What's Best About The Bay Area?

 We're currently on the peninsula (San Carlos), where I'm helping with my wife's art exhibit at the San Carlos Art & Wine Festival. It's relatively close to Tahoe, a good thing. The town and festival itself are nice, a good thing. The event is crowded, a good thing. And the weather is perfect, a very good thing.

Tahoe locals always claim that mountain weather is the best. Cold at night, hot sun during the day. But the Bay Area has amazing weather as long as you don't mind some fog in the morning. (Wait, that's not called fog. It's called The Marine Layer, which usually burns off by late morning.)

Regardless of the month, it never gets very cold and rarely gets very hot in the Bay Area. That's a feature of life near the Pacific.

We take down Sunday evening, head back to our AirBNB in Emerald Hills, then drive home Monday.

P.S. Like all of the festivals across Northern California this year, business has been good for both art and books. No recession in these parts.

Unbelievable

 Where else in the entire world can you go sailing, motorboating, swimming, diving, and parasailing on the purest of high-altitude lakes and still have an entire beach to yourself?!!!

 The storm last week brought us a couple of days of rain. And when the clouds cleared...? SNOW

Here's what Freel Peak, Tahoe's highest mountain, looked like.

Why does snow matter on September 22?

3 Reasons.

One: Snow melts slowly while rain runs off. When snow melts it has time to soak into the ground, which makes it less dry than ground where rain fell and ran off quickly. Water-soaked ground is a good thing.

Two: When the mountains are white with snow, it's good for the ski economy. People see it and start planning their trips to the mountains, booking their hotels and rental cars.

Three: It is a psychological boost to everyone to see that, despite climate change, global warming, and drought, we can have white mountains on the Autumnal Equinox!

The Sweetest Words To A Californian

The forecast calls for rain.

We're always grateful that we don't have much in the way of hurricanes, tornadoes, and other problems. But we do have fire. This time of year, the fire danger cranks up.

So looking at a weather forecast that shows the next few days bringing rain is great.

Another Big Fire Near Tahoe

 We almost felt guilty leaving the smoke that the Mosquito Fire has sent to the Tahoe Basin when we headed to the Mountain View Fine Arts Festival this weekend. The weather on the peninsula south of San Francisco cooled off and the air was very clear.

As of this writing at 8:30 Saturday night, CalFire's Mosquito Fire Incident report shows the fire has grown to 33,000 acres. For a size comparison, last year's Caldor Fire eventually torched something over 200,000 acres. The Mosquito Fire is currently 15% that size. But no one knows how much or how fast it will grow.

In classic fire expansion (as I worked into the story of Tahoe Blowup) the Mosquito Fire is making its own weather with a heat-created storm.

Here's what it looks like from a distance.

The good news is that few if any houses have burned so far. The fire is mostly in a wilderness. 

The bad news is that if its direction shifts much, there are communities that could be in its way.

We head home Monday and will get a closer look then.

My First Art & Wine Festival For 2022 - Mountain View

 The pandemic forced the cancellation of the Mountain View Art & Wine Festival for both 2020 and 2021.

The festival is finally back this coming weekend, September 10 and 11. The show is on Castro Street in downtown Mountain View. This festival is huge (400 artists and crafts people) and will keep you intrigued with countless types of artists. (Including a writer or two!)

The hours are Saturday 11 to 7 and Sunday 10 to 6. Admission is free. Come on by!

Here is more information:

https://mountainview.miramarevents.com/event-details/about-the-event

First Reviews Of Tahoe Moon

The first reviews of TAHOE MOON are coming in. I couldn't be happier.

Tahoe Mountain News: "Borg has hit another one out of the ballpark. Doing so every year is nothing short of amazing."

Bookin' With Sunny: "Never start a McKenna mystery in the afternoon as you're likely not to get to bed until very early the next morning."

Silver's Reviews: Brilliant, very knowledgeable author. The ending will have you flying through the pages.

Kittling: Books: "No matter how much I learn or how much I enjoy Borg's fast-paced mysteries, it's the characters who always bring me back for more. When you've got your hands on a new Owen McKenna thriller, you know you're in for a few hours of sheer reading pleasure."

I'm a lucky guy...

Lake Tahoe History Museum

 In the middle of South Lake Tahoe is the Lake Tahoe History Museum, a fantastic museum devoted to Tahoe history. It has hundreds of cool historical artifacts, many dozens of great displays, books on Tahoe, and much more. I highly recommend that you stop by and plan to spend an hour or two. You will be glad you did.

Want to learn about old Tahoe ships from the early 20th century?

Want to imagine staying at the classic Tahoe hotels from 100 years ago?

Want to learn about Washoe Basket weaving and see actual Tahoe artifacts that go back over 100 years?

It's all there at the museum.

The museum is located at 3058 Lake Tahoe Blvd, South Lake Tahoe.

Because the museum is run by volunteers, the hours are not extensive, typically 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Visit the website for more information: http://www.laketahoemuseum.org/home.html

Or call 530-541-5458.

I've been in countless museums in my life, and I've rarely enjoyed the experience more than the times I've explored in our local museum.

Book Launch Art Festival Catch-up Blog

 Buried with more than I can keep track of, I forgot to put up a blog for this morning. So for those of you who might be wondering if I got run over by a bus after 11 or 12 years of never missing a blog deadline, don't worry. The bus missed.

When you do a proper book launch, there is a whole lotta stuff to attend to. This weekend I helped my wife set up her booth at the Los Altos Fine-Art-In-The-Park festival.

It was a great art show. Los Altos is a beautiful town, pushed up against the Santa Cruz Mountains a couple of miles south of Stanford. Great setting. Great weather. (It always strikes us how perfect Bay Area weather often is.)

We'll be back in a couple of weeks for the Palo Alto Art Festival. After that, the King's Mountain Festival, and after that, the Mountain View Festival, unique for us in that both of us will be showing. Kit will be there with her paintings. I'll be there with my books.

Hope to see you soon!

2 More TAHOE MOON Signings In South Lake Tahoe

It's been a busy week, signing my new book TAHOE MOON all over. So good to see so many of you! THANKS!

There's more to come. 

I'll be signing TAHOE MOON at the Red Hut at Ski Run and Lake Tahoe Blvd, Sunday August 7th at 8:30 a.m.

Next, I'll be giving a talk and signing my new book at the South Lake Tahoe Library on Tuesday August 16th at 5 p.m.

After that, it's on to the Mountain View Festival where I'll have a booth September 10 & 11, then the Candy Dance Festival in Genoa Semptember 24 & 25, then the Harvest Festival in San Mateo November 10, 11, & 12, and the Harvest Festival in Sacramento November 18, 19, & 20.

I expect to spend all my remaining time working on the next McKenna book. Stay tuned... And thanks again for your support.

Independent Book Stores Are Cultural Hotspots

 On Saturday, as part of my new book launch, I made some visits to bookstores and other retailers on the north side of Tahoe, all of which sell lots of my books. I'm always impressed with how hard retailers work to promote books like mine! 

I started in Reno at Sundance Books, where I gave a talk to a nice crowd and read from my new book, TAHOE MOON. 

From there I went to Grassroots Books, also in Reno.

I drove up and over Mt. Rose summit and stopped by The Potlatch gift shop in Incline Village.

I went around the North Shore to Tahoe City and visited Geared for Games. They also have a store called Mind Play in the Olympic Village at what used to be called Squaw Valley and is now called Palisades.

Heading north from Tahoe City took me to Truckee with Word After Word books. (I'm giving a talk there on Tuesday at 6:30 PM)

These stores make my books look good! Please stop by and show your support for independent book stores and gift stores.

Next week I'll visit stores on the South Shore and in Carson Valley.

Tahoe Tribune Story About Tahoe Moon

 Last week, I was contacted by a freelance writer named Sara Jackson. She wanted to interview me for an article on my new book, TAHOE MOON. Her article just came out in the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

Sara Jackson asked interesting questions and avoided all the clichéd questions like, "Where do you get your ideas?" 

The resulting article was very well-written. Because I'm a writer, I often notice when journalists do a good job. Sara's sentences were professional, as was the way she constructed the article. When I realized she could do a good job writing fiction, I asked her if she has ever thought of writing novels.

"Yes," she said and explained that fiction was something on her horizon. She thought she might start a novel soon.

Of course, novels take a long time to figure out, never mind writing. But I can tell she's got the chops and the desire. I'll be waiting...

Here's the link to the Tahoe Daily Tribune article:

https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/local-author-who-pens-fictional-tahoe-mysteries-set-to-release-20th-book-in-series/