Great Dane Meets Spiderman!

In the foothills near Jackson, CA lives a woman named Marjorie. She's come to some of my talks, and we've struck up an enjoyable correspondence that dates back to when she and her husband acquired their first Great Dane.

The current one is a sweetheart named Daisy.

I've very much enjoyed reports from the front lines as Daisy has grown up. But I never would have guessed this next installment.

I asked Marje if I could share, and she said yes.

Enjoy!

 "On our morning walks we get down to the local street, meet and greet cars, businesses opening up, etc, and on our way home we pass the dumpsters in front of Hospice Thrift Store. This is Daisy's biggest thrill - she looks forward to bringing home a stuffed toy. She sniffs each one (when there are some, not always) then decides which one to take. The other day she chose Spiderman. She put it in her mouth and began walking away, toward home when all of a sudden Spiderman began talking. Daisy jerked sideways, jumping and looking to her rear to see if someone was there, then turned the other direction. It was hard to calm her down. She just knew someone was behind us. Then she dropped the toy and it kept talking. That was when she realized what was happening. After a few moments, she picked him up and proceeded to 'take it home.'

She turned five on July 1st, got her down to a good weight of 153. She brings so much joy and laughter each day."

Left Coast Crime Coming To Reno Mar 22 - 25, 2018

Left Coast Crime mystery convention is the biggest literary event to come to Reno in a very long time...

I'll be writing more about the Left Coast Crime in the coming months. In the meantime, here's a bit of a travelogue to whet your appetites...

As regards our host cities of Reno and Sparks, you should know that in addition to Left Coast Crime gracing Reno with its presence, there are many cool aspects to the Reno/Sparks/Tahoe area. (Note, every time you hear anyone refer to the more famous Reno, you can quietly mouth the words, “and Sparks” to give sister city Sparks her due. Our host hotel, the Nugget, is in Sparks, after all. As for Tahoe, it doesn’t need any due, as it is glorified by the annual crush of millions of visitors already.)

Reno’s Cool thing #1 - ART

Reno is known as Art Town for a good reason. One is that it has the Nevada Art Museum, with as serious an art collection as you’ll find in any comparably-sized city, and it is housed in a very modern, custom, arty building.

Nevada Art Museum

Reno is also home to multiple art galleries. As for the literary arts, Reno is well-anchored in the word firmament by Sundance Bookstore, one of the all-time greatest independent bookstores anywhere.

One of the world's greatest bookstores

There are other literary events such as the Reno Literary Crawl that takes place multiple times a year. (We writers are used to groveling, so crawling is a step up…)

Cool thing #2 - TAHOE

Reno is just down the mountain from Lake Tahoe, in many respects the most fantabulous, high-elevation, super pure, super deep, amazing gorgeous awe-inspiring body of water in the world.

Lake Tahoe - A View To Kill

Okay, for you sticklers, we’re talking 22 miles long by 12 miles wide, 6230 feet in the sky, (i.e., the lake is 1000 feet higher than mile-high-city Denver), 1630 feet deep (10th deepest in the world), with water that passes many official standards for distilled water (you can see down 70 feet). (Yes, there’s a lake in the Andes that is bigger and higher, but it ain’t deep and pure like Tahoe.) Tahoe has over a dozen major ski resorts, every kind of boating, and many of the most beautiful hiking and biking and cross-country ski trails found anywhere. There’s a reason why Reno changed the name of its airport to the Reno Tahoe Airport. Tahoe is simply, by any measure, one of the world’s most beautiful places. And Reno is its number one access point. When you come to Reno, everyone advises that you schedule an extra day or more to drive up to Tahoe and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. If the weather is decent, I recommend going up #431, the Mount Rose Highway. Take it over the summit. At about 9000 feet, it is the highest year-round pass in the Sierra. Then drive down at least to the overlook above Incline Village. The view from that overlook alone will stay with you forever. Way better is to drive all the way around the lake. When you see Emerald Bay, you are likely to agree that it is near the top of the all-time-most-amazing places. (Can you tell I’m a Tahoe enthusiast? You may have noticed that my book titles all begin with Tahoe…)

Tahoe astonishes from every angle

Cool thing #3 - TECH

Reno is the new hot tech magnet, and as such is experiencing a tech boom like no other city. You’ve probably heard that Tesla’s Giga Factory, a facility that also has Panasonic investing major bucks, is currently setting up shop in the Reno area. They followed Amazon, which built a giant fulfillment center in Reno a couple of years ago. Apple is investing $1 billion in a cloud-storage data center just east of Reno. Apple also just bought an entire city block near downtown Reno to build another facility. Then there is that search company called - let me think - oh yeah, Google. Google just bought 1200 acres in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. Yes, you read that number correctly. What does Google plan to do with that much land near Reno? Stay tuned to find out. Then there’s Microsoft, which has only three regional operations centers in the world, and one of them is in Reno. Even Berkshire Hathaway has built a power plant in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.

Wait, I just mentioned Apple, Google, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, and Amazon in one paragraph. Measured by market cap, those are the five biggest companies in the world. And they are all investing heavily in the Reno area. I guess we better sit up and take notice...

Cool thing #4 - NEW HIP

Reno has a hip thing going that is far beyond its gambling history.

*Did you know that the world’s tallest and largest climbing wall is on the outside of Reno’s Whitney Peak Hotel? It is 164 feet high.

*Did you know that during the spring you can kayak whitewater on the Truckee River in downtown Reno? If you want something more tame, walk the Truckee River Walk through downtown Reno. It is a beautiful stroll along the Truckee, down which all the water from Lake Tahoe flows.

*How about Reno’s vibrant live theater scene with multiple acting companies? For example, the Reno Little Theater is featuring a murder mystery play called Death By Design in the weeks before and during Left Coast Crime. How perfect is that? http://renolittletheater.org/events/event/death-by-design/  

Reno Little Theater

*Reno also houses the University of Nevada’s Reno (UNR) campus, with over 20,000 students. Compared to the university’s Las Vegas campus, UNR is the harder school in which to get accepted, but its graduates make more money. And it isn’t thirteen thousand degrees in the summer!  

*What else? The Reno Aces is a Minor League baseball team that’ll take you back to old-time baseball. Their stadium is right near downtown. Listen to the crack of the bat on a fastball, smell the hotdogs, lick the beer head off your upper lip. This is classic, old-time baseball. When it comes to the essence of the sport, the Yankees got nothing on the Aces.

*And if you’re a flying buff, there are few things more exciting than the Reno Air Races. You can’t get airplane races just anywhere!

Cool thing #5

The old stuff is still strong. The National Car museum will delight you whether you are a gearhead or are merely into old classic cars as modern art pieces.

The coolest cars ever at the National Car Museum in downtown Reno

Considered the Taj Mahal of tenpins, Reno’s National Bowling Stadium is world-class. And if you want to visit a casino, there are many to choose from, including the Nugget hotel and casino where Left Coast Crime is taking place.

One more thing, long-time Reno literary presence Sundance Bookstore will be at Left Coast Crime to provide books and literary gravitas. How can this mystery convention not be great?!

http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2018/

Once Again, The Talent Question...

At the Candy Dance Festival three weeks ago where I was exhibiting my books, I spoke to a woman who has read all of my books and been supportive of my work for years. This woman is also a professional singer. Our conversation veered toward artistic skills. Immediately, I sensed a frustration that I know well.

She said that people have always made statements to her along the lines of, "Oh, it must be so wonderful to have such singing talent." And, "How great to have been born with such a voice!"

Before I could respond, she added, "While I'm so pleased and flattered that they like what I do, I want to shout, 'It isn't talent! And I wasn't born with my voice! It took decades of constant, never-ending work to develop my voice and singing skills.'"

I told her about the common experience of writers hearing people say, "I'd love to write, if only I had the talent."

I used my oft-repeated example of the figure skater. Writing (and singing and painting and dancing and acting etc.) is not something you are born knowing how to do. Nor can you learn just by studying. Studying is of course great. Classes and how-to books and support groups and critique circles and youtube videos are all smart to pursue. They are very useful and well worth the time. But learning to write is only accomplished by doing it. Just like figure skating.

You can be born with excellent bio-mechanics. And you can be born with a well-made brain and nervous system to control your muscles.

But all the natural abilities in the world won't make it so you can strap on a pair of skates and go out and do a triple-twisting leap.

You have to put in 10,000 hours on the ice, practicing over and over. That is the only way to learn to be a competent figure skater.

Or singer. Or actor. Or painter. Or musician. Or dancer. Or writer.

It's true that you can't succeed at these things if you don't have some basic brains or motor abilities. But the professional singer talking to me at the Candy Dance festival is right. It isn't talent. It's many years work.

I'm Teaching A One-Day Mystery Writing Workshop

Have you ever had the urge to try writing a mystery novel and wondered just how you would start? Or maybe you've already started but could use some help structuring your plot and creating fascinating characters.

I've got just the workshop for you.

On Saturday, October 21st, I'm teaching a one-day workshop at the Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno. The workshop is called, How To Map A Murder, and it runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Imagine writing your own murder mystery, full of intrigue and thrills,
and a whodunnit puzzle that will keep readers up at night

The workshop will be held at the college's Meadowood Center near the Meadowood Mall. The cost is only $59, and in addition to learning the basics of mapping a murder, you will have the opportunity to ask any and all questions about writing.

Here's the link to sign up:

https://truckee.augusoft.net/index.cfm?method=ClassInfo.ClassInformation&int_class_id=24261#

Come join us! It will be fun!

Reno Literary Crawl

Two weeks ago, on September 16, I participated in the Reno Literary Crawl. What a great event!

There were dozens of authors who gave talks and readings and participated on panels. I didn't get a count of how many readers attended, but it seemed like hundreds.

The events were scheduled three at a time, at multiple venues around Reno, from the Nevada Museum to Sundance Books to many of the old mansions that stretch north from downtown Reno toward the river.

I sat on a panel about publishing and I also participated in a reading about suspense called "Things That Go Bump In The Night."

The keynote talk was by Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson, Stanford professor and author of the The Orphan Master's Son. Johnson spoke at the Nevada Museum.

The closing party was at Sundance Books, which went all out with music in their large yard and poetry performances up on the mansion's deck. There was a food truck, and the place was strung with festive lights.

The vibe among some attendees was, "All this in Reno? Who knew?!" Other attendees seemed to take it for granted, as if they have known for years that Reno is a literary hotspot.

This impressive gathering celebrating the written word was put on by the Nevada Humanities. Here's the link:
http://nevadahumanities.org/programs/nevada-humanities-literary-crawl

I highly recommend you make plans to attend next year. I know I will.

A large crowd in the yard listened to a poetry reading up on the balcony of the Sundance Bookstore mansion, just behind the Nevada Museum.