Authors Electric

  'April is the cruellest month," T, S. Eliot lied in The Waste Land. An American in London, he'd never been to Tucson in the blazing month of June. If he had, he'd have been less poetic and howled with his brain frying. The average June temperature--dry heat, as they like to say--is about 100 degrees, with highs of 110 or higher..  Yes, we have desert rats riding their bikes without t-shirts or caps. Then again, in Alaska some like to jog or skinny dip when the temp is minus 80 degrees F. For the most part many on both coasts make what peace they can with the weather. Having spent half my life in heavily snowbound places, I know what it's like to hibernate for 4-5 months a year. But I had trouble adjusting to the desert's stifling heat. At first, I resented my staying indoors, dehydrated and exhausted. Even with air conditioning and an overhead fan, the writer in me withered. From mid-May to mid-September, I lost the city that I'd come to love. And I felt ...

Life was a ride on the wild side when I was just a Hell's Angel. But the morning I found myself as Wyatt Earp approaching the OK Corral....life grew confusing and scary. While we gear up for the thirty-second gunfight, let me check on my Harley and try to explain. It all began, you see, with a WIP that I thought would be a cakewalk. Easy-peasy. For the fifth entry in my Seattle BOP mystery series, I wanted something simple after mountains of research that I'd had to climb for the fourth novel. Bingo: I'd send the two lead characters, Chief and Ammy off on a two week vacation. And on the way, to make this a mystery, they'd solve a simple pro bono. I couldn't stop thinking that a two-week motorcycle vacation would be perfect for the couple--though neither they nor I had ever set butt on a chopper. That didn't daunt me any more than my never having been to Arizona, where I thought to send them to deliver a pair of bikes while exploring the Southwest. Day by day, my...