Favorite Reading: October

China Lake, by Meg Gardiner.

A thriller about a lawyer-turned-writer in Santa Barbara, California who has to save her nephew from fanatics acting under the guise of religious extremism.

My mystery book group read this, and I loved it because it's full of action, fun, and surprises--just what a thriller should have!

I also enjoy short stories, and one that stood out for me was "Uncle Moon in Raintree Hills," by Fred Chappell, in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept/Oct, 2010. I loved the way this story evokes the vivid imagination of childhood along with the smells of autumn in the countryside, all rolled up with just enough creep factor.

Fodder from DC

Every time I travel to the DC area I see new sights, and I gain more fodder for future stories. Here are some of the places that especially struck me on my latest trip there:

The Carlyle House in Alexandria is a good place for ghost hunters to see orbs.

The clock tower of city hall in Alexandria where justice was served in days long past by displaying the decapitated heads of criminals.

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial didn't open until 1997! Set along the Tidal Basin, it's a peaceful series of fountains and statues and some of his timeless quotes.

A blind selection of remains inside identical coffins led to a single unknown soldier for each of three wars, WWI, WWII, and Korean (there are no unknowns from Vietnam) (and... the unknown from the Revolutionary War is buried in a churchyard in Alexandria).

Robert E. Lee's home was seized by Union soldiers and eventually became the site for Arlington National Cemetery.

Writer on the Road

Washington DC is a national treasure, and not just because some of my family lives there (although that's a good reason!) I just returned from two weeks there, babysitting my 6-month-old granddaughter. I write every day, even on the road, even if it's only a paragraph, which is about all that I managed to do while baby was cutting her first tooth. Boy, did my biceps get a great workout!

Then, exciting writer news: a request for a rewrite for one of my short story submissions. It only took three days of baby catnaps to finish the changes. Thanks to the internet, the story is now approved, never mind that I was on the road.

New Story Coming Soon!

Any day now, my novella "Crawlers" will appear in the anthology Infradead, to be published by Sam's Dot. You can follow its status here:

http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/

The theme of this anthology is the end of civilization, and my story explores how this might happen in connection to explorations on Mars. The Mars connection coincides with a massive burn-off in our Rocky Mountains. Here's what this might look like, from a recent hike I took in an area of pine beetle kill:

Favorite Stories This Month

Geoffrey A. Landis, "The Sultan of the Clouds," Asimov's, September 2010.

Imagine, if a handful of families own the solar system, and the ruling sultan of Venus invites you to his floating city in the clouds? Reading this novella made me feel as if I journeyed to Venus and explored its culture.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, "Red Letter Day," Analog, September 2010.

Students receive red letters (or not) shortly before their graduation, and these letters are shatteringly important because they're from... No, I won't spoil it!

Fourmile Fire

We were gardening Labor Day morning when we first smelled smoke. The fire started about 4 miles due west of our house. Because of high winds, we were soon engulfed in smoke.

The air took on an orange cast, and we watched ash rain down on our deck.

By late afternoon the smoke cleared a bit. About 3500 acres burned that first day.

Tuesday morning the smoke came back, so thick that it grounded the fleet of slurry bombers and helicopters until noon. 7100 acres and at least 63 buildings had burned.

The area of evacuation spread to a rough quadrangle shape that's about 6 miles north-south and 12 miles east-west. The boundaries are Boulder Canyon to the south, Lefthand Canyon to the north, the foothills to the east, and the Peak to Peak Highway to the west.

Tuesday afternoon a fleet of 9 water tankers was in the air again. Helicopters buzzed our house every 7 minutes, scooping water from our neighborhood lake to carry across the ridge to the fire.

This morning the fire is still 0% contained. It has crept north and east, coming about 2 miles from our house. 92 burned buildings have been counted so far.

Best Reading

In August, the book that stood out for me was the book my mystery reading club read:

Thunder Bay, by William Kent Krueger. Private Detective Cork O'Connor searches for the son of his friend Henry, an Ojibwe medicine man. His search leads him into the beautiful back country around the Minnesota-Canadian border and back into the 1920's when Henry was a young guide.

I loved this book on many levels. The sense of place is spectacularly drawn, the history is fascinating, and the love story is so tender! Maybe even more interesting were the parallel stories about being a dad.