I'm back in NYC, done with B-con and on my way to Germany for the Frankfurt book festival. B-con was a blast and deserves a real post, so it'll have to wait till I get back. I will say that it was really great to reconnect with all my old friends and meet new ones. It's also great to put names to faces and meet people I only "know" thorough blogs or online correspondence. I ate both good and bad crabcakes and learned how to correctly pronounce the phrase "monkey in the cupboard." I made it through all my panels without anyone realizing that I had no idea what I was talking about and managed to get out of there with only four books. Three of them I'll just ship back to LA to join the TBR pile but the fourth, THE MERCY SEAT by Martyn Waites, is going with me on the plane. I foolishly thought I'd just check out the the first few pages on the train back to New York and couldn't put the damn thing down. At this rate I may even finish it tonight. Good call, Donna!

I'm in NYC now, all set to hop a train down to Baltimore tomorrow noon.

Dinner at Jean George was amazing. I had the autumn tasting menu. I don't have time to post a full rundown but everything was delicious, complex and intriguing. My only (very minor) criticism is the kumamoto oyster amuse wasn't quite as transcendentally perfect as Chef Damon's kumamotos with ginger and cracked pepper granita. Or maybe I'm just spoiled. But I really enjoyed the meal, and I can now add "tasting menu at a 3 Michelin star restaurant" to my Omnivore's Hundred list.

I really do miss New York. No matter how long I live in LA or how much I've grown to love my adopted city, I always feel a profound sense of home here.

But alas, I'm off.

I’m in NYC now, having arrived at the ass-crack of dawn after an extremely bumpy red-eye flight filled with babies and kids. The only thing that saved me from going ballistic and trying to make a Molotov cocktail using my 3 ounces of mouthwash was Donna Moore’s wicked, brilliant and hilarious send-up of hardboiled PI novels GO TO HELENA HANDBASKET. Although I don’t advise that you read it on a night flight because people were giving me serious stink-eye when I couldn’t stop laughing out loud. Luckily I was mostly drowned out by the terrified toddlers.

Yesterday morning I had a lovely breakfast with Darren at the Nob Hill Grill and then went to get a broken nail repaired. If anyone tries to tell you that I knocked over a bottle of red nail polish all down the front of the nice Vietnamese nail lady’s white shirt, it’s a totally outrageous, malicious, bald-faced lie. Glamorous, suave divas like me never do that sort of thing. The rest of the afternoon was spent thrift-shopping with Megan, Allison and the very gracious Sara Gran, who has apparently forgiven me for being such a snarky bitch about COME CLOSER on this blog. I valiantly resisted buying anything more than a vintage handkerchief with a pattern of books that could have been owned by the naughty bookstore girl in THE BIG SLEEP.

The Noir City signing was a smashing success. They had copies of MONEY SHOT which was a nice, unexpected surprise, and they also sold out, an even better surprise. Tonight is my reading with Ardai at the KGB bar. See you there!

The Day of the Dead is a holiday to remember the past and those who have passed on. In the spirit of remembering, I posted a new photo set on Flickr. Now that my dad has moved away from the Bronx, I don’t know when I’ll ever be back up there in my old neighborhood. So I took a bunch of photos of ordinary things that I might never see again, to help me remember.

I also posted some old drawings I did when I was a kid. Proof that I’ve always been like this, although I’ll admit, I’m pretty disturbed by the disproportionate number of creepy clown drawings. Just call me Christa Wayne Gacy.

I’m off to NYC, doing a last minute sweep and clear to get my dad packed up and moved out. I probably won’t have time to post till I get back, but in the meanwhile, check out cozy rebel Sue Ann Jaffarian’s post about subgenre labels, our combined book launch, the cozy vs. noir kafuffle and why you should just read.

More on that later.

I hit my deadline, but there hasn’t been much time to relax since Tuesday. Here’s a quick overview.

First of all, I had to cancel my book trailer shoot over the weekend because the owner of the location was stuck behind the flaming truck pile up on the 5 freeway. I’m in the process of rescheduling but it looks like it won’t be until the second week of November at the earliest.

I did an interview for Publishers Weekly yesterday. I felt pretty good about the written half but always feel a little less confident of phone interviews. I’m always sure that I’m babbling incoherently, but the gal conducting the interview was pretty friendly and informal so I’m probably just being too hard on myself as usual. I don’t know when they'll run it, but when I find out, you guys will be the first to know.

I’m getting implants on Monday. Three of them! No, not breast implants, tooth implants. From what I understand, I won’t be getting the new teeth right away, because they need to do some bone grafting (!) that needs time to heal first. Regardless, I loathe going to the dentist for any reason and this will be all kinds of no fun. I will be stocking up on ice cream, soup, and vintage monster movies. Any hot, chubby girls out there want to squeeze into a latex nurse costume and come over to take care of me? Required duties will mostly consist of bending over to pick things up.

Then, the following week I will be flying back home to NYC to help my dad get squared away to move out to LA. The house is sold and ready to close and all that’s left is clearing out the last of the junk, packing him up and dealing with his two scaredy cats who need to be caught (they are way too shy to pick up, let alone put voluntarily into crates) vetted and shipped to my vet out here for boarding while my dad scores a new pad.

Also, at some point during all this madness, I’m hoping to score another work-for-hire gig and oh yeah, maybe actually find time to work on something real. Imagine that.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but I’m back in LA and trying to shake off the jet lag and exhaustion. My father’s beautiful, Victorian house is finally clean, clutter-free and on the market.

The process of cleaning and purging and sorting through a lifetime of stuff turned up a lot of interesting artifacts. Boxes filled with illustrated “novels” I had written as a child, most of them glued together with mildew and falling to pieces. Favorite childhood books that had been read to rags and fixed repeatedly with duct tape. A scrapbook my father made for my mother before I was born, filled with love songs he had composed for her and smiling, smitten photos of them together. They divorced when I was a toddler. I have no memory of my parents as a couple.

I think I lost five pounds just from sweat, hauling boxes of records and books through the Bronx summer swelter. But it’s done, and now I’m ready to get back to work of a more cerebral nature.

Things are very up in the air right now on what will be next, fictionwise. There are several irons in the fire at the moment, but I also have another ghost gig and I’m working on publicity for MONEY SHOT as well.

I managed to sneak away and get together with Ardai and Megan Abbot while I was in NYC. (If you haven’t read her drop-dead brilliant new novel QUEENPIN, go order it right now. I’ll wait.) We enjoyed too much coffee and great conversation and made plans to take over the world.

There are a few other things I need to post about, but they each deserve their own entry.