asked Patrick how things were going at the store. He said things were good. And when authors came and signed books, even better. During both evening and afternoon sessions I had signed piles of stock, of both "The Critic" and "The Killing Room".

That evening Patrick told me, "Before you left the shop, I had those books up on the internet. They'll all be sold by tomorrow."

He said I had established a good fan base in San Diego, and that the turnout at the shop at 3.30 on a Monday afternoon had been amazing.

Those readers were particularly privileged - not because they had to endure me talking for an hour - but because they got to taste the first Sarrabelle wines ever to be drunk on American soil.

I went through the tasting processes with them, and opened a bottle of Sarrabelle's Saint Andre - a wonderful, smooth red made from 100 percent Braucol grapes, then aged in oak. They loved it. The wine writer from the San Diego newspaper was there, too, and arranged to conduct a phone interview with me later this week for the full low-down on the Sarrabelle vintages. By this time glasses were empty, and there was a clamour for more.

As there was later in the day when members of San Diego's Alliance Francaise packed into Le Bouchon to hear me speak, and then taste both the Saint Andre and the Sarrabelle Syrah - as well as the Gaillac white made from 100 percent Mauzac grapes. Everyone wanted to know where they could buy these wines. And we were able to tell them that they should be available for general sale from February 28th when the first shipment arrives in Weygandt-Metzler's warehouse from France.

And what I found particularly strange, but oddly comforting, was to be standing in the heart of Spanish influenced Southern California talking French to restaurant owner Michel, and Alliance Francaise organiser Anne Laure! The world turns in strange ways.

(Chatting in French to restaurant owner Michel)

It has been a long road since we first stumbled upon Domaine Sarrabelle, tucked away anonymously amongst the rolling hills on the north bank of the River Tarn. A long time since we first stood in a darkened tasting room at the back of the wine shed with Fabien Causse tasting those wonderful wines for the first time.

And it gave me a particular pleasure and satisfaction to see so many people sharing in the pleasure of those same wines, two-and-a-half years and 6000 miles later.

Day nineteen will see us on the road again. To LA this time. A drop-by signing at a Bookstore in Westwood, then on to an evening event organised by the Los Angeles Alliance Francaise. More wine to be drunk, more converts to be made, more books to be sold.

And miles to go before I sleep.

DAY SIXTEEN

2008-02-17T03:01:00.005+01:00

It might seem like a bit of a jump from twelve to sixteen, but actually I think I was miscalculating (it's the sun and all those Margaritas). It was La Patronne (who else?) who pointed out that since we left on February 1st, the blog day should correspond to the date.

Hmmmm. She's not known as Miss 167 for nothing.

So here we are on Saturday, February 16th - Day Sixteen - and I have just completed my first formal event.

It was at Thousand Oaks, a small, prosperous community nestled among the hills just north of Los Angeles. The bookstore was Mysteries to Die For, run by Heidi and Deanne. There was a good turn-out on a beautiful morning. I had just driven the two hours north from Newport Beach on half empty freeways, and guzzled a caramel macchiato at Starbucks.

I was a little nervous, since this was my first talk of the 2008 tour - discussing the second and third books, respectively, of the Enzo Files and China Thrillers series. I never like to prepare too much, because then I get locked into a battle with my memory for a form of words I might have written down earlier.

So I had simply sketched in a broad shape in my mind the night before, making a few notes on my (now working) new computer, at the end of a long day of too many Margaritas and too much wine. And, as always, I found myself talking about things I hadn't planned to - like my first research trip to an oil rig in the north sea during a Force Ten storm, and a drunken dog with a bag over its head.

If you want to know more, you'll have to come along to one of my events. By the end of the tour the talk will have been honed to a fine art, and will trip off my tongue without a second thought. But there's always something a little exciting about the first one - like the first performance of a new play. A little rough around the edges, but crackling with creative tension.

On the drive back, I could barely keep my eyes open. The sun was blazing through the windscreen, the freeways were choked, and we sat in long tailbacks. It was a huge relief to get home - where awaited a delicious surprise.

The six sample cases of Sarrabelle wines had arrived, delivered by FedEx to Susie's door. All the brave efforts of Françoise at the winery, and the determination of Fabien and Laurent - the winemakers - to make their wines available for my California tastings had paid off.

I also received a mail from Peter Weygandt, the American importer, to tell me that the rest of the wine would be available for shipping from his US warehouse from February 28th.

Woo hoo! Success!!

All that remains now is to taste and drink, and introduce both readers and wine lovers to the delights of Gaillac wines. As well, hopefully, as selling a few books along the way

We made a good start today. Keeping fingers crossed now that all will go well with the rest of the tour.

IT HAS BEGUN!

[Susie and La Patronne herald the arrival of the wine (note Karl Rove preparing his world famous guacamole in BG)]

DAY TWELVE

2008-02-14T15:57:00.006+01:00

Now I'm really losing track, having squandered two entire days in that nether world of computer frustration, where nothing seems to work and nothing you do seems to fix it.

The new computer - the one to replace the new one that didn't work - arrived on Tuesday as scheduled. What should have been a simple installation of software followed by a migration of files, all went horribly wrong.

(The scene of the computer crime - somehow we had managed to assemble at least six computers!)

My files refused to migrate automatically through the usual firewire link between the two computers, and so I had to do the migratation, file by painful file - including my entire library with all its preferences.

It took hours. And then, finally, just when I thought it was all hunky dory, my hard disk told me it was full. 120 gigabytes of full. When there should have been more than 70 gigabytes of free space. I went to bed in despair and frustration.

The following day, with the help of Apple expert and software genius, Eric the Viking, I finally solved all the problems and got the damned thing working - with full access to the online virtual world I am researching. Woo-hoo! Back in business.

As a thank you to all, I made lunch. My famous souffle omelette, which the Viking generously described as the best omelette he'd ever had.

And by way of celebration, as well as to make up for missing my session at the gym, we all went out for dinner - well, eating and drinking seems to me like a good way of making up for lost exercise!

At the restaurant, we met up with Susie's neighbours Rob and Linda, and through the windows watched folk sitting outside around tables with huge flames flickering into the night - California style.

Suddenly I became aware that the waiting staff was treating us like celebrities.

For a moment I thought it was because of Rob. Rob is a big, glamorous man with a teak tan and a thick head of pure white hair. He just took early retirement from what must be one of the most exotic jobs on the planet - for the last fifteen years or more he piloted Sony Pictures private jets around the world, rubbing shoulders with famous movie stars, producers and directors, and flying them to every corner of the planet.

But it wasn't Rob attracting the attention of the staff. And it certainly wasn't me.

Then came the revelation.

It was Eric the Viking. Only, they didn't know he was Eric the Viking. They thought he was Karl Rove - political guru and architect of the Bush presidency. I did a double-take, and for the first time realised that the Viking was, indeed, the dead spitting image of the one-time White House puppetmaster.

I was almost in exalted company, I thought. Then re-thought. Actually, I was in much more exalted company than any disgraced White House chief of staff. I was with good friends, in a fine restaurant, with a computer back home that was finally back on track.

Not only that, but I was eating Scottish salmon. A taste of home.

Sometimes life is good. And good friends are even better!

(PS: Can anyone spot which is the real Eric the Viking?)

DAY TEN

2008-02-12T03:17:00.000+01:00

Well, it might be ten. Or maybe nine. Even eleven.

See... lost track already. Today is Monday. Yesterday I did my first signing - out on the sidewalk outside Martha's bookstore on Balboa Island. Two hours in the sunshine. Temperature creeping up to 26 degrees. Got a big red face today!

Everyone stopped to talk, to gawp at the kilt (first time I've worn it this trip - and it felt good around the waist after me losing all that weight!!). Then, just like the same venue, same time last year, a couple passed and the woman looked at me suspiciously and said, "Why are you wearing a kilt?'

Of course, I heard immediately from her accent that she was Scottish. "Because I'm a Scot," I replied. And their faces lit up.

Turned out they came from Paisley, where I started my career in journalism on the Paisley Daily Express. Not only that, but we discovered we knew all these people in common from way back in the seventies - folk like Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly and Danny Kyle, and a bunch of talented people I interviewed for the paper - all former pupils of Paisley's St. Mirren's Academy. A hotbed of creative talent in those days, it seems.

In fact it was a couple of articles I wrote about a Paisley artist who had graduated from St. Mirren's, that won me my 'Young Journalist of the Year' award. All these years later I can still remember his name. Fergus Hall. I wonder whatever became of him.

So then we discovered that these good folk had emigrated to Tasmania, of all places, thirty years ago, and here they were, decades later crossing my path by chance on a street on Balboa Island, California. It really is a small world. Last year, on the same street, I met a young Scotsman who had married an American girl and settled here in Newport Beach. His parents were there on holiday from Scotland, and it was the father who had given me the odd look and asked why I was wearing the kilt.

Okay, so people are always giving me odd looks - whether I'm wearing the kilt or not. I should be used to it by now.

Then it was off to lunch with the Jensens, my old neighbours from France, who live in a wonderul timewarp cottage in Beverly Hills. Despite now being well into their eighties, they made the drive down from LA to see us, and come along to the launch party in the afternoon.

Susie's House

Susie was hosting the party, and the caterers wheeled in copious amounts of extraordinarily good food, while we cracked open the bottles of Gaillac wine we had managed to find for sale in the US (the good stuff is not scheduled to arrive till later this week). Everyone raved about the wine, though, including a French couple who live across the road and spend Spring and Fall in their apartment in Paris.

The good ladies of Martha's bookstore arrived with piles of my books, and we did a good trade in sales and signatures. La Patronne even sold ten copies of her romantic comedy, "Looking for the Zee".

When finally the dust settled, and Susie had flown off to San Francisco for a meeting today, her business partner Eric (the Viking), and I sat into the small hours playing piano and guitar, dredging up old Beatles songs from the dark recesses of long lost memory.

Practising on the grand during a quiet moment before the fray

And as I drove through the sunshine to the gym this morning in Susie's BMW sports convertible, the long shadows of tall palms dissecting empty streets, I thought...

... I could get used to this life.

If only I could afford the health insurance!

DAY EIGHT

2008-02-09T20:18:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I've been hiding for a couple of days. Two things have been on my mind.

The first, and most important, was that my daughter, Carol, was taken into hospital in Bangkok to have a biopsy done on a tumour growing on her liver.

The poor wee soul had a miserable and painful time. She wasn't allowed to move for four hours after the procedure, and was then kept in overnight.

That was Thursday night, California time. Through the wonders of technology, I talked to her in her hospital bed that night. She was in quite a lot of pain, and pretty miserable. She had to wait until early afternoon the following day to get the results. A tense and stressful period of waiting.

I found it difficult to concentrate on much all day Friday, phoning finally late on Friday night. She and her husband, Chris, were just checking out of the hospital. And she was on cloud nine.

The tumour was benign. Huge relief all round.

Carol and Chris on their wedding day

A tiny coda to the story. When the doctor was examining ultra-sound images of her liver he said it was otherwise in excellent condition. I expressed my amazement to her: "After the amount of booze YOU put away?"

She laughed and said: "That's exactly what I said to him."

The other thing on my mind - which was, of course, put firmly into perspective by Carol's predicament - was the purchase of a new laptop computer from the local Apple store.

Damned thing had "issues" as they say here. It was gobbling up memory like a hungry dog on speed. Suddenly a 120 gigabyte hard disk had 450 megabytes left!!!

Not only that, but for some reason it wouldn't run a critical piece of software that I am using right now for research on my new book. A graphics-hungry little number that takes me into a virtual world. Crashed the whole system everytime.

So I have spent more than four hours, over two days, standing at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store trying to solve the problems. First they replaced the computer. We reloaded my files and software. Bingo! Worked like a treat. But still wouldn't take me back into my virtual world.

Further investigations revealed a conflict between a new video card and the access software. A problem that looks like it won't be solved any time soon.

So now I have another computer on the way. Should arrive Tuesday. Hopefully that will solve the problem. All digits crossed!

A final word to Joe, our genius at the bar. We kept the poor man at work way past his going home time - wife and kids waiting for him round the dinner table. But he dealt with us with patience and good humour. Even when he saw us returning the next day, and his heart must have been sinking.

Joe.... thank you. But if the new computer doesn't do the job, expect to see us again on Tuesday!!!

DAY SIX

2008-02-07T19:11:00.000+01:00

On this year's tour, I'm not just going to be talking about my latest books, but introducing the wines of Gaillac to the world. This little-known wine-producing region of South-West France is where "The Critic" is set.

I received wonderful help and support from the wine producers there during my researches for the book. From two producers in particular: brothers, Hubert and Pierric de Faramond of Chateau Lastours, and brothers Laurent and Fabien Causse of Domaine Sarrabelle.

Characters from both vineyards somehow magically morphed into characters in the book through the mysterious processes of fiction writing. But the wines made it into the book without any fictionalizing from me.

And so, during my tour, I wanted not only to give a talk about the book, but to invite my readers to join me in tastings of the Gaillac wines that feature in the story. Unfortunately very few wines from Gaillac actually make it to the States. Which is a shame, because there are some fabulous undiscovered wines, at extremely good prices. And I just know the Americans would love them.

So, through a process of diligence and persistence, I finally managed to interest an American importer in bringing in Gaillac wines for my tour - and beyond.

The importer is a man called Peter Weygandt, of Weygandt-Metzler. They are based in Pennsylvania but import to almost all of the states we are visiting. Peter Weygandt himself is a highly respected wine-taster whose choice of wines receives the full-hearted endorsement of Robert Parker - the world's No1 wine critic.

So when he decided to import the wines of Domaine Sarrabelle that was quite an accolade for Fabien and Laurent Causse, who grow their grapes on 37 hectares of rolling land on the north side of the River Tarn. Because he didn't just take my word for the quality of the wine. He had some shipped to taste for himself. And so impressed was he, that last week he went all the way to France to meet the winemakers and taste their wines in the vineyard itself.

He loved them.

But importing wine is no easy task - especially to the United States, where every state has different laws governing the importation, sale, and consumption of alcohol. So it has been a last-minute rush to try to get the wines here on time - and it looks like we might just have succeeded

While the main shipment won't arrive in time for the start of the tour, Domaine Sarrabelle, in cooperation with Weygandt-Metzler, are air-freighting 72 bottles of wine from Gaillac to California so that we have genuine Gaillac wines to taste at the early events.

There are two reds:

The Sarrabelle Syrah, which as you might imagine, is compose mostly of Syrah.

And the Saint Andre, which is produced 100 percent from the Braucol grape, which is one of the signature grapes of the Gaillac AOC.

In addition, there will be a white, produced from one of the signature white grapes - Mauzac

These grapes, along with others like Duras and Loin d l'oeil, are what give Gaillac wines their very distinctive flavours. A little different from Bordeaux and Burgundy, but every bit as good - even if they aren't as well-known.

So, it is with bated breath - after much e-mail to-ing and fro-ing - that we await the arrival next week of the first Gaillacs.

And I'm really looking forward to a taste of home.

2008-02-06T16:13:00.000+01:00

DAY FIVE

Two years ago, we were here on vacation in Newport Beach. We wanted to rent bikes and cycle north along the boardwalk all the way to Long Beach. They said it would cost 25 dollars a day. But they were selling old rental bikes for 50 dollars each. So we bought a couple.

I've lost count of the number of days and hours we've spent on those bikes, cycling around Corona del Mar, pumping up and down the boardwalk, lunching at Huntingdon Beach, and fighting our way back against the tug of the wind.

This is the third year we've had use out of them. What kind of a bargain buy was that?!!

Enough of a bargain, I figured, to treat ourselves today to lunch at the Crab Cooker.

It takes about forty minutes to get there on the bikes. Down the hill, over the bridge to Balboa Island. Weave through all the back alleys to the ferry, then cross to the peninsula. And then along the boardwalk.

The Crab Cooker is a relic from a bygone era, when this was the beach retreat of Hollywood stars. And it probably hasn't changed much since then. The waitresses all look like they've been working there since Day One, and wear funny little short, black skirts and white socks. It's not particularly sophisticated, but it's just like stepping back in time. The food is served off paper plates, with plastic cups and cutlery, but it is wonderful.

On the way back we stopped off at Martha's - the bookstore on Balboa Island which will be selling my books at the private launch party this coming weekend. It's a quaint little store tucked away down an alley off Marine Avenue, packed with books piled up on every available space. The two charming ladies who run it, Stephanie and Kathy, weren't there, but the lady who was, recognised my accent, and I was offered a choice of peach tea, coffee, or chardonnay. But that wasn't just special treatment for me. It's a choice offered every customer who comes through the door.

Just along the road is what seems like the only concession to the twenty-first century - the Starbucks where I go every morning for my caramel macchiato.

This is a quaint and curious corner of California which, in spite of all the new build, probably hasn't changed much since its heyday. Strict building regulations have seen to that. Property prices are astronomical. There is a story doing the rounds about how Nicholas Cage fell in love with a house on one of the tiny islands that pepper the bay. He knocked on the door and persuaded the owners to pack up and go with an offer of 25 million in their hands.

The story might be apocryphal, but you could believe it. Just along the coast there was a house for sale last year for more than 70 million dollars. And Cage certainly does have a house in the bay.

The one thing of which I can be absolutely certain, is that I won't be buying a house here!

2008-02-05T18:12:00.000+01:00

DAY FOUR

A woman with the largest breasts on the smallest body came strutting past, thrusting her silicone assets ahead of her, cleaving a path through the fetid air of the gymansium. Her hair was a dyed uniform black. Her face had a shiny, fixed smile. It would be hard to say she was attractive. But she was compulsive viewing.

And she was not alone. The gym was filled with women in search of immortality. And pot-bellied men paying lip service to fitness, reclining in cushioned apparatus, reading newspapers and magazines, while bronzed stick legs pumped pedals, in apparently disconnected sycnhronisation with the rest of them.

These were the beautiful people of Orange County sweating their way through the first hour of the day, hoping to spend their remaining waking hours drawing looks of admiration and approval. And there was me, amongst them, fighting off the advancing years, trying to maintain the momentum of the last few months. Sweating off the jetlag.

Susie had taken me to her local gymnasium and acquired for me a two-week free trial membership. The staff were friendly, courteous and extraordinarily helpful. And even remembered my name an hour later when I retired, puce-faced, from the fray.

I love California. And today was the classic Southern Californian day. The sun was shining brilliantly in the clearest of blue skies, the breeze blowing in off the ocean to stir the foliage of tall swaying palm trees. People wore shorts and shades and smiled, and said Hi, how are you today? And I thought of home, where the temperature dips well below zero each night, and folk are swaddled in dark winter jackets and hats and scarves, and will not find their smiles again till the first Spring sunshine melts the frost on the wall. And I knew where I would rather be right now.

Just chilling in the sunshine, working on the new book, and preparing for the campaign trail across America - and I'm not talking about the Primaries (though Super Tuesday will form the basis of tonight's entertainment). I'm talking about the more than 20 events that loom ahead, from San Diego in the far south-west, to Rochester in the frozen north-east, when I have to stand up day after day in front of audiences large and small and sell myself and my books.

Here's the schedule: PETER MAY'S US TOUR 2008

The things a writer has to do to make a living!

PS: While I'm treading blog water until the start of the tour, I'm going to write a piece about how I approach the storylining and structure of my books. Look out for it!

2008-02-04T17:29:00.000+01:00

DAY TWO
(or is it three?)

Well, here we are in sunny California, watching the wind whip through the palm trees, the rain hammering against the window. The ocean isn't even visible, and it's only a couple of hundred metres away.

Twelve hours in an aeroplane with the guy across the aisle releasing noxious fumes into the atmosphere at regular intervals. And if he wasn't trying to gas us from one end, he was snoring like a demented yak from the other.

And all to arrive in a rainstorm!

Fortunately I had my computer, and a socket in the armrest, so I was able to bury my head in my storyline for a few hours. That was after sleeping off an exhausting dinner with champagne, red wine and cognac. I'd had the hangover and got over it by the time we were over Greenland, and settled down to work as the winter wastes of the frozen Canadian north drifted slowly by beneath us.

It wasn't actually raining when we arrived - an hour late, delayed in Paris because they had to de-ice the plane. So the shock awaiting us wasn't immediately a weather one. We had been expecting to be picked up at LAX by Susie, our friend from Newport Beach with whom we are staying for the next couple of weeks.

Instead we were gobsmacked to be met by my smiling beau frere - La Patronne's brother. Who only happens to live in upstate New York, around 3000 miles away. Grinning from ear to ear, he said, "Just happened to be passing."

In fact he had booked a last minute flight to spend an extended weekend with us in California - an escape from the winter snow and ice in the north-east. Only to spend his one full day with us today in the rain!

Today was, however, Super Bowl Sunday, and we were invited to a Super Bowl party by Susie's neighbours, Rob and Linda. They have panoramic windows that look out over Balboa Island, and the ocean beyond. Spectacular. And by the end of the game, the sky had cleared enough to provide a magnificent watery widescreen sunset.

Sunset from Rob and Linda's house

Earlier we had indulged in our first Californian meal of fabulous seafood washed down with salt-rimmed margaritas. And at the party we were treated to Mexican chili, and corn bread, and chilled white wine.

The Super Bowl didn't mean much to me. It's the only game I've ever seen that can last half an hour with only two minutes to go! Apparently people only watch for the ads. Never mind, the company was good, and so was the food, even if I could barely keep my eyes open. Mid-afternoon here, the middle of the night back home.

And here I am now, nearly 11pm and wide awake. I feel a sleepless night coming on. Damned jetlag.

Where are those little pills...?

2008-02-01T21:30:00.000+01:00

DAY ONE:

Okay. Here we go. On the road again. Day One, and it was grey, wet, cold and miserable as we closed the shutters and set off on the first leg of our World Tour of the US, 2008. Seven whole weeks ahead of us. Nearly twenty cities. Two books to promote. The new EnzoFiles tome, "The Critic", and the third of the China books, "The Killing Room".

Why the hell did I ever want to be a writer?

I watched rain-streaked France flash past the window of our carriage at the head of the train as we headed north towards Paris. Premiere Classe (no accents, cos Blogger.com turns them into mince).

In front of us was a grumpy bastard whom La Patronne had forced out of our seats. Well... you know... these are reservation-only trains. He was in our seats. Spread out across both of them. He wasn't pleased when asked to shift.

What is it with people that they can't sit in the damned seats they're reserved for? Seat anarchy on SNCF. It's a national pastime. Grrrr. A good start (not). He humphed and grumphed all the way to Paris. And the woman in the seat in front of him coughed and sneezed for four hours. It was all I could do to stop La Patronne storming up the aisle and spraying her with disinfectant.

I focused instead on my laptop, and the new book. Made a good start (yesss). 2000 words in the can, and a constructive opening to the story breakdown. It is set in a virtual world - in which I have spent much of the last few months. In there the sun always shines. So it was a reality check to see the rain streaming down the windows and feel the cold eating its way into my bones.

Paris was grim. Miles of grafitti as the train approached Austerlitz. Railways lines always make their way through the most decayed tracts of a city. Paris is no different. And a miserable, yellow-grey February light didn't help.

Neither did our taxi driver. Scariest airport run in twenty years!

He was watching a film as he weaved his way at speed through the traffic choking the autoroute north to Charles de Gaulle. A DVD-powered screen on his dash. An old Alan Ladd film set in the time of King Arthur and the Round Table. I watched the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror as they dipped back and forth to the screen.

Brings a whole new meaning to the word "movie"?

In the distance I saw Montmartre, the Sacre Coeur thrusting up through the mist and rain, before we left the Peripherique, and the airport emerged from the rain.

And so now, here we are, in a hotel within spitting distance of the terminal. A 300 euro a night room, acquired somehow by La Patronne for a mere 99. No sooner had we checked in than I descended to the hotel gymnasium to catch up on the workout I had missed this morning. I've been going daily for two months now. Watching my diet, trying to get myself in shape for the tour.

Lost a stone. Which is fourteen pounds for the uninitiated. Or just over 6 kilos, if you live anywhere in the civilised world. La Patronne has managed half as much again.

She was almost tempted into the hotel swimming pool until she read the blurb. A disposable swimming costume was available. One use only. And we had crazy images of exploding swimming suits. "Your mission, should you accept it, is to swim in our pool. Your swimming costume will self-destruct in five lengths."

Hummmm. could be messy!

Oh, well. Up early tomorrow. On a plane by ten. In LA by one (local time). Into the arms of our very own darling Susie.

Can't wait!

2007-12-03T09:31:00.000+01:00

THE SHILLELAH RAP

Ever been whacked with a shillelah? No, me neither.

But I've been bludegeoned by a polished vine root. And made to drink copious amounts of chilled white wine from a giant glass. And encouraged to swear an oath of loyalty to an alcoholic beverage.

And all in the space of about fifteen minutes!

For the uninitiated, this was called an intronisation. Yes, I was intronised. And if you think that sounds painful, read on.

It all took place in the presence of a little-known brotherhood whose twenty-five members wear red and black robes and triangular hats. And it all unravelled this weekend in a tiny village on the south bank of the River Tarn, just a bridge span away from the town of Gaillac in south-west France. Oh, and there were a couple of hundred other people looking on (including La Patronne, and Le Beau Frere who had travelled from the States for the occasion).

In the packed lecture theatre of an agricultural training centre in the Midi-Pyrenean village of Brens, twenty-one chosen ones - myself included - were called down to the stage one by one by the be-robed members of the Order of the Divine Bottle, to be made Chevaliers of the Order. In nearly sixty years, only three thousand people worldwide have been selected for this honour.

Why me? Because my latest book, THE CRITIC, is set in the vineyards of Gaillac, and when I take the book on tour around the US next February, I will be offering Gaillac wines to my readers to taste.

And the purpose of the Ordre de la Dive Bouteille? To foster and promote the wines of Gaillac - a little-known wine producing area which has been making wonderful vintages since the days of the Romans.

So what happened? Well, we were called down to the stage in groups of seven, and made to stand there while our individual sponsors - all members of the Order - delivered two-minute eulogies. And how did they time the speeches?

I watched in awe as an elderly man is flowing red robes knelt at a triangular symbol etched into the floor of the the stage and set a small pot of water boiling over a candle. Some bizarre ritual owing its evolution to centuries of tradition? Well, no. He was boiling an egg. And when it was cooked, time was up.

The wonders of technology!!

My sponsor, or "parrain", was a lovely lady called Francoise Proust - no relation to Marcel, I was assured. After making me blush for two minutes, myself and my fellow chevaliers to be, had to sing a song and recite an oath of allegiance, before being presented with ENORMOUS engraved wine glasses which were filled with copious amounts of chilled white Gaillac wine which we had to drain before the song was finished.

You'll be surprised to hear that I managed to drain mine. Without dropping the glass or dribbling down my chin. Well, not much, anyway.

We had maroon aprons wrapped around us . And since I had my kilt on, bare legs poking out from below the apron made iit look like I might have been naked beneath it. Brass amphoras dangling from red, blue, and white ribbons were then draped around our necks, and the Grand Chancelier of the Order, the distinguished winemaker, Jacques Auques, whacked us on each shoulder with his shillelah - sorry, his polished vine root.

And that was it. We were now Chevaliers of the Order. Members of an elite and unique group of wine lovers whose particular predilection is for the vintages of Gaillac. All that remained was for us to sign the Golden Book - the Livre d'Or - and receive our certificates.

And thence to the gala dinner.

Now, dinners are dinners. And I only mention it because there were two very unusual aspects to this particular repas.

But, before I tell you what they were, just let me run through the menu - and, more importantly, the wine list!!!

Following an aperitif, we were served foie gras cooked in a terrine and served with fig confiture and salad.

Then came the fish course. Perch, caught locally, and poached in a wonderful cream and garlic sauce.

Naturally, our palates were then cleansed by a "trou normande", comprising an iced grape marc.

The meat course consisted of venison steaks served with a blueberry sauce, artichoke hearts and an exquisite vegetable gratin.

Then to the cheese - brought to the gathering by a "confrerie" of cheesemakers come to witness our graduation to the order. It was a ve-ery mature brie from Melun served with a wine confiture.

And finally a lighter than light cake - described as "le d'Artagnan" - presented in a display of fireworks.

But it was the wine.... what can I say? We were served a Gaillac primeur, followed by a sweet white with the foie gras. A dry white Gaillac with the fish, then two different reds with the meat and the cheese. Then finally a Gaillac effervescent - a champagne-type wine (actually they were making wine like this in Gaillac a hundred years before Dom Perignon stole the idea).

What made it all really unique was the presentation of the menu. It was engraved on the reverse side of individual 37cl bottles of Gaillac red provided as part of each place setting. A wonderful memento of the evening - even if the bottles are now all empty!!

But, really, the piece de resistance was the bread.

I have to say, I have never seen anything quite like it. A miniature round loaf at each place, engraved with the legend, 2007.

Was this a sell-by date, I wondered? Or maybe they were just letting us know that these weren't last year's left-overs. Of course, it may just have been notification that this was a very good year - for bread. A fine vintage.

I don't know - not being a connoisseur of bread. But it tasted good. So I ate it. And now, in the famous words of an old friend, "S'gone."

2007-10-24T18:39:00.000+02:00

LE PRIX INTRAMUROS

Thursday, October 18:
We gathered around the table in the foyer of the salon where the book festival would be held over the next three days. Myself and five other writers. We had all been shortlisted for the most unusual literary prize in France - the Prix Intramuros. Literally, the prize within the walls. A prize decided by real life prisoners, serving real life prison terms. The book which had won me this place was "Snakehead", the fourth in my China Thrillers series.

There should have been a seventh writer among us. But sadly, the poor man broke his leg while riding (or should I say falling off) one of the new free-to-ride bikes in Paris - "les velos libres".

The seven shortlisted books had been chosen from a long list of forty, before being farmed out to juries of prisoners in penitentiaries all over the north-west of France. The prisoners had all read and discussed the books and voted for their favourite, even before we arrived. But before the prize would be announced, we had to visit the participating penitentiaries and talk to the prisoners. About our books, literature, writing in general.

I should have been accompanied by the guy with the broken leg during a day-long trip to visit a remand jail in Angouleme, and a longer term prison near Bordeaux, but was dispatched along with my chauffeur to deal with it on my own. The other writers headed off to other prisons in the region.

The maison d'arret in Angouleme was a grim, stone-built, nineteenth century prison. Many of the prisoners kept there had not yet been convicted. Some were awaiting trial, others sentencing. Some of them had been held without either for up to two years. A group of fifteen to twenty men trooped into the room where we were to discuss the books. They all shook my hand and sat in chairs in a solemn circle, and three women from the social services department kicked off the debate.

It was slow to start, but I think the guys realised pretty quickly that I wasn't some intellectual come down from his ivory tower to hold forth. I was just an ordinary guy who wrote stories meant to entertain - and was doing his best to speak good French. So they warmed to me, and we ended up having a very lively discussion about the process of writing, of books in general, and of mine in particular.

Two hours later, the ladies from social services drew the session to a close, and I breathed a sigh of relief. One hundred and twenty minutes of French, responding to questions, getting involved in debate, had left my head spinning. I signed copies of my books, and looked forward to escaping the grim claustrophobia of life behind bars. At least I got to leave. I felt desperately sorry for those who had to stay behind - warm, intelligent and articulate men of all ages. What in God's name were they doing in this place?

Then, to my shock, I discovered, that my sentence was not quite over. They were taking me to the "quartier femmes" - the women's wing of the prison - to go through the whole process again with a group of female prisoners.

Beyond a blue-painted barred gate, I was led down a short corridor past the doors of their cells. There are only fifteen women in the whole prison. A room at the end of the corridor provides their sole opportunity for recreation and companionship. It was there that we met, after they were released one by one from their cells. Several of them were very young. Barely more than teenagers. Others were old hands. Tired, drink-puffed faces. They were less focused than the men. More likely to go off at tangents. But we did connect. Escpecially when I told them stories of bizarre Chinese cuisine - deep-fried whole scorpions, dog and cat, ants, hundred-year-old eggs.

And then, when I left, they stood patiently by the doors to their cells to be locked up again in tiny, cold, stone spaces. I found the experience deeply depressing. We have only one life, and for whatever reason these poor souls were wasting theirs.

Out into the sunshine. Free to breath the cool, fresh air, feel the sunshine on my skin. Free to live.

And then an hour's drive south. Almost to Bordeaux, and the prison at Bedenac. A former US military base, this prison comprised a very high wall built all around a huge open space. Inside, once past security, I saw scattered buildings built amid abandoned spaces. There were construction and logging workshops. Cell blocks. An administration block. I ate with the prison guards - cooked for by a inmate, and served by yet another prisoner. It was good grub.

At the far side of the compound was an old US army block which contained a music room and the prison library. It was there that I met a dozen or so men - most of them in their late sixties or early seventies. I was given the warmest of receptions. These were nice, well-read, lucid-speaking men serving long sentences. They ran a well-stocked library and loved to read. After all, what else is there to do with all that time.

Security here was quite different. The men carry the keys to their own cells and lock themselves in at night. We sat around a long table and drank coffee and talked for two hours. They were interested and interesting, and I learned that three of them were to be given special dispensation to attend the book fair at Cognac the next day. Free, and trusted to return. They were looking forward to it in the way that a parched man craves a glass of water, but were already dreading their return.

I enjoyed our conversation. It was lively and intelligent. And afterwards I signed their books and shook their hands, and took the long road north in the dying light, back to Cognac, and the gala dinner to be held in the Chateau Otard - the birthplace of Francois Premier - where the winner of the prize would be announced.

To be honest, I had no expectation of winning. There were several well-known French authors on the shortlist, and it seemed to me unlikely that a foreigner would carry off the prize.

You can imagine my astonishment, then, when they announced my name, and I had to leave my table, applause ringing around the vaulted chambers, to receive my plaque and my 200 dollar bottle of Cognac. "Snakehead", or "Cadavres chinois a Houston" as it is published in France, had been selected by the juries of prisoners - some of whom I had met, and others whom I never would. And I felt a special pride in that. Because these were no professional critics, peddling personal preferences or literary snobbery. These were real readers. Men and women with little else to do with their time but read. And escape through reading. And they had chosen my book. And for me that was worth a hundred critics' prizes.

I felt privileged, too, to have met at least some of them. Who knows what had led them to their prison predicament, or why. But I couldn't help thinking that but for fate they might have been you or I.

2007-09-22T17:19:00.000+02:00

TREADING WORDS

They say there's no rest for the wicked. In which case, I must be awfully bad.

I just finished writing Book Three in the EnzoFiles series. I started storylining it on July 9th, after three months of research and development which took me to the French Mediterranean, the North of Spain, a small town in the hills of Provence, Strasbourg, and Cahors!

I should mention that somewhere in the middle of all the writing I had to go to Lorient in Brittany for a promotional event at the Festival Interceltique, which this year featured Scotland. So I was guest of honour at the Bistro Litteraire, where I was interrogated for an hour in front of an audience by two delightful "animateurs" as they call them here in France - Maette Chantrel and Rachid Oujdi.

I was there for four days, with lots of time off. So I used one of those days to make a research trip for a forthcoming EnzoFiles book which will be set entirely on a Breton island. I spent the whole Sunday on the Isle de Groix, which is the second biggest of the Breton islands. Apart from the trees, it made me think of the Scottish Hebrides. A rugged coastline, crap roads, and little whitewashed cottages with steeply pitched slate roofs.

La Patronne et moi hired an open-topped jeep and travelled the island from top to bottom, loosening teeth and spinal joints in the process. GREAT location! We had a fabulous seafood lunch on the terrasse of a harbour restaurant, before finding a beach shaped like a concave crescent and falling asleep in the sun. Bi-ig mistake! Blue-white Scottish people transformed into cooked red lobsters.

I should also mention that while in Lorient, I became a legend in my own back garden. Sound strange? It really was. A local arts organisation here in France, Artzimut, wanted to take a tour of people around my village to meet the local artists - a painter called Christian, a couple of musicians called Chris and Fleur, and myself, the writer. When they discovered I was going to be in Brittany when they did the tour, they rigged up a computer communication deal, via iChat. They set up a big screen and a sound system in my back garden, all connected to an online computer. I went online at my hotel in Brittany, and came up on the big screen. I could see and hear them. They could see and hear me. The idea was that they would ask me questions about my books and I would respond.

Well, the organiser spoke to me about ten minutes beforehand to tell me I would have to do the Q & A twice. Why? I asked. He said they'd had to split the people into two groups, because there were too many for a single session. How many? I asked. Three hundred, he told me. THREE HUNDRED! I couldn't believe it. Three hundred people were going to trek up from the woods behind my house and through my back garden. When finally I connected with them, I asked if they wouldn't mind cutting the grass while they were there. Unfortunately there were no volunteers. I saw my neighbour, Georges, on screen, and when I spoke to him, he jumped. Georges is nearly 80, and couldn't understand how the TV screen could be talking to him. Altogether a pretty bizarre experience.

Anyway, once back from Lorient, it was back to work. The daily grind. Up at 6am, 3000 words a day. Until the last of them tripped off my fingertips and on to the computer screen at the beginning of this week.

BLOOD. That's the working title. A good title, I think. Apposite. Because the story really is about blood, in every sense.

So next week I start the revisions, which will take me into October, and the promotional month from hell. I have four major promotional events in France in October. The second EnzoFiles book comes out in the States in November, published by Poisoned Pen Press, along with the paperback of EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. The new one's called THE CRITIC, and La Patronne has already started planning the US promotional tour for it in February/March 2008. Of course we'll also be promoting THE KILLING ROOM which is published by St. Martin's Press in February.

But since THE CRITIC is about the murder of a wine critic in the vineyards of south-west France, the emphasis of the tour is going to be on wine. A sort of Book Tasting tour. We've been in negotiation with several American wine importers about bringing some Gaillac wines into the States to allow readers at my events to taste the wines I write about in the book. But, of course, nothing is simple, so I'm hoping that's all going to work out.

The first event has already been plumbed in at Houston, Texas, for late February. An event hosted by the Alliance Francaise, books provided by Murder by the Book, and wine provided by Specs. A bi-ig crowd is expected. There should be ten or twelve similar events around the States, as well as smaller signing events at the usual bookstores. And, of course, it's straight back from there to four days at the Paris book fair.

And then another book to write!

See what I mean about wicked?

The most bizarre moment of the next few months awaits me at Cognac in October. There is a huge festival of crime books held there every year, called Polar & Co. There are various prizes given out at the festival, and this year I have been nominated for one of them. It is called the Prix Intramuros - literally, the prize between the walls. There are seven nominees. We have to turn up at the festival a day early to meet each other during a dinner in a chateau. The following day we will be driven to the local prison in Poitou Charentes, where we will each spend the day being interrogated by panels of prisoners. At the end of the day, it is the prisoners who will decide the winner of the prize, and the award will be made that night.

I have to confess to being a little nervous about wearing my kilt in prison!

However, spending a day in jail was just about the furthest thing from my mind last week when I drove into my local town to go the bank. I'd forgotten it was market day, and the town was taken over by stalls and marketeers. I had to park on the edge of town and walk in. As I was crossing the main street near the bank, a blue gendarmes' van pulled up in the middle of the road. All the traffic behind it ground to a halt. The gendarme in the passenger seat rolled down his window, pointed at me, and then crooked his finger to indicate that I should approach.

I went to the van with great trepidation, wondering what the hell I had done. He looked at me and said, "Monsieur Peter May?" I just about fell over. How did he know my name? 'Yes,' I confessed reluctantly.

His face broke into a wreath of smiles. "I lo-ove your books,' he said. "I'm really pleased to meet you." And he pumped my hand and told me he'd read all four which had been translated so far into French. He wanted to know when the next one would be out, and would I sign it for him.

I couldn't believe it. He just wanted to talk. Meanwhile the traffic was tailing back all the way through the town. But nobody was going to honk a horn at the cops. Finally he shook my hand again and off they went. I walked on to the bank in a daze, ignoring the motorists glowering at me from their cars.

Was this, I wondered, fame at last?

Well, fame in my own lunch hour, anyway!

2007-03-14T14:47:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FIFTY-NINE:

It's over!

Fifty-nine days, more than twenty cities, tens of thousands of miles, and Peter May's World Tour of America Part II is finally at an end.

Now I can afford to lift my eyes to the finish line, and let my legs buckle just a little. Last night was our last in a strange bed. Tonight we board an airplane at JFK in New York and fly to Paris. Tomorrow night we shall sleep in our own bed for the first time in over two months.

Yesterday was a hectic last day in New York City. Signings at three bookstores at opposite ends of Manhattan - in Greenwich Village, Tribeca and the Upper East Side. That followed lunch with Ruth Cavin, my editor at St. Martin's Press, at a charming Spanish restaurant in 22nd street called Bolo. Ruth is the doyenne of New York editors. She is eighty-eight years old and still going strong. She is a delightful lady, sharp and observant, with dark, twinkling eyes.

St. Martin's Press, one of the biggest publishing houses in the States, is based in the nearby Flatiron building - so-called because it is built in the gushet (or triangle) between converging roads.

We walked from there, La Patronne et moi, down into Greenwich Village, then ventured further into the labyrinthine network of subway tunnels that so characterises transport in this huge city, navigating our way south, then north and east, for a meeting with my agent, Emma Sweeney, before the final booksigning of the tour at the Black Orchid.

Then Korean barbecue in Little Korea, and a smiling Korean waitress. When we asked for two vodka tonics and a couple of glasses of red wine, she tipped her head to one side and said, "Oh, you like to drink!"

Actually, I think we earned it.

Nothing more to be done. Nothing more to be said.

It's over!

2007-03-13T17:09:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FIFTY-EIGHT:

Incredibly, Spring has now followed us to New York. Outside our hotel window, the Empire State Building towers overhead in brilliant sunshine.

We flew in yesterday from Pittsburgh, and from the clearest of blue skies had a fabulous view of Manhattan, tall buildings sprouting from a narrow strip of island that looks like it is anchored to the mainland by the bridges that span the waters to east and west.

The Statue of Liberty stood on her rock off the southern tip of this most densely populated of cities, and made me think of home - it was the French who gifted this powerful symbol of freedom to the Americans.

This is the final stop on our extraordinary two month adventure which has taken us from Seattle to San Diego, from Phoenix to Vegas, from Houston to Denver, from Minneapolis to Pittsburgh.

On Sunday we drove through the heart of Pittsburgh, following downloaded instructions from the internet, to the small town of Oakmont on the city's southern fringes. There, a gathering of fans had "Afternoon Tea with Peter May" at the Mystery Lovers' Bookshop. In fact we all sat around chatting, and I talked for the last time about where I had found my inspiration for both the China and French series.

La Patronne and I were pleased to see the store's owner, Mary Alice, looking so well after her recent illness, and delighted to hear that she and her husband, Richard, are hoping to come to France this fall.

Then it was back to our hotel with carry-out barbecue ribs and a bottle of wine,

And now to, NYC, where last night we met our American friend from France, artist Ellen Shire. Several paintings from Ellen's spectacular summer 2006 exhibition at Castelnau, near Bretenoux, are currently hanging in our house in France. Ellen had problems of storage for the winter, and having large, empty walls available, we offered our services as temporary keepers of the art - until the next exhibition or, even better, sale. It will be hard to let them go, come the time.

We had a great curry at the Indus Valley Indian restaurant on the upper west side with Ellen and her brother Peter - another artist. We negotiated our way there and back via the New York subway, our first attempt to navigate the island's subterranean transport system. And, well, the only thing we got wrong was swiping our cards too slowly - guess we're not up to speed yet.

So today is packed with signings and appointments. Three drop-by signings, lunch with my publisher, and a meeting with my agent. And tonight we'll spend our last night in a bed that is not our own. The draw of home is now nearly irresistible. Two months is a long time to be away.

A wave of fatigue washes over me when I realised that, well, we're going to have to do it all again next winter. And, of course, there is no rest for the wicked in between. A Paris radio station wants to do an interview with me on Thursday morning as I transit between airport and train station en-route for home. The following weekend I will be back in Paris for the salon du livre, folowed by a rencontre at a Paris bookstore. Then the weekend after that, it's the salon du livre at Limoges...

When will I ever find the time to write!

2007-03-11T17:12:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FIFTY-SIX:

From a cold, but brilliantly sunny Sunday morning in Pittsburgh, a tall cup of Caribou coffee in my hand, I'm looking back over the last couple of days.

For all our fears of heading north and east and back into winter, the weather has really been with us. Spring has followed reluctantly in our wake to Denver, Minneapolis, and now Pittsburgh. It's warming up everywhere, and looking at the weather back home in Puymule, I see that it is sunny and warm, with temperatures getting up to 19 or 20 degrees centigrade this week.

Let's hope that winter has issued its last icy exhalation.

The sun just never stopped shining in Minneapolis, and the several feet of snow dumped by the previous week's blizzard was melting to send rivers of water running down the streets. Which was treacherous at night, when temperatures plunged to freezing and water turned to ice.

But it was in brilliant sunshine that we went with Elizabeth and Tom to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to revisit our hippy pasts in an exhibition called San Francisco Psychedelic - a photographic record of the bands and vocalists who populated the Haight-Ashbury era in the late sixties: Big Brother and the Holding Company; Country Joe and the Fish; Grateful Dead; Janis Joplin; Jefferson Airplane; and many others.

These were great pics that really captured an age, and a generation many of whom are now dead. And, God, did they all look so young! I suppose we all were, then. And thought we would change the world.

Guess we got that one wrong!!

I signed huge piles of books at Uncle Ed's mystery bookstore around the corner, and preached the gospel acording to St. Peter (that's me, in case there was any doubt), at Once Upon a Crime, signing more piles of books in the process.

Then it was off for a meal at the Rainbow Chinese restaurant with Tom, Elizabeth and Sophie, followed by fabulous late night ice-cream at Sebastian Joe's ice cream parlour.

The sun was still shining as we headed out early Saturday morning to the airport for our flight to Chicago, and connecting flight to Pittsburgh. A wet day there cleared up for our arrival, and as we drove out of the airport in our rental car, the sun made a brief appearance before dipping beyond the horizon.

We then spent a frustrating hour cruising a huge, sprawling and poorly lit mall near our hotel in search of a meal. All the restaurants were full, with waiting times of up to an hour. We ended up in a cut-price supermarket buying smoked salmon, tortilla chips and dips, and then cruising for another half hour to find a wine store. We finally returned to our hotel room to sip on Spanish wine, stuff our faces, and slip off into a sleep that would, in a few hours time, be cut short by Daylight Savings.

In those last moments, before I drifted off, I recalled a conversation we'd had in the car on the way to the airport that morning with Tom and Elizabeth. For some reason we had got to talking about sore backs, and I mentioned that I had first injured mine twenty-five years ago.

"How did you do it?" Elizabeth asked.

"I was heaving sacks," I told her.

She turned, wide-eyed with shock. "What?"

"Heaving sacks," I repeated.

I saw her exhale with relief, then she burst out laughing. "It's your Scottish accent," she told me. "I thought you said you were having sex!"

I should have been so lucky!

The Carr family...

With Sophie and La Patronne...

2007-03-09T15:24:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FIFTY-THREE:

We're time travelling again!

Ping-ponging about the time zones of the US. We've been from PST, which I think is Pacific Standard Time, one hour backwards to MST, or Mountain Standard Time, in Phoenix, then forward one hour to Mental Time in Vegas, then back two hours to Central Standard Time in Houston, then forward an hour to Mountain Time again in Denver, now back another hour to CST in Minneapolis.

Are you still with me? I'm not sure I am. I'm not even sure I've got any of that right.

Then there's feet above or below sea level. Newport Beach, of course, is right at sea level. Coming back from Phoenix and Vegas we hit 275 feet below sea level in Death Valley. Houston, Texas, is about or below sea level. Denver, Colorado, is nearly 6000 feet above.

Today we dropped a dizzying 5250 feet to Minneapolis. And plunged from springtime in Denver to snowbound winter in Minnesota.

Okay, so we were up at 6am this morning in Denver, which was 7am here in Minneapolis. We flew two-and-a-half hours north and east, and found ourselves sitting at 7pm this evening in the concert hall of a Catholic school, listening to schoolkids playing drums and brass and woodwind instruments.

What were we doing there?

Well, if you'd told us at 6am that this is where we would be thirteen hours later (no, hang on, only twelve hours later - 'cos we lost an hour), I wouldn't have believed you.

But, in fact, there is a perfectly logical explanation, which goes like this...

We're staying in Minneapolis with the daughter of our friends the Jensens from Beverly Hills, Los Angeles - our old neighbours from France. Still with me? Okay. So the lady in question is Elizabeth, and she and her husband Tom, kindly offered to put us up (or put up with us) while we were here. Tom and Elizabeth have a daughter, Sophie, who is sixteen-and-a-half, and a huge fan of the China Thrillers.

Elizabeth had lined up a dinner party for our arrival, inviting a friend of Sophie's who has ambitions to be a forensic pathologist, along with her parents. Also on the guest list, were Sophie's boyfriend, Nolan, who has a Chinese father and American mother. They, too, were invited. So all the character elements of the China Thrillers would have been present.

Then it was discovered that there was a school band concert that night. Nolan plays the drums and had to be there. Sophie, of course, wouldn't have missed the concert for anything - even me. And her friend who wants to be the pathologist was also in the band. So naturally, her parents wanted to go and see her perform. Then Tom realised he had a conference that day and wouldn't be home until nine.

So you can see how Elizabeth's best laid scheme went completely agley. It left just she, me, and La Patronne. So we all went to dinner and had a great time in a Minneapolis restaurant called Tryg's, wolfing down ribs and chicken and calamari, and killing a bottle of Pinot Noir, before going to the concert to pick up Sophie, and meet everyone we would otherwise have met at the dinner that never was... if you follow.

Anyway, this is where we are now. Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the heart of the midwest. Seven hundred and fifty feet above sea level, in Central Standard Time, with two book events tomorrow.

That's before we lose another hour flying into Eastern Standard Time in Pittsburgh on Saturday!

Except that on Saturday night, they're switching to Daylight Savings Time three weeks earlier than usual, because someone in Congress read a thirty-year-old report that said money and energy would be saved on electric light. No one told them, apparently, that companies would have to spend millions re-programming their computers, and that people get up earlier these days - and since it will be dark, will be burning electricity.

And I suppose it means we'll lose another hour. Or do we gain it...?

Oh, I give up!

Elizabeth and La Patronne in the snow...

Nolan by the big bass drum...

2007-03-07T18:37:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FIFTY-TWO:

I figure we've been dragging Spring in our wake.

Warm Spring weather is pouring over the Rockies from the west, after one of the severest Colorado winters on record.

Since we arrived from Texas, the temperature has risen nearly twenty degrees farenheit. It was around sixty degrees yesterday, and we were shedding some of the winter layers we had put on for our arrival.

Right now I'm sitting outside Starbucks, two blocks away from Charles and Marilyn's condo. It's my third morning sitting here watching the world go by. The first day was really cold. Yesterday, the air was quite soft. Today it is positively balmy, with real heat in the sun.

I like this life. A stroll down the treelined boulevard at seven in the morning, squinting at the early morning sun with a hot grande caramel machiato in my hand, watching the world go by. And it leads me to the realisation that I am not the only creature of habit. In just three days I have begun to recognise faces - a daily procession, a morning routine, a visit to Starbucks for that first infusion of caffeine. The guy with the dreadlocks and the husky dog. The tall blond with the sharp business suit. The mom in jogpants, two bright-eyed kids in the back of her pick-up, waiting impatiently to be taken to school.

It makes me think of France - the routine, not the people. The difference is that I would have been sitting on the terrasse of a cafe in the town square with a grande creme and a croissant, and there would almost certainly have been some old farmer at the bar with a glass of wine in his hand.

Charles told me that Colorado has the least number of obese people in the US. And sitting here, my eyes bear that out. People seem leaner, fitter here. The air is cold, and crisp, and clear (we are very slowly acclimatising to the lack of oxygen), and the streets are full of folk running, or cycling, or power-walking. They wear shorts and tee-shirts and perspire a lot - earning the right to that sweet, milky coffee in the morning.

There's a nice laid-back air about Denver. Yesterday we lunched in a nouvelle cuisine Vietnamese eatery. Spicy, delicious food in a relaxed and informal restaurant called Parallel 17. Then drove through the old Denver downtown area, brick buildings and warehouses converted into bars and lofts. We pulled up outside an old-fashioned store called "Savory" , whose shelves groaned with the most fabulous array of exotic spices. They grind their own spices there every week, and so they are just about as fresh as you can get them.

This is Charles's home from home. He spends hours here, prowling amongst the jars of cumin and coriander, searching out new flavours with which to spice his fabulous curries - one of which he and Marilyn had prepared earlier for a dinner party that night. Their apartment was infused all day with delicious smells, wafting almost direct from the Indian sub-continent.

Which was what we had to look forward to after the book event at "Murder by the Book". We had another good crowd, and as they always do, the store had ordered a cake with a representation of the book cover in coloured icing sugar. Only, in this case, two covers. I've never tasted such good books.

Then came the curry, washed down with a Malbec wine from Argentina. Malbec is the principle varietal of the wines of Cahors. This one was nearly as "black", but with much less tannin. It was round and fruity, but lacked the distinctive liquorice qualities of the Cahors. A nice wine all the same, and robust enough to stand up to Charles and Marilyn's spicy presentation.

Now a day of rest, gathering our energies to drag this beautiful Spring weather north and east as we head to Minneapolis, and back to winter - and all those layers that we have been wheeling around in suitcases for the last two months!

2007-03-06T19:03:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FIFTY:

We were in the "HIgh Crimes" bookstore in Pearl Street, Boulder, in the shadow of the Flatirons. There was a great turn-out. I was talking about genetically modified foods, and one biotech company's attempts to create a freezable tomato by inserting a gene from a flounder (which can live in extremely low temperatures on the sea bed).

A handsome lady in the front row, who had read all my books, leaned forward and said, "I thought for a moment you were going to tell us they had inserted a flounder gene into our present administration." There was a round of hearty laughter, and I knew then why they call it The People's Republic of Boulder.

Of course, as an "etranger" in their midst, it was not for me to comment.

But I like Boulder. It has the feel of a self-contained community, a vibrant university town in a fabulous setting. We went into the Hotel Boulderado to view the fabulous arched ceiling of coloured glass in the lobby. We walked through elegent streets which, though modern, still retain something of the original character of the place. There remains a sense of its history and heritage.

The lady who made the flounder remark was there with her husband. I was flattered to learn that he had bought her "Extraordinary People" for her birthday. Then, apparently, she had been disappointed to learn that it wasn't the next book in the China series. She is writing a book about China, and France did not have the same appeal. But she'd read it anyway and, I'm happy to report, was won over. She is now looking forward enthusiastically to the next.

In Boulder, one is spoiled for choice when it comes to restaurants. But we went, with Charles and Marilyn, to eat in the same place we ate the last time I was here. "The Mediterranean". And I got just about the best pizza I've ever had - wafer-thin parma ham, and fig, and garlic... Hmmmmm. All washed down with a Penfold's Shiraz. Urgggghhhgurgle.

And so we headed back through a clear night, towards a full moon rising, snow-capped peaks glistening away to the west. This had been Day Fifty. Tomorrow it's "Murder by the Book" in Denver, followed by Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and New York City.

We're on the home straight, with the finish line in sight. But our legs aren't buckling yet. Because it's still fun.

Addressing the good people of Boulder...

2007-03-05T18:07:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY-NINE:

As expected, the day began with a final breakfast at Cafe Texan. There is, on the wall above the serving counter, a sepia photograph of an old cowboy with abundant whiskers and a huge stetson. It looks like it might have been taken a hundred years ago.

But in fact, that old cowboy still takes his breakfast in the Cafe Texan every day. He looks, if such a thing is possible, even older than his photograph. I took pictures of both. But since I didn't want to invade his privacy (who knows, he might have pulled a six-shooter on me), I snapped him from a distance, so the clarity is not great - but good enough to make the comparison.

We said our farewells to Dick and Michelle, and their delightful four-year-old daughter, Sophia. This has to be the most widely travelled child on earth. She has been to at least fifteen different countries, and counting. They include China, as well as several countries in the continents of Africa and South America. She'll be a real heartbreaker when she grows up. We're all in love with her already - blue eyes, and an ever-ready, constant, and beguiling smile.

A young man with a woollen hat pulled down over his ears took us to the airport. Andrew Link, from Palestine, Texas. He had about him, a military air, lean and fit and alert. "Yessir!" he kept saying to me. It's a long time since anyone addressed me as "sir". That military air might come from his expertise on terrorist bombings in Iraq. Still a student at the College of Criminal Justice, he is participating in a college-sponsored project which tracks terrorist activity around the world. His speciality is Iraq, and he provides the FBI with weekly briefings.

He is just one of a whole generation of law-enforcement students nurtured by Dr. Ward (Dick). They are as fiercely loyal to him as he is to them. To enter into Dick's inner circle, you have to be pretty special. And they are all pretty special kids. "It's like planting flowers and watching them bloom," he told me. "Of course, there are always a few weeds, but for the most part they really flourish. It's hugely rewarding."

And so it was that we took our leave of Houston and Texas, some 500 feet below sea-level, and took a two-and-a-half hour flight to Denver. Colorado, which is 5000 feet above sea level. In addition to losing an hour (we're starting to feel the disorientation of ping-ponging around the time zones), we also felt the loss of oxygen. Breathing is just that little bit harder, everything takes just a little more effort. Of course, one adapts to the change, but I'm not sure we'll be here long enough to fully adjust. On Thursday we head towards the frozen sprawl of Minnesota.

We were met at the airport by our old friends Marilyn Munsterman and Charles Berberich, who have a summer house near where we live in France. But Denver is their home, and their condo has a guest aparment which is to be our home for most of this week.

Although it was cold, the sun was shining, and we were greeted by the sight of the snow-covered Rockies on the western horizon, looking out over the endless dry plains below. As the sun set behind them, we drove out into surburban Denver to the home of Charles and Marilyn's good friends, Fred and Laura, who had laid on dinner for us. Other guests were Harold, who works for the famous Denver bookstore, The Tattered Cover, and his partner John, who works for a publishing house.

Good food, good wine, good company, and by ten we were ready to fall into bed, still in the grip of oxygen starvation, to sleep soundly in the shadows of mountains, anticipating our bookstore event in Boulder on Day Fifty, and another back in Denver on Day Fifty-One.

2007-03-04T05:10:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY-EIGHT:

After turning into a few one-way streets the wrong way, and missing the odd turn-off, we finally made it to the lobby of the CBS Radio/CNN650 building in downtown Houston to meet up with John DeMers for my live appearance on his Saturday morning "Delicious Mischief" show.

John is a colourful character, originally from New Orleans, whose show focuses on his twin passions of food and drink - with a little bit of mystery thrown in.

His other guest was a lovely big guy called Bear Dalton, a stetson-wearing cowboy whose passion is wine. Over the years he has become something of a cult figure around the vineyards of Bordeaux where he makes wine-tasting trips in full cowboy regalia to find new vintages to stock his SPEC's Liquor Stores in Houston. He had brought four bottles to taste on the show.

Happily, when he finished, he left them for the rest of us to drink. A glass or two of Californian red oiled my vocal cords for the twenty minute interview which lay ahead. Actually, it seemed like just five minutes, and then we were heading out again into the sunshine.

Our stay here has passed in a blur.

We had a strange moment of homesickness when we lunched in an Indian restaurant (the Indian food in Glasgow is just about the best you'll find outside of India).

Then on to "Murder by the Book", where a sizeable crowd turned out to hear my talk. One reader, Steven Sill, arrived with a sackful of my books, which he had acquired from various sources. He had read the entire China series, and wanted each and every one signed. Another reader, Fred Forschler, had bought all the books direct from us via the website, indulging in a lengthy exchange of emails with La Patronne in the process. He almost pinned me to the wall, demanding a follow-up to the sixth China book. "You can't just leave Li and Margaret like that," he said. "There has to be more."

The tour has been punctuated by similar requests, and along with the hundreds of emails I've had on the subject, I might have to return to China one of these days - just to see what has happened to the hapless pair since we last encountered them (I fully believe they have been getting on with their lives in my absence).

I finally met Barbara Douglas, who is quoted on the back of "Extraordinary People", describing it as her favourite book of 2006. The store's Dean James, a member of the committee which decides the prestigious Edgar Awards, puts it in his top five for the year. "Murder by the Book" had sold more than 100 copies in advance of my appearance there, and I signed a great many more during the course of my visit.

Our long-suffering minder, the incomparable Ginny Wilson, drove us back through a spectacular sunset and partial eclipse of the moon, to a barbecue dinner of grilled ribs in Huntsville, before dropping us off at the university hotel to pack and prepare for our flight tomorrow to Denver.

We will have a farewell breakfast at the Cafe Texan with Dick and Michelle in the morning - a last taste of Texan hospitality - before embarking on the home stretch of this long, long tour.

With staff and readers at "Murder by the Book"...

Typical Texan dining instructions at the Huntsville rib joint...

2007-03-03T03:55:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY-SEVEN:

Life is crazy. It takes you to unexpected places at unforeseen times, stirs interesting thoughts, and throws up unanticipated events.

Like, for example, going through security at John Wayne airport in Orange Country, California. We were headed for Houston, Texas, and had allowed plenty of time at the airport - because the man with the kilt is always subject to special attention going through security, as regular readers of my blog will know.

I stripped down to essentials, as usual, and stepped through the metal detector. Not a peep. No alarm, nothing. I couldn't believe it. The buckles on the kilt always set it off. Always!! I almost said, "No, hang on, I'll go through again, it's bound to go off this time." But I didn't.

The female security officer looked at me sadly and shook her head, leaning forward to confide, "I was really hoping the alarm would go off. You know, the male security guys get so embarrassed when they have to search a guy in a skirt."

Okay, so we're travelling Wednesday, because our scheduled week in Huntsville, teaching creating writing at Sam Houston State University has been cut short. No one signed up for the course. But Dr. Richard Ward, former Dean of the university's College of Criminal Justice, still wanted us to come. He is an old friend and mentor, and the man who made the writing of the China Thrillers possible because of his contacts inside the Chinese police.

He is now the university's Associate Vice President for Research and Special Programs, and had arranged for us to give a talk to creative writing students at The Woodlands campus of the University of Houston. So we spent a couple of hours chatting with the students in a classroom in a space age building in the woods of Conroe - less than a mile away from where the denouement of "Snakehead" takes place.

Actually, that scene was set at Dick Ward's ranch just outside Huntsville, but for the purposes of the story I'd transplanted it to Conroe. Dick has never forgotten my description of the chaos inside his garage. Nor forgiven it. When we went to the ranch for dinner the following night, I discovered he had made a concerted effort to tidy it up for my benefit. His good lady wife, Michelle, had told him to bring us in the front door. But I sneaked around the side to take a peek in the garage.

It was... well, nearly tidy. Good job, Dick!

Dick is an extraordinary man of exceptional energy. He has made more than sixty trips to China, training the top five hundred cops there in the latest Western policing techniques. He is constantly globe-trotting, making connections, raising funds, placing students. Most of the major law enforcement agencies around the world are now populated by his former students. Talk about being well-connected!

Being around Dick is never dull. He sent one of his students to the airport to pick us up. A lad with a good Scots name, and sound Scottish heritage, Duncan McCallum. He was, however, a little nervous at driving the university's brand new white Ford Expedition with which Dick had charged him. He would not, he said, be able to face his mentor if he were to do it any damage. "If we have a wreck I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me to Mexico. I will simply have to disappear."

Thanks to Dick, we found ourselves, Thursday afternoon, at the George Bush Presidential Library, on the campus of Houston A & M University at College Station (popularly known as "The Aggies"), about an hour from Huntsville. I'm not talking here of George W Bush, the current President, but of his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, the former President.

Interestingly, I had been in the house set up in Beijing by Bush Senior when he was made special envoy to China in the 1970s. It is now the home of the US Ambassador, and I set a scene there at an ambassadorial party in "The Fourth Sacrifice".

I'm not sure I had ever really formed an opinion about George Bush Senior, but I found myself impressed, and even moved, by the public exhibit at the library. An eighteen-year-old war hero who flew bombing missions over the Pacific during World War Two - when he was shot down and very fortunate to be rescued; a father who suffered the tragedy of losing a daughter who was only four years old; a man who handled the rigours of running the CIA; a man with the wit and intelligence to make powerful speeches off the back of handwritten notes made minutes before getting up on the podium.

Both La Patronne and myself were moved, almost to tears, by a letter he had written to his mother reflecting on the loss of his daughter, and another written to his children on leaving Kennebunkport.

This is a man in his eighties who still makes parachute jumps, who lives by the old fashioned values taught him by his parents - values that seem all too scarce in today's society. I arrived at the library with an open mind, and left with the impression that here, perhaps, was one of the most unsung Presidents of recent times. A decent man.

Thanks also to Dick, we found ourselves today at the Houston Space Centre - chauffeured by our old friend, Ginny Wilson, a student of Dick's who had been assigned to babysit us during our last visit, and who was doing a wonderful job of babysitting once again. She is small, but perfectly formed, and has trouble reaching the pedals of the Expedition. But she is equally fearless and throws it around the freeways and the streets of Houston like a veteran truck driver.

It would probably not have occurred to us to visit the Space Centre. But I'm glad we did. They had the space capsules actually flown by astronauts of the various programmes that led, eventually, to the moon. Numerous artefacts of that extraordinary time of ingenuity and invention. How basic it all seemed. Clocks that told the time with mechanical counters, dials and knobs and switches that looked like a mock-up on a fifties film set. And yet it was all real. In unbelievably cramped conditions, brave men took extraordinary risks to push back the boundaries of space, with what was then cutting-edge, but untried, technology.

We looked at rocks from the moon, dust collected from it's surface, and touched a piece of moon stone more than one-and-a-half billion years old. We frolicked in the Sky Lab, and "flew" the shuttle. We ate the ice cream of the future - frozen granules that stuck to the palate.

And we wondered what had become of that spirit of adventure, the insatiable desire of man to push forward into the unknown. Somehow it seems to have turned inwards, got stalled by greed and complacency, in spite of all the technological advances.

In his speech given at Rice University in 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." Fine words that launched a fabulous adventure that reached its conclusion a mere seven years later.

But that was nearly forty years ago. One wonders where the impetus and inspiration will come from to kick-start that ambition. To re-launch the great adventure. And it seems unlikely to come from today's crop of mediocre leaders.

I am reminded of a famous quotation, "Two men look out from behind the same bars, one sees the gutter, the other the stars" , and I can't help thinking that we need to lift our heads again.

The "Cafe Texan" where we breakfast with the Wards...

An interesting logo in this typical Texan cafe...

Dick's "pet" long-horned steer...

The Ward ranch...

2007-02-27T01:48:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY-FOUR:

I'm watching the sun coruscating across the rippled surface of the harbour. A yacht cruises slowly by, its sails filled by the warm offshore breeze. The Stars and Stripes flap in the sunlight, tall palm trees sway listlessly, silhouetted against the ocean beyond.

I feel sad, because tomorrow is our last day here. Since returning from Vegas, time has slipped away through our fingers, like the sand on Newport Beach. On Saturday I did a small signing event at Martha's bookstore down on Balboa Island. It was a beautiful day, so they set up a table out on the sidewalk, and I spent two hours signing books and chatting to passers-by.

Among the first to buy a book was a family out for a morning stroll - Ma, Pa, son, daughter-in-law, grandson. Pa was looking curiously at my kilt, then the son approached. He was a good-looking young man in his twenties.

"Are you Scottish," he asked, in an unmistakeable Scottish accent.

Turned out he lived in Newport Beach with his American wife, and his parents were there on holiday from the east coast of Scotland, to visit their son and grandson.

These Scots are everywhere!

Next up was a real American. You could tell from his accent. Then it turned out his family was Scottish and his name was Donald Stewart. You cannae get much more Scottish than that!

Of course, they all bought books.

Then Mike and Barbara Monachino, our friends who live in Newport, New York, Jersey, Canada...I lose track... showed up, fresh from a holiday in St. Bart's in the Caribbean. They bought a couple of books and we agreed to meet for lunch at Chimayo's, our usual cycling destination at Huntington Beach.

Many margaritas later we returned to doze away a somnolent afternoon.

Sunday, we should have left for Houston, Texas, to teach a one-week writing course at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. Unfortunately, the university had no take-up on the offered course, so we rearranged our flights to give ourselves a few more days here.

We leave on Wednesday to spend time with my friend and adviser, Dr. Richard Ward, who first opened doors for me in China with the Chinese police. I have a live radio interview on John DeMers' "Delicious Mischief" radio show on CNN650 in Houston on Saturday morning, followed by a book event that afternoon at "Murder by the Book".

Then on Sunday we head north to Denver and Boulder, Colorado, and cooler climes - the beginning of the long trek north and east, via Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and ending in New York City in two weeks' time.

Then home.

It feels like we've been a long time gone.

Susie and the Monachinos at Chimayo's...

2007-02-23T19:40:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY:

Las Vegas is an experience everyone should have. Once.

It is the capital of tack, an assault on the senses - from the doubled over plastic figure outside a trinket store on The Strip blowing bubbles out of his backside (calm yourself, Gary), to Elton John, Celine Dion, and The Beatles.

Sadly, all we got to see were the bubbles.

We arrived mid-week, and all the major shows were "dark" - i.e. not playing. Even the standing exhibition we had wanted to see - a display of plasticised human body parts - was mysteriously closed... although it seemed to be on show everywhere else I've been; Seattle, Phoenix... And The Beatles tribute band, Rain, were away on tour.

We settled instead for a fabulous meal at the Aureole restaurant in Mandalay, where a girl on a pulley system flew up and down a vertical wine cellar housed in an air-conditioned glass column in the centre of the grande salle. We also sent her hurtling skyward - to fetch a bottle of chardonnay from Susie's own Ambullneo winery.

In a sense we were lucky. Because the previous weekend the whole city had been in gridlock - a combination of the NBA playoffs, St. Valentine's Day and President's Day, had brought unprecedented numbers of visitors to Las Vegas. "Worse than New Year's," a taxi driver told us. So although it seemed busy to us, apparently we had the place to ourselves.

Daytime Vegas is less impressive than the nightscape. The lights lend it glamour and glitz. Daylight reveals a certain tawdryiness. It is a city of gapsites and construction, a restless search for the next bigger thing. But in the casinos themselves you'd be forgiven for losing track of time. There are no windows, and so no daylight. Gamblers sit at tables in a constant twilight, long-legged girls feeding them endless free drinks to stay there and lose more money.

Land is cheap, property is readily available, there is no state income tax, and so Las Vegas has become the fastest growing city in the USA. The weather might also have something to do with it.

Before we left, we visited Caesar's Palace, wandering through ancient Rome, with domed skies going through twenty-four hour cycles in a matter of minutes. We ate near the Trevi fountain, pizzas at Spago's, before heading off into the dusty heat of Death Valley.

This is what the moon must look like, minus the craters. Rocky outcrops and stony mountain ranges rising out of the sand of the Mojave desert. Endless, blistering miles of it. It is 86 metres below sea level, and temperatures range from upwards of 130 degrees farenheit during the day, to below freezing at night.

A low pressure weather front was moving in off the Pacific as we headed west, colliding with a standing high pressure. The result, at first, was wind. We saw great clouds of sand whipped up into clouds in its hot, swirling breath. Then, as we rose up through the mountains to over 4000 feet, we met the rain. A thrashing, battering downpour.

And so it was, that we got back to Newport Beach on a blustery wet night, glad to be home. An early night, and a deep sleep, were rewarded by sunshine at dawn, and the fantasy that is Vegas seemed to vanish in the haze of our memories, like a mirage in the desert.

Dawn view from Susie's...

2007-02-22T18:19:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-NINE:

Okay. No words this time (well, not many), just pics (click on the picture to enlarge, then the back button to return).

Let Vegas speak for itself...

Susie stands by a familiar address... in New York?

Eating Irish in the Big Apple

...served by Kelly from Calistoga, California (wearing the Black Watch)

...watched over by a free lady

Disney mean much to me...

And there's that lady again...

Ahhh, New York, New York!

Oops...

La Patronne gambles on a penny...

...while Susie figures out the odds

A lady with extraordinary nails tries her luck...

Vroom, vroom...

Big, bad bikers...

Hey, what happened? Paris!!!?

Speaks for itself...

Bit of an eyeful!

And more...

In the fading light...

The ladies of the night - Les Girls!

ONLY IN LAS VEGAS!!!

2007-02-21T19:43:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-EIGHT:

It was dark by the time we got to the Hoover Dam, La Patronne, Susie and I. Earlier, we'd been burning up the tarmac on Route 66. The sun had taken forever to set beyond the mountains. The sky was incredible. Like the cover of "Snakehead".

And then there it was, floodlit, spectacular, an extraordinary feat of engineering accomplished in the nineteen-thirties to harness the power of the Colorado River and bring light to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. We felt dwarfed by it, as slowly we drove around its perimeter, rocks rising sheer around us.

A tower showed a clock set to Arizona time at one side of the dam. It was 8.25pm. On the far side, another clock showed Nevada time. It was 7.25pm. It had been a long drive since our early start in Phoenix more than twelve hours earlier. The hour-long TV interview I recorded with Barbara Peters at nine o'clock that morning, seemed like a week ago.

Since then we had braved barren desert scrubland, mountain roads climbing above the snowline, 5000 feet and more, the spectacular red rocks that rise out of the ground all around the little town of Sedona - rocks like cathedrals, stunning in scale and colour.

And now, as we crested the final ridge in the dark, there it was. Las Vegas. Laid out before us like some vast carpet of light, spread across the desert plain between jagged mountain ranges. If ever there was a way to enter Vegas, this was it, hurtling in on the freeway through a blaze of neon, then swooping down on to The Strip, Susie at the wheel, monuments to man's creative madness rising on all sides.

My antipathy for big cities is well-known. But this was an experience not to be missed. For those worshippers of mankind's most fabulous of follies, this is a must-make pilgrimage. It is crazy, but compulsive - escpecially for those gamblers among us.

Treasure Island, Caesar's Palace. And then - how crazy is this? - Paris, the Eiffel Tower. Across the road is Venice. Further along The Strip are Monte Carlo, New York, the Pyramids, Luxor.

We are in the Bellagio. A vast reception area leading into an even larger gambling floor. Row upon row of slot machines, croupiers turning wheels, flipping cards, gathering dice. You have to run the gauntlet of it all to get to the elevators. Clearly they hope to tempt you to lose money en route.

And then our room, on the 26th floor, with ceiling to carpet windows looking out on the Eiffel Tower, and a huge man-made lake with a spectacular water and light show that runs every fifteen minutes.

I stop to pinch myself. It's all so unreal - and at the same time so incredibly real. Because we are here.

A long way from the tiny South Pasadena bookstore of "Book 'Em" that we visited on Sunday to talk to customers and sign books. Or the afternoon drink we shared with our old French neighbours, John and Bettie Jensen in Beverly Hills, before dining at the Los Angeles Country Club - where the maitre d' made me wear a jacket and tie in an attempt to accomplish some veneer of presentability.

Or the long drive through barren moonscapes, punctuated by forests of wind turbines, and a dramatic desert thunderstorm, to the upscale town of Scottsdale on the edge of Phoenix. The vastness overhead on that Arizona desert drive had been extraordinary - a cistine sky of dark, bruising brushstrokes, smeared across a wet, purple fresco (that one's for Ian and Hilary).

Then rain pounding on the skylight as author Mary Anna Evans and myself were interviewed by our publisher, Barbara Peters, before an enthusiastic audience at the Poison Pen bookstore. The one place you don't expect to be cold, or rained upon, is Phoenix. But, then, nothing about this trip is conforming to the expected.

Barbara Peters prays for success...

And now we have a day to play, and I'll leave you to guess at what it is we might get up to in this original sin city. For, after all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

See you in California.

Writing the Vegas blog...

2007-02-18T17:49:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-FOUR:

As we sped down Interstate 5 heading south for San Diego, I watched the gauge charting the outside temperature rise and rise. In farenheit, of course. At one point it touched a staggering 86 degrees - which is an unbelievable 30 degrees Celsius. With twenty-four feet of heavy woolen plaid wrapped around my waist, you could say I was feeling the heat.

And when the holiday traffic on the freeway ground to a halt (it's Presidents Day on Monday), we all started cooking. It was hard to believe it was still mid-February.

We were headed for a book event at the "Mysterious Galaxy" bookstore in San Diego to sign some books. Because of the holiday weekend, we didn't really expect a crowd. As it happens, my good friend and pathology adviser, Dr. Steve Campman, turned up with his whole family - Trenda, Danielle, and Jacob - and staff and customers gathered round as we talked about how it was Steve who had made the writing of the China series possible - since one of the main characters is a pathologist, and I knew not the first thing about pathology when I began writing the books.

Steve, currently a medical examiner in San Diego, is the perfect adviser for a writer. He has an eye and an ear (and a nose) for those things that a writer is looking for when describing a scene - particularly an autopsy. He doesn't just answer my specific questions, but looks beyond them to their wider implications and always makes valuable suggestions.

When, in "The Killing Room", I was looking for my pathologist to find tiny clues towards establishing the identites of murder victims found on a building site, Steve came up with some great ideas. A slight groove between the front teeth of one, made by holding pins between them, suggested that she might have been a seamstress. Polyps on the vocal chords of another led to the thought that she might be a singer. Another had tiny stress fractures in the bones of her feet, suggesting that she might have been a dancer. In fact, she turns out to be an acrobat.

Other books dealt with blood spatter patterns, an accident during autopsy, getting DNA from ten-year-old bloodstained flagstones, and many other complex pathological and forensic issues.

It is all those tiny little insights that lead towards authenticity, and it is Steve that I must thank for them all.

We got back to Newport Beach in the early evening and went to the Chakra Indian restaurant on the UC Irvine Campus to, finally, satiate my desire for Indian food. It is just about the only thing we miss since we left Scotland. Our home town of Glasgow has some of the very best Indian restaurants in Europe. Indian cuisine is almost impossible to find in la France profonde, and it never tastes quite the same when you make it yourself.

But for now you'll have to excuse me. As usual, after a curry there is somewhere I have to go in a hurry.

La Patronne and Susie at lunch on the Lido at Newport Beach

2007-02-16T04:42:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-THREE:

It's weird! I live in France, I wrestle with the language daily, and I think I've made some progress over the last few years.

I've been in the States for about four weeks, and whatever confidence I have in my French seems to have evaporated. A flurry of e-mails and iChats first thing this morning brought that realisation home with a bang.

I got two e-mails from my French publisher: one about my rail tickets to the Paris book fair in March, the other concerning my nomination for a literary prize awarded by prisoners.

It was the latter that made me question my understanding. The award is called the Prix Intramuros, and it is made as part of a festival of crime writing held in Cognac in October. I had already been shortlisted for the Prix International which is also awarded at that festival, so was surprised to find that I had been nominated for a second one.

But as I read on, I seriously began to question my comprehension of the French language. What the e-mail seemed to be saying was that six writers had been shortlisted for the "Intramuros", and if they agreed to be put forward for it, they would have to arrive at the festival a day early. Then first thing the next morning, they would be taken in twos to a nearby prison, where two juries of prisoners would quiz them on their work during a nearly twelve-hour day.

That night, at a dinner in the banquetting hall of a local chateau, the winner would be announced and the prize awarded.

In a panic, I e-mailed my French translator, Ariane, in Paris asking if I was understanding this right. We then had a lengthy iChat in French, via instant messaging, during which I struggled with both comprehension and expression, before finally arriving at the realisation that my first impressions had been correct.

This really is an award made by prisoners. The prize was first given in 2005, and is an attempt to bridge the gap between those on the inside and those on the outside through the medium of reading. I'm not sure if I'm the first foreigner to be nominated, but I know that last year's six writers were all French. I read their accounts of their prison visit and interrogation by the juries of prisoners, and it certainly seemed to have left an impression on them.

By coincidence (or maybe not), the book which has won me the nomination is "Snakehead" - "Cadavres Chinois a Houston" in French. And during the research for that book, which is set in the United States, I visited several prisons in Texas - including the so-called "Death House" in Huntsville, where prisoners are executed by lethal injection.

So we should have a lot to talk about, those French prisoners and I. But I'm going to have to brush up on my French prison vocabulary first!

When finally I broke the surface of this sea of French, I looked out of the window to reacquaint myself with my present reality - i.e. southern California - and was delighted to see that the sun was blazing out of a flawlessly blue sky. I was reminded, briefly, of a jet which had worked its gymnastic (and at the same time laborious) way across those blue acres the previous evening. Clever manipulation of an on/off smoke trail spelled the words WILL U MARRY ME above the setting sun. It was, after all, Valentine's Day. Awwww.

Of course, in a few years it will probably be GIMME A DIVORCE!

But with the morning sun now rising, and the temperature soaring into the mid-twenties centigrade, it was time to get on the bike and blow some of that French syntax out of my hair. So La Patronne and I cycled and ferried and cycled our way to a restaurant called the Crab Cooker near the ocean. We gorged ourselves on scallop and prawns before making our way to the beach, paddling in the Pacific, then dangling our legs from a lifeguard station as we let our feet dry in the breeze.

I looked up from the book I was reading, which was in English naturally, and got sudden butterflies at the thought of prisons and prizes in October. That, of course, is my reality. Not this. Not California. This is unreal. Sea and sunshine in February! I expect to wake up any minute to feel the cold French winter blowing around my ankles, and French words tumbling naturally from my lips.

With the distantly echoing words rattling around my head, 'And it was all a dream.'

2007-02-14T22:32:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-ONE:

Yet another testament to the glamorous life of the writer - unblocking Susie's waste disposal with a toilet plunger. Yeeeugh!

The worst bit was when the thing suddenly slipped and sent vile, sticky, oily yuck splashing all over us.

Roll on San Diego!!

2007-02-14T02:31:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY TWENTY-NINE:

I made what is, hopefully, my final visit to Stanley the Dentist this morning. I had my mouth stretched open and held in place by a strange green webbing for nearly an hour while he drilled, gouged and dug out the root canals of my abscessed tooth.

Afterwards he made an examination of the rest of my mouth and shook his head sadly.

'You need a plan,' he said. 'Let me take a full mouth x-ray and I'll give you a plan. There's a lot we can do with those front teeth, and some of those bottom ones, too.'

I asked him for a ballpark figure. He scratched his head thoughtfully and said, 'Think in terms of buying a new car.'

I gulped. 'Fifteen to twenty thousand?'

He looked at me, obviously wondering what kind of cheap car I drove. 'At least,' he said.

I told him I'd think about it if my books became bestsellers. Meantime, I was figuring out how I was going to pay for the present lot of treatment, which came to almost 2000 dollars. I've got travel insurance, which should cover part of it. And today I downloaded a form from the French social security website with which I can claim some reimbursement from the French government. An advising doctor will decide if the treatment was an emergency or not (I think an abscess is definitely an emergency), and some amount of reimbursement with be offered - or not.

Vive la France! I find it hard to imagine any other country even considering reimbursement.

And speaking of France, and the fact that I live there... we ordered a Mexican carry-out last night, which arrived at Susie's door in the hands of a very pleasant young Asian man. As I took the food from him, he looked around the house (and its night-time view of the harbour) in wonder. 'Have you lived here for long?' he asked in a heavily accented English.

I explained that I was just a guest, and that I actually lived in France.

He looked at me with admiration. 'Your English is ve-ery good.'

Sunset view of the harbour from Susie's house...

2007-02-11T21:16:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY TWENTY-SEVEN

It's funny how something you can't see gets blurred.

I'm talking, of course, about time. I'm sitting here, Sunday morning, in Newport Beach. And it's raining! The last time I wrote, I was in San Francisco. And it was raining. In between there has been MORE rain (huge amounts of it in Northern California), sizzling sunshine in LA, a birthday dinner, a VERY drunken night, a brilliant review of "The Fourth Sacrifice" in Entertainment Weekly...

"May exposes Beijing's dirty charm in a country grappling with modernity. The fast-paced second half is strongest, but the love-hate tension of the romance captivates throughout."

... and two great book events.

Already, it's all blurring into one fuzzy lump. So I'll get it all down before I forget.

Thursday we went to the home of Susie's sister, Kathy, in Sacramento. It was her (I'mtoopolitetotellyou'th) birthday, and we all drove up with her daughter, Gillian, to the little town of Auburn where Susie and Kathy grew up in the halcyon days of the sixties. There we met her mom and went to a restaurant for Kathy's birthday celebration.

Kathy's husband, John, was in Toronto on business, and her twelve-year-old son, Sean, had gone to a dance to chat up girls. His friend, Eric, was a head shorter than Sean, and complained that he was the fourth smallest boy in his school. La Patronne told him not to worry, it meant his head would be in perfect alignment with the girls' boobs. Which sent the boys off into paroxysms of giggles, and Eric went off to the dance seeing the world from a whole new happy perspective.

We drove back to our hotel through a downpour, and headed off the next morning through even worse rain to the central Californian coastal town of Santa Maria (near Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch). But first, we traversed those huge plains of the state's vast featureless interior, the Californian breadbasket. Crop fields stretch off to endless shimmering horizons. Occasionally, in the very far distance, you catch sight of mountain ranges washed pale in the dusty haze, and crop-dusting bi-panes swoop and dive like demented birds.

We passed whole orange groves damaged by frost in January. Dead leaves. Ruined oranges hanging from lifeless branches and gathering in drifts on the hard earth. One-and-a-half billion dollar's worth of ruined crop. The frost had killed just about everything, and the land was a dead, straw brown.

The hills of the central coast area were greener. They were nearer the ocean and had been protected from the frost. We checked into a hotel in the little beach resort of Pismo Beach where, Susie revealed, she had lost something very valuable many years before. I wondered if it wasn't too late to go back and look for it. But she assured me it was long gone.

The Pacific Ocean lapped at the balconies of our rooms. It was dry here, and warm. But we didn't linger to enjoy the view. We had an appointment at Susie's winery - Ambullneo (which stands for New American Bulldog - a breed of dog which is the passion of Susie's partner and winery owner, Greg Linn).

The winery has been fashioned from an old barn, and sits in the lee of Scottish-looking hills which have been planted with hundreds of acres of vines (the climate here is somewhat different from Scotland where only pine trees would grow). This being "Sideways" country, the main varietal is Pinot Noir.

Greg proudly gave us the grand tour, and then we spent the next couple of hours barrel-tasting the 2006 wines - many of which were still in malolactic fermentation. A young South African lad called Dieter, leapt nimbly among the barrels with a large pipette to siphon off chardonays and pinots for us to taste. Of course, you are supposed to spit - but, well, it does seem like such a waste.

It was dark by the time we finished and wobbled out into the night for a hairy drive through early evening traffic to Greg's extraordinary home near the coast, where New American Bulldogs frollicked and snuffled about our legs, and Greg's beautiful wife, Jana, produced trays of hors d'oeuvres to be washed down by champagne.

This was a fabulous house, with a dining room like a banqueting hall in a mediaeval chateau. We ate beef ribs marinated in Ambullneo's best vintage, and drank from the full range of Ambullneo's 2005 wines - glasses lined up in front of our plates like plump little monks tempting us with the produce of their cellars. Fabulous!

I have to say, I don't remember much about the journey back to the hotel. I think we got lost a couple of times. I do remember waking in the middle of the night with a thundering headache, and got up to drink copious amounts of water.

The morning arrived in a haze of grey pain, and I had to get into the kilt for the long drive south to Los Angeles. We were going straight to The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, LA, for a book event at 1pm.

As we headed south, so the skies cleared and the temperature rose. By the time we got to LA it was 24 degrees centigrade and still rising. We had a small, enthusiastic crowd at the bookstore - there was a couple there, the Toppens, who had read the entire China series, having bought the books directly from us over the internet when they were living in Arizona. The bookstore's owner, Bobby McCue, had huge piles of books lined up for me to sign before we got back on the freeway to head north again to the valley community of Thousand Oaks, where a large and enthusiastic crowd was already gathering in the "Mysteries to Die For" bookstore - even although we were half-an-hour early.

It was a really great event - and a good way to end a hectic first week. It's hard to believe that in under ten days I've been to Seattle, Sacramento, Davis, San Mateo, San Franciso, Auburn, Santa Maria, Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks, giving five talks, a radio interview, meeting an old friend from thirty years ago, and covering well over a thousand miles in the process.

Now I'm looking forward to a few days of respite (the good weather is forecast to return this week, with temperatures soaring to 25 and 26 degrees centigrade), a chance to finish revisions on the new book and make a return visit to the dentist, before starting all over again next Saturday with a trip to San Diego..

There's nae rest for the wicked!

2007-02-08T19:04:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY TWENTY-THREE:

It rained. What can I say? It just rained out of a bruised and battered sky all the way to San Francisco, and all the way back. The city that we had seen so clearly from the Bay Bridge just twenty-four hours earlier, had disappeared in the downpour.

San Francisco itself was grey and cold, people with their heads down, hurrying huddled beneath shiny wet umbrellas.

The book event was at the Book Passage bookstore in the ferry terminal building which has been turned into a lively market. We wandered amongst exotic stores selling everything from caviar to Champagne.

At the bookstore we were greeted by Ron Jin, who could not have been more enthusiastic about "Extraordinary People". He LOVED it, he said - the taste and sounds and smells of Paris that rose from the pages - and that once caught by the story he had been unable to put it down. 'It was literally a page-turner,' he told me. 'The kind of book you have to read in one sitting.'

Which was exactly the kind of encouragement I needed on a cold, wet, San Franciscan night, with a long tour still stretching ahead of me.

It wasn't a big crowd. "Intimate" is how it might be described. No one really wants to venture out on a night like that. As I spoke I could see, through the window in the dark, lines of commuters with raincoats and hats hurrying up gangplanks to waiting ferries. Across the bay, you could just make out the lights of Sausalito through the mist and rain.

I gave my talk, and my impression of Enzo Macleod, and signed piles of books that Ron had lined up for me. And as we left, to face the long, wet journey back to Sacramento, he gave me a beautifully wrapped box - a gift, with the compliments of the store. It turned out to be a very classy stationery set, with my name embossed on the cards.

Thanks, Ron, and thanks, Book Passage. We'll certainly be back next year for the follow-up to "EP", with wine from Gaillac for a "book tasting" at the store on market day.

A day of rest now, before heading south tomorrow to visit Susie's winery at Santa Maria.

A ferry loading commuters in the rain...

We had lunch with Hibbard and Sharon Williams. Former dean of the UC Davis medical school, it was Hibbard who introduced me to my pathology adviser, Dr. Steve Campman...

2007-02-07T09:39:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY TWENTY-TWO:

As we came over the hilltop, the bay opened out before us, and there, shimmering in the dusky pink evening haze, was the city of San Francisco clinging to steeply rising hills above the water. In the far distance we could just make out the distinctive rise and fall of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I had been to this city before, but never seen it from here.

It is truly spectacular.

By the time we were crossing the Bay Bridge, the lights were on, redifining the city in the fading light, reflecting it in still dark waters. We skimmed past its very edge, skyscrapers towering above us before we passed on through the hills towards San Jose. By the time we got to San Mateo it was dark. The main street was defined by Japanese restaurants and shops selling oriental goods. The journey from Sacramento had taken nearly two-and-a-half hours in rush-hour traffic. But we sailed through it in our Toyota Prius, the pride and joy of Susie's business partner, Eric Jungemann, who had generously offered to drive us there and back.

Having disparagingly described Eric's precious Prius as a "potato car", Susie sat in the back seat with her computer on her lap writing and re-writing software for the entire journey, while the rest of us sang Beatles songs along to a CD.

Ed Kaufman's bookstore, M is for Mystery, is a fine shop, with well-stocked shelves, and he has more than 4000 subscribers to his newsletter. He sells books all around the world, and has been very supportive of my work.

We had a small, but enthusiastic crowd, and I had the chance to try out my talk for the first time. There were a few rough edges, and I need to polish up the end a bit, but it went down well enough. As usual I signed the huge stacks of my books that Ed had bought in and will hand-sell, then we headed off into the night for sushi (well, what else?) before hitting the road for home.

A red tide of tail lights on a ribbon of black highway that wound its way back through hills that looked as if they had been draped with pearl necklaces of light. The Bay Area is so densely populated, huge blazing swathes of connurbation huddled around the water's edge.

Then San Francisco rose up around us once more before the box girders of the Bay Bridge sent it shuttering off into the night behind us. Tomorrow we will be back, but this time to head right into the heart of the city itself.

I feel a long way from home, but at the same time privileged to be here. And there is so much more still to come.

Oh... and thanks, Eric, for helping us contribute in our own small way to the fight against climate change with our zero emissions journey there and back.

Long live the Potato Car!

2007-02-06T08:41:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY TWENTY-ONE:

It was the best of days and the worst of days.

Tipping out of a hotel room at midday, we made our way - via a quick lunch in a Greek restaurant - to the studios of Capital Public Radio in Sacramento to be interviewed live for the "Insight" programme hosted by Scots exile Jeffrey Callison.

Sitting in the green room, nervously clutching the extract from "Extraordinary People" that I was to read during the interview, I got distracted listening to the guest ahead of me. Her name was Kim Phuc. You might never have heard of her, but you've almost certainly seen her. She was the little girl on fire in the photograph taken during the Vietnam war following a napalm attack. She was running down the road towards the camera, arms raised, trying to escape the fire and the pain.

Miraculously she survived, but only because the man who took the photograph, Nick Ut, got her to a hospital. She had burns across nearly two thirds of her body, had something like seventeen operations, and was in hospital for a year-and-a-half. She was nine years old when it happened. The photographer now lives in Los Angeles, and they still keep in touch, talking by phone at least once a week.

When the Vietnamese government discovered some years later that the girl in the photograph was still alive, they attempted to exploit her for propaganda purposes, interrupting her medical studies at home to send her to Cuba to train in languages. There, she met her future husband - also a Vietnamese. They were told that they had to honeymoon in Moscow, but when the plane stopped to refuel in Canada, they took their chance to seek political asylum.

She has lived there, ever since, raising children, and only recently taking them back to Vietnam to visit the spot where she was pictured in flames.

As I sat listening, she recounted the story of her meeting with the man who had coordinated that napalm bombing mission in 1972. He asked if she could ever forgive him, and without hesitation she told him she had already done so.

She now runs an organisation that works to help children who are the victims of war.

There was something extraordinarily moving in her simple articulatation of the dreadful pain she suffered, and the difficult journey of her life from that moment to this. Her courage and suffering reduced my nerves at speaking on live radio to something considerably less than inconsequential.

So it was without fear that I read my piece and did my interview, reducing Jeffrey to open-mouthed amazement at the story of my pathology adviser, Dr. Steve Campman, and the French woman whose life he saved - all because of a scene I had written in "The Firemaker".

Off then, to a wine bar in downtown Sacramento called 58 degrees to discuss the promotion next year of the follow-up book to "Extraordinary People", which is set amongst the vineyards of southwest France. The book is already written, and plans for a uniquely different tour to promote it are fermenting nicely. And just to keep our discussions well lubricated we had a glass or three of excellent wine to wash down the words.

The book event at the Avid Reader in Davis that night was seriously quiet. The town was deserted. Monday evening, the day after the Super Bowl... maybe not the best time for a talk on mystery books set in France and China.

So we turned it into a drop-in signing, and I signed all the copies of "Extraordinary People", "The Fourth Sacrifice" and "The Firemaker" that the store had got in stock for the event. A signed book is a sold book, so all in all, we did not too badly.

And, you know, each time I think of that little girl, arms outstretched, running down the road, it puts all my troubles, whatever they might be, into their proper perspective.

(Copyright, Nick Ut/Associated Press)

2007-02-05T18:16:00.000+01:00

US TOUR 2007, DAY TWENTY:

Just a boring old travel day. Actually, a really quiet travel day. Because this is the day when America comes to a full stop.

IT'S SUPERBOWL!!

Yes, the day that Janet Jackson bared a nipple for all of half a second and shocked a nation. Well, having taken elaborate safeguards to ensure that nothing so obscene should ever be seen again in this country that hosts the world's biggest porn industry, Americans were settling down again to watch a game between a team from Chicago (the Bears), and a team from (I think) Indianapolis. Why anyone else in the country would give a damn who wins beats me.

In an FA Cup final between, say, Leicester and Coventry, no one outside of those two sets of supporters (except for a few diehard soccer fans) would even bother to watch the game.

It is a phenomenon unique to the US. Some poor fellow authors at Left Coast Crime were scheduled to sign books at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop this afternoon. By kick-off time, it was expected that the town would be deserted and that beyond that time no one would turn up at the store. I'm glad I did my signing yesterday, when the store was jam-packed.

Even on the ride out to the airport it was apparent that the streets were emptying. The airport itself was a bit like a ghost town, and the few people sitting at gates waiting for their flights were all glued to TV sets showing the game.

With four hours to wait, I'm actually sitting here writing this to kill the time.

In a few hours I will meet up again with La Patronne and Susie at Sacramento and the tour will begin in earnest - an hour-long interview on Sacramento public radio tomorrow afternoon, followed by a talk and signing at the Avid Reader bookstore in Davis. Then on Tuesday it's San Mateo, and on Wednesday San Francisco. And so on...

From a nearby TV the cheers of the crowd are ringing in my ears.

As a famous American poet once wrote: The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep!

A couple of Seattle streets buskers (no, NOT Bill and Tanya!)...

PS: For those following the blog, it wasn't Bill at the Seattle Opera.