Once more unto the beach.

I know I've been half-American for a few years now.

I know it was all to do with sorting out the travel mess because of that six-syllable volcano in Iceland.

But just for a moment there, my English sinews quivered and my heart swelled when I heard that Gordon Brown was dispatching an aircraft carrier toward the French coast.

Choc full . . . or not.

"Did you get any chocolate syrup when you went shopping?" Primus asks me.

"No, because we have two bottles in the fridge," I reply.

"Yeah, but they're both empty," he informs me.

Fifth grade logic. Or rather, fifth grade housekeeping.

The rudest placename in England.

Parts of the beautiful village of Fingringhoe in Essex date back to the twelfth century. It took the language of present-day hip-hop to make it sound dirty.

(After visiting the place and taking the pictures, I found that it had already been included in a book called Rude Britain. But the warped mentality that made me do a double-take when I passed the signpost is entirely my own work.)

Collector's item.

Talking of An Embarrassment of Corpses ("my Embarrassment," as I refer to it for short), the book came out toward the end of the year, perfectly timed for Christmas gifts but already past the deadline for Edgar Award consideration -- at least, that's my excuse. On Christmas Day that year, my brother-in-law Tom gave me a suspicious package, which turned out to be a copy of my own book.  And he and his then wife had autographed it for me, complete with their academic qualifications. Ha bloody ha. But at least it was a sale.

I used this book as my general tote-about copy, including the notes and page-turn cheats I needed when I made the audiobook. (And the egregious typos.) But then it occurred to me that if my in-laws were claiming to have written it, what if other people did as well. I started asking my fellow authors at conventions if they'd also claim it as their own and sign it to me. And they did. S. J. Rozan and Dale Fututani Flanagan added their chop. Carole Lea Benjamin added the signature and pawprint of the excellent Dexter. And memorably, Sparkle Hayter gave it a kiss-print. (Lucky book.)

The list of great mystery writers continues with (in no particular order, honestly) Val McDermid, Harlan Coben, Laura Lippman, Sujata Massey, Donna Andrews, Jerrilyn Farmer, Janet Lawrence, Barbara Jaye Wilson, Penelope Evans, Tom Savage, Gerald Schiller, Sue Henry, Joyce Christmas, Susan Moody, Polly Whitney, Dean James, Brenda English, Tom Kreisberg, Jackie Girdner, and Nancy Bartholomew. And my particular friends (this time in strict alphabetical order) Rhys Bowen, Meg Chittenden and Kathleen Taylor, who is often spotted around these parts. And now Gene Wilder, since I had the book with me at last week's conference. He's not a mystery novelist, but he did write the screenplay for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.

(I didn't have it with me for Janet Evanovovich, but she cheerfully wrote that she loved my work when she inscribed a copy of Hot Six for me. Of course, she's never heard of me. Who has?)

So long at the fair.

The boys' elementary school had its annual fair today. Secundus comes out of the book sale and thrusts a 2005 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records into my hand. (Clearly, I am the designated porter for the family. I walked home at the end of the day carrying a cake.)

"But you already have a later version of this," I protest.

"Yeah, but I don't have that one," he explains.

Third grade logic. Maybe I can find a buyer for last year's telephone directories?

* * * * *

Later, the organizers announce a desperate deal over the PA system -- grab a bagful of unsold books for $1. I have enough unread blocks of paper around the house, but to the bibliophile in me, this is the muezzin's call to prayer. I grab a five-minute respite from running the frog-flipping stand. The book room seems to be the place where lightly used copies of What to Expect When You're Expecting go to die. But there, on the hardback fiction table, still unsold despite the price -- a tattered, ex-library, ex-Salvation Army thrift store copy of my own An Embarrassment of Corpses. I buy it to give it a decent burial, but in the end give it to my friend and fellow mother Robin, who was handling the frogs in my absence.

(I wonder if another friend and fellow mother and fellow author, Annabel, has these problems?  She co-wrote a book called Click: The Girl's Guide to Knowing What You Want and Making it Happen, which was very popular around these parts. I have a feeling that her teenage readers aren't giving up that particular bible to school fairs anytime soon.)

Daddy dearest.

Mentioning Eddie Fisher a couple of posts back sent me to Wikipedia to confirm that the much-married singer is still alive, now into his eighties. And I found a great quotation. Reading his explicit tell-all book a few years back, daughter Carrie Fisher -- born a mere 60 days after me -- commented: "I'm thinking of having my DNA fumigated."

Progress retort.

Okay, you lazy git, I hear you cry, what of this so-called novel of yours, the raison d'etre of this blog?

When last we referred to This Private Plot, I was nearly at the end, having written the "reveal" chapter, with only the brief chase scene and the final mystifying plot twists still to go. Well, as I mentioned at the time, the reveal is clearly the point where you can see your entire clockwork edifice for the first time. I certainly decided there and then to tweak the mechanism -- removing clumsy threads, bolstering the identification of the killer with a couple of extra clues. No doubt there'll be more changes in later edits.

But I also realized that there were some glaring structural issues. I was holding too much back for this chapter, tipping a whole box of greasy padlocks onto the table to be picked instead of having the entire mystery solved by the gentle turn of a single tiny golden key. This is a plot-heavy book -- hence the title --  and so, amid the distractions of conferences, workshops, taxes, and Spring Break, I've been seriously shuffling the deck, dragging revelations to earlier places, lightening the load of the final stages. It's a bit like rebuttoning your cardigan after you discover you matched your first button to the wrong hole.

Most of this is in my head. Much of it is in note form, with diagrams and arrows. But just as I was about to go ahead and make the changes to the text, I remembered a timely piece of advice: Don't do any rewrites until you've completely finished your first draft.

Chastened by my betters, I pass this nugget on. And it makes sense. Why risk going through fifteen drafts without ever reaching the end? Isn't it better to make your changes after you've seen what the entire beast looks like? And why postpone that motivating sense of achievement that comes from typing the words "The End."

The End. (Or is it?)

A word from our sponsor.

Here's a great picture of the Unicorn Writers Conference's progenitor, my friend Maureen Amaturo, and her interviewee, our guest of honor. It was taken by Darren Wagner, the official photographer for the conference, who has very generously allowed us to use his images gratis.

Darren has prepared a dizzying slideshow of his conference coverage, which you can see on his website. You have to wait 4:30 minutes for my first appearance, and then I'm merely introducing the splendid Jeff Bens. In case you're interested, I reappear in my own right (write? Thanks, John L.) about half a minute later, wielding my stunningly lo-tech audio-visual and wearing the usual dorkish expression I have when I'm talking, i.e. all the time.

Too much information.

My personal indicator that a dinner party has gone on long enough is when the guests start comparing how many hours of sleep they need.

It's not the subtle signals that they're ready for bed. It's not even the vertiginous decline in the quality of the conversation. It's the blinkered, tone-deaf, puerile egomania that you think anybody else cares if you can do with less than seven as long as you can sleep in on the weekend. I know then that my life is too short to spend any more of it in the company of anyone so solipsistic. (Especially since I need a good seven and a half if I'm to function properly.)

And this is why I don't see the point of Twitter. Several years ago Garrison Keillor scornfully noted that the purpose of cell phones seemed to be to  "announce our progress through life." Tweeting perfects that. As W.S. Gilbert noted in The Gondoliers, "when everybody's somebody, then no one's anybody."

So imagine my complete horror at a snippet in the Personal Tech section of today's New York Times. (I only read it for the articles.) Somebody has invented a bathroom scale that's connected to Wi-Fi (does that still have to be capitalized?) When you step on it in the morning, your daily weight, lean and fat mass, and BMI can be uploaded instantly to a web site, an iPhone app, Twitter, and Google, so the world can check your avoirdupois.

And the tag line? The comforting news that if you don't want anyone else to know your weight, you can still buy the product but create a private Twitter account. So much hipper than putting on a pair of glasses and looking down between your feet at the bloody readout!

Oy. (164 pounds, but I've been raiding the boys' Easter candy.)


ADDENDUM
This whole business of people who mistake egocentricity for raconteurism reminds me of one my favorite quotes of all time, apocryphal or not.

(I know, I know -- I keep a blog going about my life, but nobody's forced to read it. Not yet, anyway, but if I ever get my hands on those negatives, people . . . Anyway, I'm interesting, dammit. Just ask . . . er  . . .)

Apparently, pop singer Eddie Fisher was on a 1950's TV show called "This is Show Business" and asked a panel of celebrities for advice on a problem, which was that women refused to date him because of his age -- he was in his twenties, but his fans were teenagers. The great writer George S. Kaufman was on the panel that night, and said:

"Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to twenty-four times the magnification of any telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the construction of the Mount Palomar telescope, an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn't be able to detect my interest in your problem."

I truly wish I'd said that, on innumerable tedious occasions.

You like me! You really like me!

I just got my evaluation from the Young Authors' Conference. Modesty forbids my reprinting the whole thing, but here's my favorite extract:

"Nice accent, powerful, and amazing."

All that and an Oxford comma. I told you these were the best kids in the world.