My dear friend Allen, who I miss a lot, was invited to go sailing on Long Island Sound (hard G, please). He sent me this photo, captioned, “what the well-appointed luxury sailing yacht wears on its navigation table.”
I love it.
So, if you happen to be in Western Montana this weekend, come to Missoula for the Montana Festival of the Book. It looks like it’s going to be a good one. I will be in exceptionally good company, as you can see:
Friday, October 24
2:30 p.m.
Crime Pays Panel
w/Peter Bowen, Alafair Burke, Craig Johnson, and Neil McMahon
Holiday Inn Ballroom A/B
Saturday, October 25
2:30 p.m.
Reading
w/Neil McMahon and Craig Johnson
Holiday Inn Yellowstone/Glacier
You can find the full schedule of events here.
I meant to post this sooner, but what with Bouchercon and all, it’s been a busy week. Long story short: my short story, “Untitled,” was the second runner-up in the “Chicago Crime Writers Competition,” sponsored by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, Time Out Chicago, and Intelligentsia. The first round was judged by Vintage Books editorial staff, and Michael Harvey (The Chicago Way, 2007; The Fifth Floor, 2008) ranked the finalists with help from TOC’s books editor, Jonathan Messinger.
A longer version of “Untitled” exists–much, much longer–but the contest rules capped story length at 3,000 words and I figured that a pair of scissors never hurt anything (except, of course, the eyes of running children who ignore their mothers’ admonitions).
Check out the first runner-up, “Still Life,” by Lori Rader-Day, and the winner, “The Cutting,” by Chad Sanborn, too!
Marshal Zeringue, the one-man army behind the Campaign for the American Reader, asked me to apply the Page 69 Test to One Nation, Under God. Though he has a very impressive list of test-takers, for a little while I wondered what, other than a nice link-back, could result from examining a single page out of context.
To find out, I launched my book launch party with a reading of page 69 and received an enthusiastic response. Then I mulled it over and wrote a short post for the Page 69 Test blog. Nothing earth-shaking, but it is fun to think about what any single page does or doesn’t say about the work as a whole. I still have unanswered questions, though: why did Marshall McLuhan, the test’s creator, choose page 69 in particular? Was he feeling frisky? And was Marshal Zeringue fated to carry out McLuhan’s notion due to a shared (almost) first name?
Or was McLuhan making fun of Ford Madox Ford’s Page 99 Test?