My friend Marcy Italiano has a new book out, Katrina and the Frenchman: A Journal From the Street, which is about her experiences in New Orleans during the hurricane, and afterward. I read the manuscript a while back and supplied her with a response that was supposed to be a blurb but ended up turning into a mini-review. You can read it here (toward the bottom).
I wonder what it says about me that I’m intrigued by oddball characters. People like Bobby Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and, more recently, Walter Bishop from Fringe. I know I’m not the only one, because there seems to be entire Google threads devoted to tracking down his pithy quotes. My favorite from last night popped out of his mouth a moment after a woman threw herself from the top of an office building. “I do hope Agent Dunham meant to do that.” I especially like it when he gets involved in thoughts about food or drink, and it’s unclear whether he’s talking about, say, the cinnamon flavor of his coffee or Olivia’s apparent ability to murder people with her thoughts. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy Fringe for as long as I have, but it’s all because of Walter. The fact that we’re getting Leonard Nimoy on board late in the season is only a bonus.
I’m reading Cruel Intent by J.A. Jance, a book I got through the Amazon Vine program a while back, but it drifted to the bottom of my TBR stack. She has a tendency to overwrite and explain things that aren’t necessary, but the story is interesting enough, about a guy who set up a matchmaker website for cheaters simply so he could find candidates to murder. (The fact that it’s making a boatload of money is simply gravy as far as he’s concerned.)
Still struggling with the current short story, and the second pass page proofs are headed back to me this weekend with a May 1 deadline. Crunch redux.
