Actually, it’s brown, but  I’ve carried a tiny, leather notebook for at least a decade. I have a stash of new inserts and when one is full I pull it out, date the cover, and thumb through it to remind myself of the contents.

• Notes on a lecture by Ray Kurzweil, creator of the concept of the Singularity, predicting computer technology in the coming 20 years: “self-replicating technologies,” the proliferation of malevolent software (and how to stop it), and other gems of futuristic vision.

• Notes from a February 2006 MWA meeting that included especially grisly information about bodies after death, example: cherry red skin color indicates carbon monoxide poisoning. (I’m leaving out the more graphic examples.)

• Quotes from what was obviously a stimulating lecture on the masks we wear in society by University of Chicago faculty member and author Wendy Doniger: “The reason I hate spending an evening with boring people is not that they bore me but that I bore me because of the mask I wear.” Good stuff for a writer of social satire.

• A drawing of a cool porch swing I saw in Bali and dreamed I might one day build for the porch of the house I might one day have…

• A raft of hastily written notes that helped solve a major plot problem in the book I was working on, which became MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT (2010)

Other notebooks have detailed descriptions of people I see in restaurants, tantalizing snatches of overheard conversation, hand drawn maps of streets I want to use as settings in books, and names of fascinating people I met, or books that someone recommended.

Do I use this stuff? Maybe not all of it, not directly, not so far. But some, definitely, and as for the rest, who knows when a character of mine might realize she’s put on a mask to hide something vital from someone else? And, because we can all dream, I might win the lottery, get that house with a porch someday, and need a swing!

(Post revised from December 2010 LadyKillers blog post.)

LOCATION, LOCATION: Memorable places and the authors who create them

A partial list I started and others contributed to this week. Thank you and don’t hesitate to add your own on this blog page. There are several I haven’t read and that are going on to my TBR list right now!

American Plains in MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather

Bath, England in PERSUASION by Jane Austen

Boston area in MYSTIC FALLS by Dennis Lehane

Chernobyl in WOLVES EAT DOGS by Martin Cruz Smith

Communist Laos in THE CORONER’S LUNCH by Colin Cotterill

Cuba in HAVANA BAY by Martin Cruz Smith

Georgia mountain country in DELIVERANCE by James Dickey

Heaven in SUM by neuroscientist David Eagleman

India in THE GAME by Laurie King

Japan in feudal times in THE 1000 AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET by David Mitchell

Lake Superior in A SUPERIOR DEATH by Nevada Barr

Massilia (Marseille) in LAST SEEN IN MASSILIA by Steven Saylor

Moscow in WAR AND PEACE by Tolstoy

Navajo country in SKINWALKERS by Tony Hillerman

Niagara Falls in THE FALLS by Joyce Carol Oates

Northern Africa in THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles

Occupied France in SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky

Paris in MURDER IN THE SENTIER by Cara Black

Port of Chicago in DEADLOCK by Sara Paretsky

Post World War I England in MAISIE DOBBS by Jackie Winspear

Shanghai in SHANGHAIED by Eric Stone

Sicily in THE SMELL OF THE NIGHT by Andrea Camilleri

The high seas in MASTER AND COMMANDER by Patrick O’Brian

Victorian London in BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens

“Cyborg” is a term I have heard around for decades. Something to do with robots, outer space, Star Trek, Hal in 2001, A Space Odyssey. More recently, I’ve been hearing “Cyberpunk” and wondering if that’s a guy with a mohawk, leather jeans, and the inability to be killed.

So, okay, I’m not up on the term. But over dinner last night, a friend began talking about a TED Talk and it woke me up from my indifference in a hurry.

Wikipedia begins an entry on “Cyborg” by defining it, classically, as a living creature with both “biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts.” While I’m digesting this, and thinking I get it, Wiki editors add, “The cyborg is often seen today merely as an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology.” Ah, prosthetic hands and those amazing prosthetic legs operated by muscles in the face or even brain signals. Thrilling, important, I’m for it. Bio-engineering, brain-computer interface, A.I. – very cool stuff and no longer the fevered dreams of science fiction writers and comic books artists.

But wait – my friend was talking about cyborgs in the context of social media and feminism, and I realize I haven’t been paying attention. She’s excited because she listened to a TED Talk by Amber Case, a “cyborg anthropologist” and, apparently, a leader in the tech world, who graduated from college in 2008. 2008! Case is looking at the ways technology has fused with social activity, has changed us, how we are fundamentally different, are looking at and interacting with our environment as cyborgs. (Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg.)

http://blog.ted.com/2011/01/11/we-are-all-cyborgs-now-amber-case-on-ted-com/

These are big ideas and I need time to try them on. Frankly, though, I’m still reeling over Amber Case’s degree of prominence only two years out of college. I commend you, Cyborg Woman, and will hold an image of you riding across the landscape on a hover-cycle, orange mohawk and leather jeans proclaiming your place in the new cyberworld order as I sit here hooked into my computer, checking my Facebook friends and sending tweets into the ether like the social cyborg I have become.

(with apologies for posting late – lesson for the day: it’s not enough to write a post…)

Walter Kim’s “My Cart, My Self” essay in the Sunday New York Times (January 2) inspired me to check on what Amazon.com’s algorithms think I might enjoy reading. It’s a challenge, given that I am an author with a book for sale on the site, a parent and grandparent, and a frequent book buyer for other people. So, here goes:

Starting at the page for my own mystery, I learn that people who bought my book also bought Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (I’m flattered) and Mary Anna Evans’ Strangers. Aha – she’s a fellow blogger on LadyKillers, so there’s a real connection.

My cart page says people who bought the book currently in my cart, Canterbury Tales with illustrations by the amazing Arthur Szyk, whose art I just saw at a local museum, also bought Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. But the edition of Fairy Tales is illustrated by someone else. And now I see I’m being invited to consider Grimm’s Fairy Tales and A Christmas Carol, so we’re drifting out of focus.

Back to the book department and, as I browse, a new set of recommendations appears: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint, next to Oliver Twist and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Yes, I possess a liberal arts degree, but this seems pretty generic.  Alice in Wonderland, The Divine Comedy…honestly, Amazon, now you’re really fishing.

So, I go back to Murder in the Abstract, and start again. And learn that customers who bought my book also chose A Short History of Women: A Novel, by Kate Walbert. It’s possible only one person has bought my book on Amazon recently and she – I’m guessing it’s a she – bought Walbert’s book, which I’ll have to look up. But now, the algorithm’s going all out. It’s posted a raft of other authors “my” buyers also purchased: Patricia Cornwell, Tana French, Stieg Larsson, Hilary Mantel, Nevada Barr…a meaty list of writers I get to rub shoulders with in – and only in – this virtual space in a variant of “six degrees of separation.”