Monday, July 12, 2004

Laura Lippman

Well, another busy day of signings...I'm off tonight to see Laura Lippman. If anybody has any questions, let me know.

News and pics at 11PM

UPDATE: Well, this is the early morning Update after the power outage that lasted until 2AM UPDATE! Sorry for the delay.

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to meet the multi-talented Laura Lippman at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood. She was signing her latest novel By A Spider's Thread, the next installment in the PI Tess Monaghan series. There was a standing room only crowd - Bobby, Claire and Shelly (The Mystery Bookstore staff) along with my friend Alan and me. Never the less, Laura was a good sport and talked to us for the entire hour as she signed our books and the bookstore stock. I was lucky enough to get to sign my copy of Like A Charm, the anthology that was put together by Karin Slaughter.

Most of time we were talking about how the tour was, the friends that we have in common, her work, etc. She told us that on the plane ride out her that she read Karin's new book Indelible so she could prepare to interview Karin Slaughter at Harrogate Festival in a few weeks. Based upon our discussion, I bet Karin will get some interesting questions next week.

We also talked about the post yesterday on Sarah Weinman's blog regarding the WaPo Review of Kevin Wignall's For The Dogs. It was agreed that any review is better than no review at all.

When asked what she was working on, she told us about a new anthology that is being put together by Gary Phillips called The Cocaine Chronicles. The story she is working on is called "The Crack Cocaine Diet."

Bradbury's Cat Pajamas

On Saturday I had another opportunity to meet our great American Man of Letters (that's my opinion) Ray Bradbury. Ray was signing his new book, Cat's Pajamas, at Mystery and Imagination Bookstore in Glendale. This book contains 20 stories, 18 of which have never been published before ranging from the early 1940's to 2003. I think one of the great things about Bradbury is that many people think of him as only being a science fiction writer, where it may be more true to say that he is a writer who uses all elements of fiction and imagination to make a story work. Many of the stories here deal with a wide range of interests and issues, including race issues.

As always a big crowd was on hand to meet Mr. Bradbury. As always, a fine glass of merlot was present and Ray took time to say hi to each person in line.

Here are a few pics....


Powered by Blogger