Had strange dreams overnight that caused me to wake up needing to know the time difference between my old home in Northern KY and an odd hotel (and by odd, I mean nonexistent) in New Delhi, India. (For the record, New Delhi is 10.5 hours ahead of Union, KY, and therefore of Mondoville as well.) I live to inform.
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One afternoon early in the week, I saw a random student who looked like he was trying to racewalk — arms and hips swinging in that peculiar gait — coming down the sidewalk toward me. However, he was bent at about a 30-degree angle at the waist, and I said as he passed, “You’d do better if you stood straighter.”
Yesterday, I decided to watch a basketball doubleheader at the college gym, and since it was a gorgeous day (sunny, mid-60s), I decided to walk it. As I lumbered across the street, a truck passed, and I heard a voice: “You’d do better if you stood straighter.” One to you, random student.
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Also this past week, I got a look at the cover of Greasepaint and .45s, the clown-themed crime anthology that Ryan Sayles has put together for Down & Out Books. Chuck Regan’s cover painting seems to sum things up quite nicely.
They left one of the o’s out of Moore, but I suppose I’ll live.
The book contains my story “Command Performance”, and I’ll let you know when it’s available for pre-release orders.
Meanwhile, Lawrence Block’s At Home in the Dark antho, which includes my low-rent rock and roll story “Rough Mix”, will be available before too long as well — on 30 April, to be precise.
Again, you can rest easy knowing that I’ll keep you posted. Whether you’ll rest easy after reading the stories, on the other hand, is another question altogether.
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Meanwhile, I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of Tombland, the latest in C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series. While the fact that it seems to be a pituitary case of a book, coming in at nearly 900 pages, gives me qualms, I just can’t pass up the chance to spend more time with Sansom’s hunchbacked lawyer-cum-detective after a few years without word from the Tudor era. If you aren’t already familiar with the series, you could do a lot worse — it’s fun for fans of crime fiction and historical novels alike — Sansom has a Ph.D. in history from the U of Birmingham, so the details are typically very strong. But as ever for me, the real strengths in the series are in the characters, both Shardlake’s and the supporting cast. Check them out.
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And speaking of the Tudor era, I had best get back to prepping for my Shakespeare class — we’re doing Faustus and starting The Scottish Play this week. But I’ll go ahead and play you out with a bit of music. It’s a classic 60s garage punker, but why does everything have to be obscure. Besides — the Spawn and I were bellowing it around the house a couple of days ago, so here you go. Here are the Sonics, with one of my favorite songs from my favorite rock and roll era, and a reminder that there’s a case to be made for putting the vocals into the red.
See you soon!
