I'm sitting in the living room with a fire burning, watching the snow come down.  I should really go out and shovel the front steps and courtyard, but I really don't want to.  We drove through a mix of rain, snow, sleet and sun yesterday as Pat and I made our way back from Los Angeles.

The worst part of the journey was the final few miles from the south end of Santa Fe to the house.  I drove through desnse fog that swallowed the tail lights of the cars in front of me within just a few feet.  I could barely see the lines on the highway.  I crawled home at 30 miles an hour, and it was white knuckles all the way.

Because of the weather it ended up adding a couple of hours to the drive.  Santa Fe to L.A. can certainly be done in  a day, especially if you have a companion.  I'm not sure I could do it alone, but I may give it a try when I go back late this month.

I also realize how much I love Los Angeles.  I love the energy of the place, the restaurants, the beach, the quality of horses in the area, the fact there is so much to do.  Yes, if you have to commute on a daily basis it can suck, but I'm a writer.  I can adjust the times that I travel.

Every winter I think "I'll sell this house and move west."  Then spring comes and I think, "Not yet", but this year the need to get out is stronger than ever.  I was actually born in L.A., at the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital so maybe I'm being drawn home.

What I really want is to be rich enough to have a small place in L.A. and keep my N.M. house.  I'm deadly serious about this -- if anyone would like to rent a spectacular custom home 17 miles from the Plaza in Santa Fe, and an hour from the Santa Fe ski basin, two and a half miles from a high end riding facility complete with indoor arena, let me know.  I could leave it mostly furnished.

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Curse the Cassutt's!  They are pushers of great books!  So I blogged about The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo a few days ago.  Now I can talk about The Girl Who Played with Fire, the sequel.  I read it in, basically, a day.  I sat up until 11:00 pm to finish it and this was the night before I had to make the drive back to N.M.

I thought this one ended a bit abruptly, but it was edge of your seat, frantic page turning all the way to the end.  Not only does he create compelling mysteries, he created people I really cared about.  The good people are decent but flawed and even the bad guys have reasons for what they do.  They're complicated -- like real people.

He also had an amazing ability to switch POV, sometimes in the middle of a page, and not make me crazy.  It's a very hard thing to pull off, and he did it.  The only other writer I've seen who did it even more effortlessly was Georgette Heyer.

There were also a fairly large number of POV characters which I generally don't like.  That was one minor drawback to the book, but the story was so compelling I didn't find myself becoming irritated.

The third book isn't available in the U.S. yet, but the Cassutt's scored a British edition.  When I return to L.A. I hope they've finished reading so I can start the third one.

Alas there will be no more.  The author died at a very young age.  He was also one of the good people.  He kept track of right wing, and neo-Nazi movememts in Sweden, and exposed them.  I gather there were many threats and a great deal of stress, but he was determined to sound the alarm about these crazies.  Wish we had a greater awareness of that toxic thread in this country because it's on the rise.

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