En route to Left Coast Crime...

Greetings, all. I'll shortly begin the long drive up the coast to Monterey, site of this year's Left Coast Crime. Hope to see some of you there! I know I'll be seeing a few of my fellow Murderers: Jeff Siger, Cara Black and Annamaria Alfieri.

It's a spectacularly beautiful drive, especially if you have the time to divert to Highway 1 now and again. 

(this is actually from a train trip, because I am not in the habit of taking photos while driving)

One of my favorite sites en route is the elephant seal sanctuary. This is just south of Hearst Castle. 

But I'll probably have to drive straight through, which is a pity.

For all the travel I've done in various parts of the world, to my mind, there is still no better place on earth than my beloved California. One of these days, soon, I hope, I'm going to write a book that takes place here. 

Maybe Dorothy was right. There's no place like home.

That's about all I've got right now. I have a bag to pack, a cat-sitter to pick up at the airport, and, oh yeah, a novel to finish. Otherwise I've been obsessively following the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 — latest evidence tends to rule out that "startlingly simple" popular theory published in G+/Wired, and we're back to some sort of deliberate criminal act. But who knows? By tomorrow there could be something completely new that contradicts all the other "facts" that have been posited about this case. I'm pretty sure Courtney Love didn't find the plane, but if she did, it wouldn't be the strangest part of this story...

Given how fascinating and mysterious this case is, it's easy to lose sight of the lives that have been impacted by this tragedy. I can't begin to imagine what this must be like for the families of the passengers and crew. Not knowing. Having to allow for the slightest possibility of hope. Waiting. 

It's a reminder that as much as we all love crime fiction, as much as we love a good mystery, as writers, as readers, we might want to keep in mind what the human costs of our fictional deaths would actually be. Murder is everywhere, and it is in general a messy, tragic business.

Lisa…every other Wednesday...