Bev Vincent

I just heard that David Thompson from Murder by the Book in Houston died suddenly yesterday. He was in his late thirties and had been working at MBTB for 21 years.

MBTB is the place for mystery lovers in Houston. It’s pretty much the only bookstore I go to any more. They bring in all the big name authors for signings, lectures, and other events, but they’re also extremely supportive of the little folk, too. When I attended a Michael Connelly signing a few years back, I joked to Connelly that he was my editor (for a story in The Blue Religion). David overheard and immediately invited me to do a signing. That signing turned out to be one of the best events I’ve ever had.

There was a funny and fun story in the Houston Chronicle a while back about how David and the current MBTB owner, McKenna, transitioned from being friends and coworkers to dating to getting married. David always remembered me when I went into the store (which wasn’t more than once or twice a year), and he was one of the most enthusiastic and friendly guys I’ve ever met. I last saw him at the Edgar Award banquet earlier this year—a short story from one of his Busted Flush Press titles was nominated.

Terribly sad news.

One of the problems with going off the grid for a number of days, especially during the summer, is that things can sneak up on you. We spent Labor Day weekend in a beachfront house on Surfside, which is about 50 miles down the Gulf Coast from Houston. We didn’t much care what the weather was, but for the first few days it was quite nice. A few squalls, but mostly sunny, with enough of a breeze to keep it from being unbearably hot sitting on the balcony.

Then, yesterday morning we woke up to strong gusts of wind and rain shooting horizontally at the windows from the gulf side. Turns out Tropical Storm Hermine had formed overnight and we were getting the outer bands as it headed toward landfall. Its track was going to take it well west of us, but we were on the wet side of the storm and it wasn’t going to take much to flood low-lying areas. Already we observed that the tide was in higher than we’d ever seen it, and high tide wasn’t expected for another several hours. The last things we wanted were: 1) to get stranded and 2) to have the car flooded (or 3 — both), so we decided to pack up and head for home. The place we were staying was roughly where the right-hand edge of the red blob in this photo intersects the mainland.

Fortunately, Monday night was a lagniappe. I received a call from the realtors on Friday saying we could stay on until Tuesday for free because no one else was coming in for the week. So we weren’t out anything by leaving “early.” We drove through some occasional heavy rains on the way home, and there were a few places where the right-hand lane had heavy water and some of the service roads were inundated, but it wasn’t bad. Today we’re still getting a lot of rain and the interstates are flooded in places, so it looks like we made the right call. We’re also under tornado watch, with a risk of hail.

We had a relaxing time of it all the same. Cooked some great meals, read a lot. I finished Star Island by Carl Hiaasen and got over halfway through The Devil’s Company by David Liss. This book, which is part of a series, reminds me of the recent historical novels of Robert McCammon. We also started reading The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith, which is essentially a No. Ladies’ Detective Agency novel set in Scotland. Isabel Dalhousie, the protagonist, even has an assistant named Grace who isn’t much different from Mma Makutsi.

Have some recorded TV shows to catch up on from the weekend. Sons of Anarchy starts its new season tonight on FX, too.

Nostalgia comes in many forms. We enjoy movies set in the era when we were young. We browse through old photo albums and floods of memories come back. We go to reunions or meet up with old friends from school on Facebook.

I have food nostalgia. There are certain things my mother used to bake or cook or even buy that are inextricably linked to childhood. Some of them I never expect to experience again. One example: mom used to make the greatest jelly roll. It started with a light, yellowish, spongy thin cake that she would wrap in a wet towel and roll after spreading jelly on it. The jelly roll itself was great, but for me the real treat was the edges of the cake. She would trim these off before making the roll—they were dark and crispy and crunchy, and no one, not even my older sister, quite knows how she made them. Geez, I can taste them right now simply writing about them!

Alpha-Bits was one of the cereals I often had as a kid, along with Honey Comb and Shreddies. The latter two I can still get (though I have to import Shreddies from Canada), but Alpha-Bits went “out of print” a couple of years ago. Then I saw a box on Covert Affairs a couple of weeks ago and, after a little research, found out I could buy them from Amazon so yesterday morning I had Alpha-Bits for breakfast again. Heavenly.

My mother made the best boiled icing. She made it look easy. No candy thermometers were involved—she knew it was ready by the way a drop trailed a thread behind it when released from a spoon. I really wish I’d paid more attention back then. I attempted boiled icing yesterday and it was a catastrophic failure. It looked like it was going all right. I had a thermometer and I heated the boiling sugar water to 240° and blended it in with the beaten egg whites. But it never set, and I ended up with a bowl full of liquid froth that would have run off and puddled onto the floor if I’d tried to ice the cake with it. I was very disappointed. I was so looking forward to recapturing that taste from my youth again. Had to settle for a can of store-bought. Bummer.

I finished and posted my review of Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith. Not the absolute best Renko novel, but any MC Smith novel is guaranteed to be at least very good.

I was a little surprised by Annie’s actions in Covert Affairs this week. She hasn’t been on the job long enough to go off the grid the way she did. I also don’t understand exactly why Joan didn’t put her through the wringer. I know she’s their best link to Ben Mercer, but still. And who are we really meant to trust? Joan and Arthur or Mercer? It was inevitable that she should run into the FBI guy that she encountered on her first job, when she pretended to be a prostitute to get the data from a smartphone at a crime scene.

And I’m still not sure who’s zooming who on Rubicon. Ingram seems to be guiding Will along gently in a certain direction, but to what end? And poor Maggie—she and Will always seem to have the absolute worst timing.

Big Brother is getting down to brass tacks. Only five people left, and only two people will vote tonight, unless there’s a tie. If I were Enzo and Britney, I might collude to make a tie and force Lane to cast the deciding vote. That would put him in the cross hairs by whoever he sent to the jury house.

I’m going “off the grid” for the long weekend. Have to get away from phones and internet every now and then. Time to recharge the batteries and relax. Cook some good meals, play cards, make jigsaw puzzles and just hang out.

At just about the same time as he was accepting an Emmy award, John Hamm’s alter ego, Don Draper (or Dick Whitman, if you prefer) was getting a Clio award for the best floor polish commercial. Nice piece of synchronicity. I didn’t watch much of the Emmy’s. Saw the opening sketch on YouTube and thought it was pretty clever and well done. (Where did Hurley come from all of a sudden?!) It’s a kick to see Hamm doing something different, and Betty White is sure getting a lot of mileage out of her rediscovery. Kudos to Kate for letting herself be the butt of the joke.

The Twitter idea might have sounded good on the drawing board, but it was lame in execution. I don’t really know much about Fallon, have never watched his show, but I thought he did okay. The “tribute” sketch for three shows we’ve lost this season was funny. Ricky Gervais can be both funny and lame in the same sentence.

I wonder how far they’re going to let Don Draper fall before he rebounds. He’s getting worse and worse. This week he had a lost weekend, where he went to bed on Friday night with one woman he’d just met and woke up on Sunday morning with another he didn’t recall meeting, presumably the waitress at a greasy spoon who served him french fries. He didn’t remember ordering Peggy to camp out for the weekend and he most certainly didn’t remember cribbing someone else’s slogan at a drunken pitch meeting for Life cereal. That scene, where he was scrambling to come up with ideas, was almost painful to watch. I wonder if Roger Stirling actually did hire him (while drunk) or if Don just used his knowledge of drunken behavior to convince him he had.

Eureka was like old home week, with the return of several characters from past years. Thankfully, their return was only temporary and, for the most part, hallucinatory.

Reviewed the page proofs for one forthcoming short story and the contract for another. Beyond that I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done this weekend. I’m tinkering with a Cemetery Dance column (though I don’t have a deadline for it yet) and cogitating over a couple of short story commitments.

We watched The Return of the King (the four hour version) yesterday afternoon. I didn’t know who John Noble was when I first saw the movie, so I didn’t make the connection between Denethor and Walter Bishop of Fringe until now. Frodo is a passive protagonist for most of the adventure. He makes a few concerted decisions–like the decision to be the ring-bearer and the decision to part from the fellowship after Boromir’s meltdown–but for much of the long journey he’s listless and unimpressive. If not for Gollum, he would have failed. If not for Sam, certainly, too.

I finished Martin Cruz Smith’s Three Stations this weekend. A gritty, dark portrait of Moscow. A few gibes at Putin. Arkady Renko has to be suspended or dismissed once every book, like Inspector Rebus. A relatively brief book with two major storylines that are unrelated. Full review to come. Next, I picked up Star Island by Carl Hiaasen. A good opening, in which a paparazzo is misled into following the wrong ambulance when a celebrity named Cherry Pye overdoses on vodka, Red Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed and stool softener. I’ve only read a few of his books, but I like a light crime story every now and then.

It’s so nice to leave the gym at noon and walk out into dry air. Usually it’s like a sauna, but our humidity has been down so it doesn’t feel nearly so close.

While I was updating my bibliography this morning, I observed that 2010 has been a particularly good year for short fiction. Counting reprints, I’ll have eleven stories see print by the end of the year, and one other reprint released in audio version. This includes the four stories in When the Night Comes Down (an excellent way to sample a cross section of my fiction, as well as introduce yourself to three other fine authors, by the way!

Other publications this year include appearances in eVolVe (which will be available in the U.S. in September, by the way), Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, Best New Zombie Tales and Dead Set, along with forthcoming appearances in Specters in Coal Dust, Shivers VI and one other anthology I’m not allowed to mention yet.

That, along with some nice award nominations, a second printing of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion and an Italian translation of the same, and an appearance in Thrillers: 100 Must Reads all make for a decent year—and it ain’t over yet.

A double elimination on Big Brother last night. Matt played a good game, but made some bad decisions along the way. His original plan to get rid of Brendon blew up, and this week he made a couple of very bad strategic moves. The worst was in not revealing the presence of the brigade to try to sway Ragan and Brendan into keeping him. It was the only card he had, and he didn’t play it. Nevertheless, Brendan got his due finally, as well. I wonder what Rachel will think of his bald head when he shows up at the jury house! It will be interesting to see what happens to the brigade now that they’ve reached the point where they have to start eating their own to survive.

I wasn’t expecting last night’s episode of Burn Notice to be the season finale. They sure packed a lot of plot into 42 minutes. It took me a while to recognize the lawyer/father of the client from Without a Trace. I knew his voice, but his grizzled face threw me. I think it was probably Jessie who picked up the briefcase at the end, with Michael lying in a pool of blood on the side of the road. Thankfully we only have to wait until November for the show to return.

I posted my review of Dexter by Design by Jeff Lindsay last night. The next review will be the latest John Connolly. I received Carl Hiaasen’s new book from Amazon Vine and ordered the new Isabel Dalhousie by Alexander McCall Smith. I haven’t read any of that series, but I can’t pass up a book with a character who shares a name with the town where I went to school and the name of my university, too.

Cemetery Dance officially announced Shivers VI today (after a pre-announcement directed at long-time clients yesterday). The anthology contains my story “It is the Tale,” as well as stories by many names you’ll recognize: Brian Keene, for example. Kealan Patrick Burke, Norman Prentiss, David B. Silva, Melanie Tem, Al Sarrantonio, Nate Southard, Brian Freeman, Scott Nicholson. See the link for more.

Oh, yeah, and Stephen King and Peter Straub. King’s contribution is a reprint of “The Crate,” first published in Gallery and in a couple of early 1980s anthologies before being adapted as one of the sections of Creepshow, the one starring Adrian Barbeau, Hal Holbrook and a tribble with teeth and claws. Peter’s contribution is “A Special Place,” an excised part of A Dark Matter that was previously published in limited edition.

A pleasant surprise, to say the least. This is my third Shivers appearance. I seem to have a lock on the even numbers.

The humidity is down considerably today, which makes it feel a lot cooler even though it is still in the nineties.

A while back, I sat down for a lengthy interview with a producer working for Biography Channel International. They were updating their Stephen King biography, which was a decade out of date, and wanted to add some new faces to the mix. Lisa Rogak and I fit the bill. I spent three hours answering questions based on what I wrote in The Stephen King Illustrated Companion. I figured they might use five or ten seconds of all that footage—and the five or ten seconds where I said something ill advised or ill considered.

I received a DVD copy of the finished product last weekend. While I find it painful to watch myself on the screen, I didn’t see anything I regret saying, which was my worst fear. They actually used quite a bit of the new footage. And where else will I get to share the screen with people like Johnny Depp and John Cusak? In fact, it might be my only opportunity to be on television. This version is for the international market only, so I don’t expect to accidentally stumble across myself on TV while flipping channels.

The first single from The Union, the upcoming Elton John/Leon Russell album, is now available at iTunes. It’s called “If It Wasn’t For Bad,” and was written by Leon Russell. It “features vocals by Elton John and piano and vocals by Russell along with an extraordinary band bringing a bold rock/country sound organically crafted by these true musical legends,” to quote the Decca press release.

I’ve been exploring options for converting my work desk into a standing desk. I’m not sure this will be a permanent change, so I don’t want to invest a ton of money in it. The swivel arms that I’ve found at ergonomic shops—ones with sufficient range for what I’m looking for at last—all run between $700 and $1200. Out of my budget. I’d be happy with a wooden platform that I can sit my flat screen monitor, keyboard and mouse onto. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I’m not finding anything that fits the bill. I might have to break down and build it myself. My biggest concern is in getting the height right, which is why the swivel arm options were attractive. Anyone out there have any first-hand experience doing this?

For the first time in weeks, we aren’t under a heat advisory. The temperatures are dropping slowly this week. By Friday we’ll barely be in the 90s during the daytime. It’s a welcome change.

I’ve been invited to join a local, limited membership writing group. There will be just five of us, four of whom I’ve met before. All of us are published. The biggest downside is that two of the writers are in San Antonio, a solid three-plus hour drive away. Our first get-together is in mid-September, so we’ll see how onerous the drive is. I gave up the local writing guild a number of years ago because I didn’t think I was getting anything out of it, but most of the writers in that group were still struggling to get published. This should be different.

I finished Dexter by Design, the fourth Jeff Lindsay novel, this weekend. It’s an improvement over Dexter in the Dark, which jumped the shark badly by wandering off into Moloch territory. Narrator Dexter has an acerbic wit, especially in his observations about Miami drivers, but he treats his homicidal tendencies more like demonic possession than a corruption of his personality. Also, Lindsay tries too hard to make a statement about death and dismemberment as performance art by having Dexter and Rita visit a gallery in Paris, while on their honeymoon, that features video of a woman cutting her leg off bit by bit with a chainsaw. Ultimately, this vignette ties in thematically with the rest of the book, but not actually, which makes it seem like something of a coincidence. Everything gets tidied up a little too neatly and conveniently at the end, too.

Started Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith. So far it’s set in and around the same three train station cluster featured in Stalin’s Ghost—a lively place in the daytime and an underworld at night.

On Saturday, we went out shopping for a little used car for our daughter to use at university. She lives not far from campus, but there are no sidewalks. The first car we tried out was a disaster. The engine light came on before we left the lot and the air conditioner never produced any cold air. It was hotter inside than out. I guess we should have gotten a clue when the salesman didn’t join us for the test drive. We tried a couple of other places and decided the VW dealer would be our last. We struck gold—got a very nice car for a decent price. So nice, in fact, that my wife decided she’d rather have that one and passed on her car to our daughter!

I’m sure there are worse things in the world than picking up a cup of iced tea, taking a huge draught and discovering that it’s sweetened. I’m quite sure of that, in fact. But at the moment I’d be hard pressed to come up with an example. Ugh. Sweet tea—that’s just plain nasty.

Shame seemed to be the theme of this week’s episode of Mad Men. Betty Draper was ashamed of what the neighbors might think if they found out what Sally was doing during a sleepover (and doing to to The Man from U.N.C.L.E., no less!). Bert Cooper finally got to make use of his Japan-o-philism when the agency hosted a group from Honda, but his strongest contribution was to express shame over Roger’s behavior. And Don made use of the culture of shame by goading his rival into breaking the rules of a bake-off for Honda’s business (thus causing them to over-invest in the project) and then expressing indignation to Honda’s executives because they broke their own rules. My favorite part of the episode was Don’s deception. It was like a caper movie, where he pretended to be spending a boatload of money on an ad, thereby inducing another firm to up the ante. It was very much in line with the Business is War philosophy.

We watched Cairo Time on the weekend. It stars Patricia Clarkson as Juliette, the wife of a Canadian United Nations employee stationed in the Middle East. She’s a magazine editor taking a break to go visit her husband, except he’s been delayed in Gaza, where he helps establish refugee camps, by an uprising. She’s a fish out of water, and her hero is a Syrian, Tariq, who used to work with her husband, played by Alexander Siddig. He looked very familiar to me, and it took me a while to recognize him as Dr. Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Tariq becomes her tour guide through this beautiful landscape, explaining the local customs to her while trying to navigate a dangerous path between chaperone and something more. Juliette promised to wait to visit the pyramids until her arrives, but delay begets delay and a trip to the pyramids is just one more step toward overstepping bounds. It’s a beautifully sensual movie, written and directed by a Syrian-Canadian filmmaker. I’ve always wanted to go to Egypt and the movie enhanced that desire. My favorite line comes from Tariq after Juliette says she wants to see Alexandria: “You know the library burned down.”

It turns out my wife has never seen The Lord of the Rings, so we watched The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers this weekend. The super-long extended versions of both. I found myself marveling at the use of forced perspective throughout. I maintain that the scene where Galadrial goes nuclear when Frodo innocently tempts her with the ring, is the worst part of all three movies. It’s like someone else got in there and decided to tinker with that one bit, it’s so much out of line with everything else. Otherwise I like it as much as ever, and look forward to seeing the final installment, perhaps next weekend, 35 false endings and all. I think Jackson’s crowning achievement is in his treatment of Gollum. Not so much the animation but his understanding of the character as tragic rather than evil. The scenes where Gollum struggles with himself are great.

I’m almost finished Dexter By Design and ready to take up the new Martin Cruz Smith novel. The Dexter book is okay. I like the fact that the nemesis is essentially off-screen for most of the book. He’s briefly glimpsed while stabbing someone important, and observed fleeing from the scene of a hit and run, but other than that he’s in the book mostly by implication. Still an example, in my opinion, of a case where the TV adapters did a better job than the original.