Dear Nice People*
Next month, I have the Very Good Problem of two days alone in Paris with nothing planned. I would appreciate suggestions. I have visited Paris several times, as recently as 2020, and done most of the expected things.
*Mean People cannot reply to this tweet. Also researching a novel, for real.

I am sorry I neglected to include something that would make clear the scale of this cardboard book cover, which is at least six feet tall — and about to be jettisoned. And there’s a story. So, 15 years ago (egads) this book was published and it was my first big success. NYT bestseller, etc, etc. It had fallen off the list then jumped back onto the list the week I headed to the Texas Library Association meeting in San Antonio.

This disingenuous piece on disinformation contains disinformation and I don't usually knock typos on Twitter, but JFC, New York Post it's "its."
nypost.com/2022/05/14/jef… To be clear, @wiczipedia is my friend, which means, in fact, that I know more about this than anyone who has dragged her just for the political "game" of it all.

Working on correcting something of which I’ve long been ashamed: My crime novels are no longer kept separate from the mainstream fiction in my office. I can't remember why I ever started shelving my books that way, probably because I didn't want the crime fiction tainted by the other stuff.

I don't know about you, but when I hear "only in theaters" what I'm hearing is, "worth becoming sick for" and very few films meet that standard for me. OK, I'd probably go to Paddington 3, depending on the reviews.

Good morning, Baltimore. A thread on walking and writing. It will be boring but possibly helpful if you wish to walk or write more. In my pre-pandemic life, there was lots of incidental walking. I averaged 2.4 miles a day, or 5,662 steps.

I have finally found a roll-out sugar cookie recipe that involves no sticking (and thus no cursing) and I feel bad about ending the family holiday tradition of spending an afternoon in my kitchen shouting "shit" over and over. So sad my kid will miss the character-building experience of holiday rage baking.

As a woman whose work is helped immeasurably by publicity, my advice is that if you don't need publicity, don't be profiled. Unless the writer is someone like @taffyakner -- because then, even if it goes awry, you still might learn something about yourself. I say this also as a former journalist who met a lot of people who thought that publication would = validation.

I love my job, which this morning has "forced" me to research what proms were like in the 1990s -- their likely themes and dresses -- which led to me looking for prom scenes in various '90s films. Did I mention I love my job? Update: Twitter is VERY interested in proms and, yes, Jessica McClintock was the designer I was grasping for. Tentative plan: the prom is set in 1997, the song is "Unbreak My Heart." But remember, '97 in Baltimore is '94 everywhere else, fashion-wise.

Subbing in "Hot Fuzz" for my usual seasonal viewing of "Love, Actually," just feels right this year. "Thanks for the monkey."
"Yours isn't it."
"I won it for you."
I challenge you to find a more romantic exchange in Love, Actually.

Today I submitted my course description for a 2021 workshop on the personal essay. It may or may not happen, but, alas for you, Twitter, it got me thinking. Full disclosure: I seem to come to genres when they have been pronounced dead. My first novel, which centered on a female PI, went out on submission in 1995 after I spent a year searching for an agent.

Can we talk about the time I was awakened in the middle of the night to learn I had just won an award? And can we pretend this what I was wearing? While this is Edgar Week, there are many prizes given for crime fiction. The Agatha, Barry, Macavity, Nero Wolfe, the Strand, the Hammett -- the list goes on and on. The Anthony is given based on vote by those who attend Bouchercon.

Happy birthday to IMHO Baltimore’s quintessential bard, John Waters, who officiated at my wedding in 2006. This is what I wore. I had taken a notion (always a dangerous thing) that I needed to buy "investment" clothing. This is a St. John's suit that, even 14 years later, I think ages me. In my defense, I think Angelina Jolie was the face of the brand at the time.

Should I subtweet about a sensitive topic in my genre? Polls remain open but I think I see a trend.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Link here because the next 'graph is important. nytimes.com/2019/09/17/opi…

I’m glad we’re talking about Baltimore but would love to see the conversation zoom out to consider all cities struggling with big problems. And to consider how remarkable cities are, how they survive indifference (at best) and hostility (at worst).

Probably going to spend the entire day, off and on, thinking about A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN being called "sentimentally spunky" in Penny Marshall's NYT obituary. You know what's sentimentally spunky? FIELD OF DREAMS. That movie is drenched in sentimental spunk.

I know we don’t know anything right now, but I’m not going to be surprised if @realDonaldTrump helped kill my friend. Was that civil enough or everybody? Words matter. Obviously I believe that. I’ve been sending words out into the world professionally for 28 years.

A few weeks ago, when we lost Roth, I joked about the Bourdain stories I would tell one day, adding that I hoped it would be 50 years hence. Well, here we are. Manchester, England, 2000. Kitchen Confidential has been published and Bourdain is in the process of becoming Bourdain. But he’s at a crime conference and that’s where @AoDespair and I meet him.