Talk about bad recon work!

Yesterday was my first day back from vacation.
I'd spent most of Monday weeding the inbox down to a managable number and creating a To Do list to choke a shark.

Got to the office at the crack of yawn to start in.

And realized it's pub day for the new Jack Reacher novel.
The novel that is sitting here on my desk, tempting me. Tormenting me.

What kind of idiot was I to come back on pub day for the latest Lee Child novel?

Well done, good and faithful friend

The Wiggly One

When the Fabulous Stephanie Evans became my client, there was the delicate problem of what to call her.  She had a perfectly lovely name of course, but it was also the name of the head of our company here at FPLM. 

We thought it would be hilarious to call her "Miss Texas" since she lived in Sugar Land and wrote great books set there too.

Well, no. Stephanie scotched that at once. "I do NOT have big hair," she said (only much more nicely because she is, after all, from Texas)

So we tried a couple more iterations.  By then we'd gotten several photos from her featuring her two adorbable pugs. 

So "Pugnacious" it was and is, in honor of her tenacity and her beloved canine companions Mr. Wiggles and TommyLee Jones.

Mr. Wiggles was old in the way that that oak trees are old: solid and falling apart all at once. Bad vision, bad hearing, bad hips, but never ever bad tempered.

Today, Mr. Wiggles' work here is finished and he goes on to greater things.   I'm glad he will live on in the next book SAFE FROM HARM. I'm glad I knew him.

He is and always will be Quite The Dog.

TommyLee (l) and Mr. Wiggles (r)

When the world needs writers most

Watching the Colorado fires that have devastated homes and habitats.

Image by Rick Wilking / Reuters

More images are here.

Toni McGee Causey talks about the need for writers in time of trouble better than I ever could.

Adrienne Rich has died

"For The Dead"


I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight

from BryantMcGill

Notice of her death in the LA Times

iSad indeed

last image was found here

This is what is happening in the Catskills

I'm watching for a place to donate relief funds.  When I know I'll post it here.

I will never stop missing you

David Foster Wallace left a huge hole in the hearts of his readers and fans, not to mention his friends and family when he took his own life two years ago.

His wife, artist Karen Green, has a show called "Sure is Quiet" that, without mentioning her husband directly, is about his death.

The New York Times article about the show is here.

Kate Duffy, Kensington editor, has died

Here is a lovely piece about Kate's impact on a writer she didn't know or publish.

Crime novelist Barbara Parker has died

Does it seem like a lot of crime novelists are off to the Great Library in the Sky lately?

Barbara Parker, of whom I was and am a devoted fan, has joined that list.

Oline Cogdill has a more in the Sun-Sentinel

(via Sarah Weinman)

John Updike has died

Rabbit at rest, indeed.

Here's the link to the Times article.

One brick at a time

Last month I attended the Black Orchid banquet sponsored by the Nero Wolfe Society. One of the speakers was Jonathan Santlofer, author of the The Death Artist, among other books. He mentioned he'd turned to writing after a career in painting. He'd stopped painting when one day after a major exhibit, five years of his paintings were destroyed in a fire.

When I heard those words I didn't know if I was going to cry or throw up. Both seemed quite possible. I couldn't even speak to Mr. Santlofer after the event cause the only thing I could think about was that fire, even though it was clear he had come to terms with the loss, and rebuilt a new and satisfying creative life.

Fire is my worst fear. I know exactly what I'd take if we had 25 seconds to leave the building. Close friends of mine have had that experience in NYC: FDNY pounds on the door and says "get out NOW." You get over it but you never forget. We don't exactly have traditional fire drills, but we talk about what we'd take, where it's located, how we'd get out if the stairwell is blocked. We don't obsess, it's not some sort of well thought out plan, but we think about it more than just casually.

I know fire is a fear shared by many of my neighbors. I laugh about the smoke detector going off a lot, but when it does, and doesn't stop, my neighbors are in the hallway, making sure things are under control.

Close friends have spent a lot of money to scan all their original music compositions onto disk. A fire would have destroyed an entire career if the music had burned.

Thus it was with a heavy heart I learned our friend Travis Erwin has experienced a terrible fire, one that consumed his entire house. The people are safe, but the house is gone.

Susan Adrian's blog lists ways to help.

Please join me in doing so if you feel so inclined.

Donald Westlake, a great writer, has died

A file obituary is in the Times today, and Sarah Weinman has an early post.

There will be more, much more, to come.

His loss is a sad and bitter end to 2008.

Michael Crichton dies

News just off the CNN wire that Michael Crichton has died.

I still remember reading The Andromeda Strain and of course Jurassic Park.

A sad day indeed.

Cornelia Read on Elaine Flinn

Sad news from Eugene, Oregon that mystery writer Elaine Flinn has died of cancer. Lifted straight off the Murderati blog is Cornelia Read's perfect tribute:



The Flinns were the smartest family in Carmel, California, and the coolest. I used to hang out with Elaine's daughter Kelly and her gang of irregulars eating crepes at a little place in town, under the stairs where I. Magnin used to be, on Ocean Avenue. We would snark and laugh for hours.

The very first time Kelly took me to her house to meet Elaine and Joe, everyone was talking about Dave Brubeck.

As a teenage hippie kid raised on Donovan and Hendrix, I had no idea who this was.

"Dave Brubeck? 'Take Five'?" asked Elaine and Joe.

I stood there dumbly.

"Are you fucking serious?" asked Elaine, patting me on the shoulder. "Oh, you poor kid."

"Take Five" has been one of my favorite songs ever since.

And I learned early that it was F-L-I-N-N, never with a "Y," because Flinn was the REAL Irish spelling and Flynn was evidence of the lasting taint of British oppression, which is something you do not fuck around about in the presence of this family.

After that I ended up going east to school, and stayed there a good while. Kelly and I kept in touch sporadically, 3000 miles apart.

When I joined MWA NorCal, about six years ago, I noticed one particular name in the membership list. Elaine Flinn. With an "I."

I emailed immediately: "Kelly's mom, Elaine Flinn?"

She wrote me back about sixty seconds later: "Cornelia, where the hell have you been? Welcome, kid."

I can picture her really clearly right now, sitting at the Great Conference Bar with Tony Hillerman, a glass of Jack Daniels in her hand. She's dressed impeccably, as always, and she just said something smart and funny and wicked that cracked him right the hell up.

There's Brubeck on the jukebox, too.

My heart goes out to Elaine's husband Joe, to Kelly and Sharon and Patrick. Theirs is a great, great loss.

It is ours as well.

Elaine was damn good people. I am so lucky to have known her.

Yo mothafucka Meow

My pal Val died yesterday. Pulmonary hypertension, a lung condition that she'd had for a year probably contributed to her death. She wasn't yet 50. She'd refugeed out of New Orleans ahead of Katrina; she'd only moved to New Orleans a few years before to be with friends.

I adored her. We shared the same deeply perverse view of the world. We were sarcastic sisters of St. Skeptic. She made me laugh every time I talked with her.

She talked about coming to New York periodically but she never quite made the trip. She was aghast at how much apartments cost here, and always told me what she got there in Texas for about what I paid here in New York (two bedrooms, living room, dining room and a garage for starters). I always said "yea Val, but it's in TEXAS" and we'd laugh.

She told me one of her cats was from New York. I said "how can that be, and besides, how would you know?"

Val said "cause this cat has attitude. I pet him and he looks up at me, yawns, and says 'yo mothafucka, meow'". Well I was on the floor of course, and forever after when she called, I answered with that phrase.

Val wasn't an important writer. She didn't do lifesaving work. She herself would have said she was just ordinary.

Well, Valerie wasn't ordinary at all to those of us who knew her and loved her. She was amazing. She was funny and smart, and fun to be with. What is ordinary now is the world without her presence.

She will be deeply missed. I only hope that when Saint Peter sees her at the Pearly Gates he knows to say "yo mothafucka, meow."

Madeleine L'Engle dies

Sad news from PW Daily just now

Madeleine L’Engle
Author Madeleine L’Engle died last night in Connecticut, at the age of 89. Best known for her 1963 Newbery Award winner A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, L’Engle was the author of more than 60 books for adults and young readers, most of which were published by FSG. This spring, the Square Fish imprint of Holtzbrinck reissued L'Engle's Time Quintet in new editions.

The cost of war is not money.

This is Marine Wedding, one of Nina Berman's photos from her show Purple Hearts currently at the Jen Bekman gallery.

Elizabeth Murray 1940-2007

I'm very sorry to see Elizabeth Murray has died.

I'm not sure I understand her work fully. I know I like it. For me it met the first criteria of art--the works are instantly recognizable as hers. It also meets the second--they're fun.

The Met did a show of her work last winter and it was always fun to see people's reactions coming into the gallery. Their faces just lit up.

Her work also plays with space and perception, something I appreciate in novels as well as paintings.

Here's more about Elizabeth Murray.

oh damn

Jackson's Books in Salem is closing.


I bought my first Robert Parker bookl, The Godwulf Manuscript, at Jacksons.
Katy King was on their best seller list, my first client on one.

I haven't been there in years given I live three thousand miles away now but the loss of a great indie store and the group of people who worked there is not a happy day.

Robin

There are a lot of ways to spend public money.
Wars.
Salaries for people to fight wars.
Ammunition for people to fight wars.
Equipment to keep people "safe" in wars.
Survivor benefits.


Seattle Washington doesn't have enough money for mental health services. Frankly, I'm embarrassed to write that. Seattle is my home town and I love the place even though I'm a devout New Yorker lo, these many years.

I found that statistic when I was searching for information about the death of a woman on Sunday July 16. She had a history of mental illness and called Harborview for help, saying gangs of people were after her. She wasn't sick enough for admittance.

She was Robin Raible. She was my first friend in first grade. My mother has known her mother since third grade.

Robin had perfect pitch. She introduced me to pop music. She was the only person I knew for years who had a canopy bed. She had the coolest name of everyone in our grade. She loved the color turquoise, and when I sign my letters these days with a turquoise pen it's a subtle connection to her.

Our paths diverted; I hadn't seen her in a long time. I can still tell you her phone number, her mom's address, where she was born, and her least favorite knock-knock joke. Those things stay with you a long time-a lifetime now I guess.

Her father was a Unitarian minister so I'm not surprised to hear Matthew 25:40 in my head: "what you do to the least of these, my brethren, you do to me".

Robin Starr Raible
always a star, always