August is fast approaching, and that means it’s time for the Edinburgh International Festival, one of the world’s foremost celebrations of art, dance, and music. And with the Festival comes the Fringe, an alternative festival launched in 1947, the same year as the Edinburgh Festival, with the mission of allowing access to all performers. Now the Fringe rivals the Festival itself, and is THE place to see the quirky, the innovative, and the laugh-out-loud funny.

This year my London-based photographer friend, Steve Ullathorne, is exhibiting a new series of photographs at The Gilded Balloon, one of the Fringe’s foremost venues. Restyles of the Dead and Famous are twisted tweaks of the Blue Plaque bearing London homes of the dead and gone - from Jane Austen to Oscar Wilde via Thomas Crapper and George Orwell. The Scotsman’s Claire Smith calls Steve “the Annie Leibowitz of comedy,” and these irreverent images are the proof of the pudding.

But if you can’t get to Edinburgh, and you find yourself in London on a Saturday, have a wander down Portobello Road. At Tavistock Road, just before the Westway, on most Saturdays you’ll find Steve selling his London prints from his market stall. From the whimsical (London Policeman), to the sublime (my favorite photo of the Albert Bridge), the photos are fabulous. And you’ll be following in fictional footsteps.

A red letter day today! I have my complete tour schedule, and the cover proofs for the book arrived in the morning mail. The book looks fabulous, and I’m very excited about seeing old friends and meeting new ones. I’ll be signing in Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Phoenix, Tucson, Iowa City, Omaha, Lincoln, and Kansas City, with a break in the middle for 4th of July weekend (apparently no one wants to come to book signings over the 4th of July!) While in the San Francisco area, I’ll be on the faculty of the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference 2008, a real treat for me. Here’s the complete faculty, and the conference schedule. Some of the other writers on the faculty are already favorites of mine; others I’m very much looking forward to meeting AND reading.

On the Road Again seems doubly appropriate, as I’ll be driving across Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, a mini-adventure. I’ve asked my terrific publicist at Harper Collins to make sure I have a car with sat nav, as if I get lost in the cornfields I may never be seen again. And I’d better start making those road trip CDs.

And then on August 11th I’ll be flying to the UK, where on the 13th I’ll be attending a Literary Event in Ludlow, Shropshire, organized by my friend Kate Charles, and featuring nine authors. (More info to follow.) August 15-17th I’ll be in Oxford at St. Hilda’s College Mystery and Crime Conference, but as a guest this time rather than as a speaker. I’m very much looking forward to a weekend of visiting with friends and listening to great talks on mystery. After Oxford, it’s back to London for sixteen days, where I’ll be staying in the East End, the setting of the next book, Necessary as Blood.

Then October 9-12th I’ll be in Baltimore at Bouchercon 2008, Charmed to Death, a terrific event.

And in between all this traveling (and while on the road) I’ll be working on the new Duncan and Gemma novel, but more about that next time . . .

Yes, I’m back from England, and I promise I will take up where I left off writing about my trip, even if after the fact, but for now I hope readers will forgive a momentary American digression (and the word play.  Couldn’t resist.)

Yesterday was the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby, and Derby day is a small ritual for me.  My father, who died in May of 2003, loved racing.  For a number of years when I was growing up, my parents owned a second home in Arkansas, and we always caught a part of the thoroughbred racing season in Hot Springs, and sometimes the Arkansas Derby, one of the big prep races for the Kentucky Derby.  My father wasn’t a true gambler; he made a small carefully worked out bet on each race because he liked to study the form, and if he came out ahead at the end of the day, he considered it a bonus to the pleasure of the outing.  From him I learned to study the horses in the paddock, and to stand at the rail at the finish, as close as I could get to the smells and sounds and motion as the horses tore by.

And I was a horsey child, fed on Black Beauty and Marguerite Henry’s King of the Wind, dreaming of Walter Farley’s Black Stallion, photos of Man of War and Secretariat taped to my bedroom walls.  Then in my teens (when the horse pictures came down and the rock stars went up)  I discovered Dick Francis, an irresistible combination of horses AND mystery, and thereafter bought every new release to share with my dad.  My father never managed to get to Churchill Downs for the Run for the Roses, but we always watched the Derby together, and the Preakness, and the Belmont, and against the odds we always hoped for a Triple Crown winner.

I’m both sorry and glad that he missed yesterday’s race, for it  was glorious and devastating: Big Brown, the favorite, romped across the finish as if he’d been for an outing in the park, and looks as if he might be the first horse to capture all three races in thirty years, since Affirmed took home the Crown in 1978.  But Eight Belles, the only filly in the race, finished a game second, then broke down and collapsed on the track.  Both her front ankles were fractured and she was immediately euthanized.  My father would have felt the loss of this beautiful horse deeply, as do I, but he would have looked forward to the next two races with undimmed enthusiasm, as will I.

And in the meantime, if I decide I prefer Pimms No. 1 Cup to mint juleps, and if I occasionally slip up and say "darby" rather than "derby", a little cross-cultural confusion only adds to the fun.  (And I can wear a silly hat at a horse race on either side of the Pond.)

Actually, the term “high tea” for the posh afternoon sort of thing with tea and scones is a misnomer, but it worked better in the title than “afternoon tea,” which is the correct term. But since my favorite place for afternoon tea closed, the Basil Street Hotel near Harrod’s, I had been promising myself that I would have tea in the Orangery (left) in Kensington Palace Gardens, and so yesterday took advantage of the sunny day–how to resist a walk through Hyde Park, and a gawp at Kensington Palace, although I didn’t go in the palace proper.

The Orangery is tucked away behind Kensington Palace, and has its own beautifully landscaped gardens. What better way to while away an hour or so, drinking tea, writing, and gazing out the windows. Except the park and day beckoned, as did this little door set into what I think must be the nether regions of the palace itself. There is nothing more intriguing to the imagination than a door marked PRIVATE.

And then the park . . . I debated over which photo to include, because no photo can do justice to Hyde Park on a sunny–if cold and a bit windy–spring afternoon. I’m not sure that such a thing is meant to be recorded, but must, I think, be experienced. Babies toddling in the bright green grass; bikers biking (although I’d prefer they not be the mad ones that run you down if you’re not careful); benches to be sat upon and deck chairs to be lounged in; dogs running off lead, chasing balls and squirrels, real or imaginary. And although I’m not sure it’s allowed, there should be small boys and girls sailing wooden boats on the Round Pond.

There are daffodils and bluebells and grape hyacinths in the grass, the camelias are fading, the rhodedendrons just coming into bloom, the buds unfurling on tender trees and roses, and all the human faces are living sunflowers, turned towards the light. Glorious indeed.

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I promised I’d post everyday from London, and as of Thursday I will have been here two weeks. That’s always the way it goes with these visits–never near enough time to get in all the things I need and want to do. I’ve been researching the book-in-progress (more on that later) and taking a few pictures for the illustrator of the maps in the US editions, Laura Maestro (more on that later as well.) But I’ve also been doing the very ordinary things I love most; just enjoying London, and Notting Hill in particular. The weather was absolutely foul the first few days-raining, sleeting, snowing, then raining, sleeting, and snowing some more, and I spent my first Saturday at Portobello Market, something always very much looked forward to, freezing. It was so windy and miserable that stalls were blowing down, and many of the stall-holders gave up after a gallant struggle and packed it in for the day. And no, I didn’t get any pictures of the market in sleet and snow, as I was feeling too protective of my new camera, and besides, my hands were numb.

But with the usual capriciousness of London weather, by the time I had walked from the bottom of Portobello Road back up the hill, the sun had come out, and I was able to snap this shot of a magenta door on Kensington Park Road, with yellow forsythia in bloom in the garden. The photo is deceptive, however, as it looks like a lovely spring day, but it was still ferociously cold.

By the next Saturday, spring had made a bit more progress, as you can see from this shot taken at the intersection of Portobello Road and Chepstow Villas, where Portobello Market really begins.

A false promise once again, however, because by the time I’d got half way down Portobello, it had started to rain and blow, and while not as cold as the previous Saturday, the wind turned my umbrella wrong side out and broke it–a common London hazard, and I ended the afternoon soaked, looking like a drowned rat, and desperately in search of warmth and TEA!

Still, it was Portobello, and not to be missed, weather be damned!

Sorry about the pun–couldn’t resist. Nor could I resist putting up more than one photo, as we had an exceptional morning and I couldn’t choose between my favorites. We had three to four inches of snow last night, which for McKinney, Texas, on the 3rd of March is quite something. It was certainly our only snowfall this winter, and probably ranks right up there as far as overall snowfall in our temperate clime.

And as you can see, the dogs LOVED it. Neela (on the left) wasn’t too sure about putting her paws in that nasty cold white stuff last night, but once she learned she could run in it, there was no stopping her. This morning dawned crisp and perfectly clear, and we went out for a romp early to make the most of our snow day. This was one of our usual walks, on a dead-end hike-and-bike path called Preservation Trail, but transformed into a white wonderland!

The dogs ran and rolled and played and took big bites of snow, and I snapped away with my little Canon IXY like mad. Not bad action shots for my little pocket camera, although I had to delete the snap of Neela with a big glob of snow on her nose as it was too out of focus.

The dogs look so fierce with their teeth showing, but it’s pure play. The snow and cold make Hallie, who’s ten, feel like a puppy, and you can definitely tell who’s top dog.

After an hour we went home wet, cold, and happy. By midday only traces of snow remained, and the town square was running with rivers of melting slush.

But just for a night (another post to follow with photos from last night) and a day, we got to pretend we lived in New England . . . or perhaps even England.

Just wanted to say thanks to all those who have posted and sent emails the last couple of months.  I’ve been writing like a mad person since October finishing Where Memories Lie, which is now in the very capable hands of my editor at William Morrow.  Not that I wasn’t writing before that, it’s just that the first part of the process tends to be slow for me, and it took my trip to London in October to really kick start the second half of the book.  For all the impatient readers out there, I’m trying to find a way to speed up the research/plotting part, so that I can write a book in less time (and not have to work quite so hard at the end.)

I’ll be going to London in March, doing the preliminary scout for the next book, which will be #13 in the series.  Hmmm.

In the meantime, I thought others might enjoy London Daily Photo as much as I have the last few months–it’s the next best thing to being there.

A beautiful autumn day yesterday. This is a Texan’s reward for suffering through the summer–we breeze through October and early November in seventy-degree bliss, until the first Arctic cold front dips down from Canada (in Texas we call this a Blue Norther, not sure why) and the shorts and flip-flops are abandoned in a scurry for our stored woolies. But in the meantime, walking the dogs in the woods with golden leaves catching the sunlight as they drifted through the trees, I thought, ah ha, photo op, and so this morning took along my camera. And discovered that it goes against the laws of physics to freeze two big dogs, running happily loose in the forest, in the same frame. If you call out to them, they run towards you and you get snouts in the lens. If you try the candid op, you get waving tails and furry behinds. In the end, this was the best I could do, one in focus and one a blur of motion, and in the process I discovered why professional photographers are so agile. To get eye (or nose) level with a moving canine requires putting one’s body in positions a professional trainer would envy. The motto, I suppose, is that while I tried to capture a moment, the dogs lived in it.

I visited the new Whole Foods Market in Kensington High Street with great anticipation; after all, this is a Texas store that has morphed into a giant, and this is its first venture into the UK (gobbling up any rival natural foods stores in the process.) It’s a beautiful building, tucked just in front of The Daily Mail, but rather than the comfortable familiarity I suppose I was expecting, I found it rather scarily corporate. The first floor has a sushi bar, an oyster bar, a pizza station, a juice bar . . . and a DJ, along with lots of green and very expensive spa and decorative items. A long way from the early funky stores in Austin and Dallas, when you could have a contest to see which cashier had the most piercings and tatoos. Still, later in my visit, all over London I saw shoppers proudly carrying WFM bags with their groceries or dinners, so it looks like WFM UK is on its way.

This is my favorite Portobello Market photo–a juxtaposition of the traditional grocers’ van parked perfectly in front of the Starbucks near the bottom of Portobello Road, new meets old. In fact, I have this print framed in my kitchen. Portobello’s traditional fruit and vegetable vendors are struggling to hold their own against the influx of chain stops, and I can’t bear to imagine the market without them.