It Feels Like the First Time

From James

Foreigner. That’s who sang the song with the title of today’s blog—the song that you are now unable to get out of your head, thanks to me. Sorry.

So now that we’ve put that behind us, let’s talk books.

When my first novel was released in 1994, I got some advice from a wise older (I said older, not old) lawyer-turned-author by the name of Paul Levine. His words were something to the effect that I should enjoy every minute of it, “There will never be another first book.”

For the next ten novels, I’d have to say he was right. Sure, I still get a thrill when I walk into a bookstore and see my newest novel on the shelf. Any writer who doesn’t feel that thrill should probably stop writing. But it has never quite been like that first book.

Until now.

Last Friday I launched my fist young adult novel, Leapholes. Over 200 people turned up at Books & Books in Coral Gables for the event. Every chair was taken, people were standing in the aisles, more were sitting outside in the courtyard and listening only to the audio. Kids crowded onto the floor in front of me. My own children were there, too, still young enough to think that their dad is cool. This was better than my first book.

“Daddy, was Rosa Parks a real person?”

My daughter Kaylee asked me that question in February 2003, after learning about the civil rights movement in the first grade. I told her that she was real; that her arrest in 1955 started a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama led by Martin Luther King, Jr.; and that the battle eventually ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Can we go there?” she asked.
“The Supreme Court?”
“No.”
“Montgomery?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Where then?”
“Nineteen fifty-five,” she said.

She was making a joke, and I laughed. But then I thought to myself: Why not? I liked making up bedtime stories for my kids, and I’d even written poems for them. Every time the Grippando family visited a bookstore, Kaylee and her little brother Ryan would hunt down one of my novels for adults and ask if they could buy it. I would explain that I had plenty of free copies at home, but they wouldn’t be reading them until they were in high school. Seeing their disappointment made me want to write a book that I could share with them as children. I also liked the idea of helping them understand what I did as a trial lawyer. So I was immediately taken with this idea of traveling back in time and meeting people like Rosa Parks who were involved in famous legal cases.


Harry Potter Meets John Grisham—Cool!

So I came up with the story of a boy named Ryan (my son's name is Ryan), a boy who hates middle school and who is in a lot of troube--trouble with the law. The one person who can help Ryan is a mysterious old lawyer named Hezekiah. Hezekiah may have magical powers, or he may have the most elaborate computerized law library ever conceived. Either way, together, Ryan and Hezekiah do their legal research by zooming through “leapholes,” physically entering the law books, and coming face-to-face with actual people from some of our nation’s most famous cases—like Rosa Parks—who will help Ryan defend himself in court.

So, that was the concept—a work of fiction that incorporated real cases. The hard part was trying to figure out what cases to put into the story.

"Hey, was that my Grandma you just threw overboard?"

On April 19, 1841, the American ship William Brown hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic while en route from Liverpool to Philadelphia. It was loaded with Irish emigrants. Roughly half the passengers went down with the ship, and the rest piled into two lifeboats. The boat commanded by the first mate was so badly overloaded that it began to sink. In the face of crashing waves and a driving rainstorm, the first mate in utter desperation ordered his crew to lighten the load. Twelve men and two women were thrown overboard and drowned at sea.

When the survivors finally reached land, one of the crewmen who had thrown passengers overboard faced criminal charges. It was undisputed that the lifeboat would have sunk and all would have perished if it had remained in its overloaded state. However, the American judge who decided the prisoner’s fate wrote that the passengers should have cast lots to determine who should live and who should die. This opinion sparked sharp debate among jurists and legal scholars. Some believed that casting lots was fair, almost an appeal to God. Others believed that casting lots was effectively "playing God," a practice that dehumanized all of us.

What do you think?

Sounds like heady stuff for middle schoolers, but it’s all in the story telling. And in writing Leapholes, I adhered to Rule #1: keep it fun. But I also kept it accurate. The case of The William Brown, for example, is reported at United States v. Holmes (1842).

Legal Evil

A large part of the book is set where Legal Evil lives. This is where Ryan must go after his friend Hezekiah gets trapped in an old law book without a return leaphole. I figured that Legal Evil should live in the worst decision the Supreme Court has ever decided. I won't spoil the mystery by telling you which case that is, but I can tell you that it's in the same general neighborhood as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). Dred Scott was a slave whose owner took him into Illinois (a free state) and Wisconsin (a free territory) for twelve years. When his owner took him back to Missouri and said you're still my slave, Dred basically said, "Ain't happenin' dude." He sued his owner saying that he was free, because his owner had taken him into free territory.

The Supreme Court sided with the slave owner. The cool thing about this case (at least for Leapholes) is that the Justice who wrote that opinion--Chief Justice Roger Taney--was the PERFECT candidate for legal evil personified--my villian. If I were not a computer idiot, I'd show you his picture. Google him. Does he look happy to you?

The ABA--and I don't mean the American Booksellers Association

One other cool thing about Leapholes is that it is the first novel for young adults ever published by the American Bar Association. The ABA is doing a wonderful job sharing the book with schools across the country. And teaming up with the ABA has allowed me do things I couldn’t possibly do with another publisher.

Take the Afterword, for example. We asked some famous lawyers and lawyer/authors to tell middle school kids in their own words why they became a lawyer. The submissions were incredible, and we were able to put together an allstar line up that includes former U.S. Attorneys General Richard Thornburgh and Benjamin Civiletti; U.S. Senator Mel Martinez; famous trial lawyers Roy Black, David Boies, and Willie Gary; lawyer/authors David Baldacci, Linda Fairstein, Jeremiah Healy, Phillip Margolin, and Lisa Scottoline; Judge Phyllis Kravitch (longest-sitting female federal judge in America); Lance Liebman (Director of the prestigious American Law Institute), Jamie Gorelick (former 9/11 Commisioner and Deputy U.S. Attorney General); Judge Marilyn Milian (the “People’s Court” judge) and two NFL Hall of Fame Footballs players who are also lawyers, Nick Buoniconti and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan C. Page. In appreciation of their contributions I’m donating a portion of the profits from Leapholes to charity to promote children’s literacy.

So check it out. Have fun. Be a kid again.

Nehru Slept Here...

Am deadlining like crazy, so this is an old article about my very favorite hotel ever, The Imperial in New Delhi. If you should ever find yourself wanting a place to stay in that city, this is an amazing place to hang out.

The "recent trip" referred to below was actually for our tenth wedding anniversary. We celebrated our eighteenth this past Sunday. Time sure flies when you're old and boring....



As my husband and I climbed into a cab on a recent trip to India, I thought again that the first and most powerful impression one has of this country is always olfactory. The air is spiked with sandalwood, coriander, patchouli, hair pomade, woodsmoke, urine--a grab-bag profusion of floral wonder and, Oh, the humanity! There is nothing else in the world that smells like this; the closest thing would be a Cajun-spiced public men's room in which someone has just dropped a liter of Shalimar from a great height.

It can be overwhelming, intoxicating. After a fifteen-hour flight it knocks you off balance. And then there is the fact that the colors are different, here. Even driving through the darkened streets at three a.m., they seem dusty, somehow, and always just a shade off what your eye expects. There were, for instance, dimly mauve elephants dozing by the side of the highway, tucked amongst the makeshift tents full of people. And then, of course, what you're seeing is most likely pretty different, too (at least for the average North American business traveler).

As we neared the city it seemed every traffic island had fifty men asleep on the concrete, laid out neat as buffet cutlery beneath the buzzing streetlights. Everything seemed to be buzzing, in fact--especially my head. I longed to lie down, to not be in motion any more, to just chill for a bit before I faced the full sub-continental assault on the senses. Thankfully, I had been here before, and had booked us a room in what is perhaps my favorite hotel in the world.

The driver pulled through the wrought-iron gates of the Hotel Imperial, then slowly cruised along the driveway between a long allee of palm trees, surrounded by gardens. We were ushered into the great, cool marble lobby by a silent and turbaned doorman who might have just wandered out from the pages of a Flashman adventure. By the time we were slumped against the ornate wooden paneling of the elevator, being swept up to our floor, the two of us were travel-gritty and nearly cross-eyed with fatigue.

The room, simple by this hostelry's standards, was bigger than many apartments I've occupied in Manhattan. The ceiling was easily twelve feet high, and towering casement windows looked out over the riotous gardens below, framed by long white curtains whose double Aegean-blue stripe along the hem put me in mind of Mother Theresa's headdress.

A good long hot bath and several huge fluffy towels later, we were much repaired. Like well-trained road warriors, we remembered to brush our teeth with the bottled water provided next to the sink, and then fell thankfully into the crisp white sheets of the perfect bed, for once needing no melatonin.

I remembered, upon awakening, the wise words of British author and politician A.P. Herbert: "the critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time." Travel-weary though my husband and I still were, I knew that our union would be fortified by the splendid offerings of the Garden Restaurant (which has a magnificent view of, yes, the hotel's gardens).

We stumbled to the elevator and through the lobby, headed for the Imperial's interpretation of a coffee shop. Once inside the airy white dining rooms, we were gently ushered to a table and furnished almost instantly with an elegantly proportioned pot of excellent coffee, accompanied by tiny pitchers of steamed milk. The waiter then directed us towards the astonishing breakfast laid out along a series of linen-draped refectory tables.

We started in on the flesh of red papaya and perfect mangos, which we dressed with the headily fragrant juice of local limes. Though the western delicacies looked amazing, I tore myself away from the omelet fines herbes offered by a white-jacketed man in a toque, and moved on to the enticing platters of delicately spiced aloo bhaji (the superlative local version of home fries) and a fresh batch of poori, the round bread that, though deep-fried, was so light and airy it was more like a brioche-pita hybrid.

The room itself had undergone some renovation since I'd last been here in 1987. Though remade as space so light-filled it seems part of the grounds outside, the design retains all the charm of the hotel's origins.

The Imperial, one of the world's most reasonable five-star hotels, is one of the legendary Four Maidens of the East (the other three being the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, Raffles Hotel in Singapore and Mumbai's Taj Mahal). Conceived as a place where the English and Indians could meet socially, construction began in 1930 at the express orders of the then Viceroy, Lord Willingdon.

Sardar Ranjit Singh was in charge of the project. Before long, he had to approach the Viceroy to tell him politely it was becoming hard to keep to any sort of budget, as Lady Willingdon's suggestions regarding the hotel's tableware and furniture were "excellent but expensive."

Willingdon had a remedy, requesting that the seat next to him at the grand ball to mark the opening of the hotel be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Ultimately, the place-card went to the Maharaja of Patiala, who paid an appropriately princely sum of 50,000 rupees for the place of honor.

Inaugurated in 1935, the hotel boasts today 285 guest rooms set on eight manicured acres of garden in the center of Delhi. And ironically, the liberal meeting place envisioned by one of the last British Viceroys was the setting for some of the major events of the country's Independence movement.

As journalist-author James Cameron once wrote: "To cross the threshold of the Imperial is to get a crash course in Indian affairs." The place, he continued, "[w]as full to the doors with a fluctuating tide of politicians, princes, newspapermen, idealists, cynics, black marketeers, beards, turbans, uniforms, sweat, Australian whisky and obsessed fanatics of all persuasions."

It was, in fact, in the billiards room here that a large portion of the Indian Constitution was drafted. Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress Party colleagues held innumerable caucuses and strategy sessions in the ballroom, the individual suites with 14-foot-high ceilings, and the white-trellised verandah.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah, future father of Pakistan, was enjoying a round of cucumber sandwiches with Sardar Patel on this same verandah when a Muslim League fanatic took a shot at him. Patel grabbed Jinnah and dragged him indoors to safety.

Nehru frequently dropped by for official receptions after he became Prime Minister, but drank only fresh fruit juice and water. A strict vegetarian and teetotaler, he never sampled the hotel's famous baked Alaska, as it contained eggs and brandy. It is still on the menu, however, for the delectation of those of us who are somewhat less pure.

The head barman, M.S. Bisht, was quoted as having said that he had "laid tables that had two wine glasses for (red and white wine respectively), a glass for the port, another for sherry, a whisky glass, a champagne glass, a cognac/brandy glass, a liqueur glass, and a water goblet--regardless of what those at the table drank." The dapper Mr. Bisht began his career at the Imperial as a "glass boy" in 1953, and can rattle off the names and proper method of concocting mixed drinks that few alive today have sampled, or even heard of.

The quality of the food here is outstanding, as well. Since the hotel's opening, when four of the world's finest chefs were imported (from France, Italy, Lucknow, and Dacca) to man the Imperial's kitchens, the cuisine available has astonished locals and foreigners alike.

The beauty shop, not a spot I normally frequent in hotels, is also unbelievably wonderful. I was worked on from head to toe for two hours by some very cool, entertaining, and talented people. For a hundred dollars, including a ludicrously large tip, I received a manicure, pedicure, massage, haircut, blonding touchup, and facial. I emerged feeling like a different, and much happier, person.

If I had just won the lottery and had free run of the amazing jewelry store in the lobby, I don't think I would ever have come home. Overall, I am seriously tempted to try being the Indian (and overaged) version of Eloise.

There is nothing about the Imperial not to like, unless you are hell-bent on spending the rest of your life staying in a Holiday Inn as some sort of bizarre penance. In all of my travels, I have never felt as refreshed and well cared for as I have here, and yet the service is never obsequious or smarmy. I would make the fifteen-hour flight each way just to spend a weekend at this place.

The Hot Breath of the Santa Anas

By Paul

Brush fires in the canyons.

One hundred degrees in the valleys.

A dry, stinging wind from the desert.

Over the weekend, the Santa Anas tossed tumbleweeds across Southern California. Close your eyes, and you’re driving a 1939 Ford coupe to San Berdoo, sand crackling against the windshield.

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.” Raymond Chandler, TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS.



For a different take on the Santa Anas, check out the wry and witty Susan Kandel’s I DREAMED I MARRIED PERRY MASON. The protagonist, Cece Caruso, rejects a worker’s suggestion that the motor of her courtyard fountain is being fouled by sand from desert winds. “The Santa Anas were invented by Raymond Chandler purely for literary purposes,” Cece says.

Well, they do make a fine metaphor.

NEWSPAPERS, BOOKS & CHILDREN

I grieve at each business section story reporting that the nation’s newspapers are in worse health than Fidel Castro.

I love newspapers. I have three papers home-delivered, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. I get three newspapers’ daily e-mail digests, Miami Herald, Washington Post, and Legal Times. I skim the websites of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the Harrisburg Patriot, the Centre Daily (PA) Times, and Penn State’s student newspaper The Daily Collegian.

When I was a child growing up in dairy farming country of central Pennsylvania, my father subscribed to the New York Times, by mail. The paper arrived two days late, but I started reading every issue. Haven’t stopped.

You can have your 24-hour television news networks with their endless stories of sexy female teachers seducing their male students. I’ll take my newspapers, thank you very much. All this is prompted by Monday's Los Angeles Times which has an excellent tabloid insert, “Parent Reading Guide.”


There are suggested reading lists for children and two dozen “parent tips” for improving children’s literacy. Tip number one is simple but effective: “Read to your child and have your child read to you for at least 20 minutes every day.” Amen.

Last week, I sent two books to my grandchildren.
For Lexi, age four, there’s “Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People,” by Dav Pilkey. And for Jonah, age six, there’s one of my favorite children’s poems, “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” by Robert Service with illustrations by Ted Harrison. Many children know by heart the melodious opening (and closing) stanzas:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.


GRIPPANDO & THE LAW


Great story in the current issue of the "Florida Bar News" about our cohort, Jim Grippando. No, he's not one of the dozen lawyers disbarred this month in the Sunshine State. The article features his forthcoming book, LEAPHOLES, which should get young adults reading. LEAPHOLES is a novel that also teaches legal history through the magic of time travel, actual Supreme Court cases coming to life. Do I have that right, Jim? We're hoping you blog about it as soon as the book hits the stores.

Happy Reading.

--Paul

Out with the old, in with the new

Patty here...

RECYCLE THAT

We Angelenos are faithful recyclers. Each week we separate our trash into three bins. Black for garbage. Green for grass and leaves. Blue for recyclables. We do such a good job that the city hasn’t had to create a new landfill in years. Go team!


I just finished my latest book, so Saturday I fired up the shredder and cleaned out my office. What a mess. There were stacks of paper and sections of the Los Angeles Times that I’m sure held pithy articles that I planned to use as inspiration for a future book. The only problem was I couldn’t remember why I’d saved most of them. I also shredded numerous drafts of SHORT CHANGE, enough to fill my blue recycling bin. Hint: As you can see, the bins are quite voluminous.


My friend the environmentalist tells me that shredding paper isn’t a good thing. She says it takes up too much space. Despite her admonition, once I’ve turned in the last draft of a novel to my editor, I shred all of the previous ones.

I shred those pages because I’m paranoid—hey, I’ve lived in Los Angeles a long time. I have the right—but my caution comes from experience. After I finished my first novel, I had what seemed like a gazillion manuscripts lying around. My house is on the small side, so I had only two choices. Get rid of all that paper or buy a machete to hack my way to the front door.

So I started shredding.

My Main Man watched as I toiled over the Fellows.

“Why don’t you just throw that stuff in the recycling bin?” he said.

“What if somebody steals it?”

“You’re being paranoid. Nobody is going to steal your marked up manuscript pages.”

It did seem unlikely, but this was L.A. Strange things happen here. On the other hand, shredding took a lot of time, time that could be spent writing books. So I took his advice and dumped all of the copies of my Great American Novel into the blue bin. I felt sheepish, but at the last minute I caved in to my misgivings and mixed up all of the pages. If somebody wanted to read that puppy, they'd have to be committed.

Thursday night I rolled the bin out to the curb for pick-up. Friday morning I went outside, opened the lid, and found that every single solitary page of every manuscript was missing—stolen in the dead of night.

“Think of it this way,” MM said. “Thanks to you some homeless guy has wallpaper.”

Yeah, that or my novel was on its way to New York with a nice cover letter.

I’ll admit that I don’t shred all of the pages of my manuscripts. I save the ones that have critique notes penned by members of my writing group. Brilliant Tish. Effervescent Barb. Too-cool Elaine. Insightful Steve. TM who always writes “funny” by the sentences that make him chuckle. I live for those “funny”s. I keep all of those notes, because there are some things you just can’t bear to part with. Our group disbanded last fall. People moved away. I miss them. And I’m sorry to say that in the future I’ll have more paper to shred.

WEHO BOOK FAIR

And now—tah dah—the photos you've been waiting for. On Sunday I attended the 5th Annual West Hollywood Book Fair along with fellow NakedAuthor and bon vivant, Paul Levine. Paul moderated a panel called "Writers Who Thrill," which included Andrew Klavan, Gayle Lynds, Thomas Perry, and Theresa Schwegel.



Afterwards he signed books at the Mysterious Galaxy booth.



I was on a panel called "Funny Ladies" with Jerrilyn Farmer, Harley Jane Kozak, Sue Ann Jaffarian, and moderated by Bob Levinson. Here we are trying to look cool in the sweltering heat.



Some of the other authors who attended—

Marissa Batt, Rochelle Krich, Gary Phillips



Dick Lochte and Denise Hamilton



Steven Hodel and James Lincoln Warren



Susan Kandel with her pup



And congrats to Our Jacqueline. Her MESSENGER OF TRUTH was once again on the Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List on Sunday.

And congrats to Tom whose picture was featured in the "Calender" section. Yeah!

The Pilgrim's Progress — More Ramblings From The Road

from Jacqueline


... Minneapolis ... Chicago ... Cleveland tomorrow ... and so it continues: the book tour. As I said last week, or was it the week before, it’s great meeting the booksellers and the readers of one’s books, but the bits in between – airports, taxis and hotels – leave something to be desired. Mind you, there’s much to nudge the imagination.

Take airports. Richard Curtis, the director of Love Actually, had it right when he decided to make the comings and goings at an airport the basis for a story about love – you see everything at an airport. And me? I’m a people-watcher at the best of times, in fact most writers pay attention even when they think they’re not – you notice the way a man flicks a cigarette to the floor and twists it into the ground with the sole of his shoe, or the way a woman struggles to push a buggy through a door and the only person who tries to help her is an elderly lady, herself burdened by bags. I’ve done my fair share of watching and observing this past few weeks, not because I’ve set out to look at people, but just because I’ve been at airports and you see a lot of emotion at an airport. And you see things that make you think.

Like the young woman in the ladies room in – where was it? Minneapolis, I think – in her brown, beige and white camouflage uniform and light desert boots. She was applying make-up, carefully wielding the mascara wand, then a blusher brush and finally a swoosh of reddish-brown lipstick. She brushed out her sun-kissed blonde hair, then pulled a lovely leather purse from her kitbag and threw a few essentials into it before going out into the terminal and off down to baggage claim. I thought that, perhaps, she was coming home on leave, and suspected her boyfriend was somewhere waiting to meet her outside. And I’d wondered where she’d been, and where she might go next. More than anything, I wondered what she might see, once she’s back on duty, but those desert fatigues told a story all their own.

At another airport I saw a middle-aged couple with their disabled son, a young man in his late teens, I would have thought. Both parents seemed to have a casual elegance about them, and, though burdened by bags for three, along with a few extra bags, they were so graceful in every movement. I wondered about that, as people struggled around me with over-laden luggage, or so it seemed. The woman was dressed in smart beige slacks topped with a rich yellow sweater, Her bag and scarf were yellow, and her shoes were beige and yellow. The father wore beige slacks and a deep aubergine-colored jacket. I mention the clothes because the son was wearing clothes in colors that complemented his parents’ attire – there he was in a yellow shirt, and aubergine pants. And each parent held one of his hands as they waited for their flight, only occasionally revealing a level of concern in the way that they looked at each other and then at their son. Were they going to visit friends? Taking him to college for the first time, a place where he would have to venture forward into the world on his own? Or were they just on vacation, the three of them getting away from home, with all the hassles that come with traveling with the physically challenged.

Then a couple of days ago, at another airport, there was the woman who touched my soul and whom I haven’t quite managed to get out of my mind since. I won’t say where I was, just in case, after all, you never can tell, someone who knows the woman might read this post. Stranger things have happened. I was at the gate, waiting for my flight to finally start boarding. A delay was expected and it would be a while, so I began reading my Newsweek. I became aware of the sound of sobbing. It was no ordinary sobbing, the sort you hear when someone has just said their goodbyes at security control, but a deep keening that came from the soul. I looked around and saw, about six seats along from me, a woman bent double, just breaking her heart. It was so wrenching that I could physically feel her despair. I saw the people sitting close by begin to move away. Such situations can be difficult, because approaching the person may be met with even more sadness, or perhaps aggression, so I simply concentrated saying the words to myself, “May she know peace.” It’s from what the Buddhists call a meditation of loving kindness.

A young woman from United Airlines came along, and I have to say, she was just terrific. She wasn’t in uniform, and I imagine she was some sort of caregiver who deals with such situations. She knelt in front of the woman, and just began talking to her, then encouraged her to stand and walk a few steps – at which point she sat her down next to me. The United woman and I exchanged looks, and I gathered that the distressed passenger had imbibed a strong drink or two, which of course isn’t unusual in difficult circumstances. Then she went off to get some coffee for the still-sobbing woman. People were looking across, then quickly away, or peeping over their newspapers. My heart went out to her, so I simply rested my hand on hers, whereupon she clung on to me as if for dear life.

We managed to find out who was picking her up at her destination, and the United representative made arrangements for the woman to travel later, and to be picked up from the airport, and in the midst of all of this we discovered where she was going, and why, and pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place – it’s her story, and intensely private. The woman held on to me until I left to board my flight, and I had to run as I’d waited until they were just about to close the gate.

I’ve wondered about that woman ever since, and the couple with the son, and the soldier with her make-up kit. You see it all at airports, the laughter, tears, the joy, the frustrations, the boredom, the rich and not so rich. And I know this might sound sappy, or hackneyed, but from what I’ve seen, most of the time – aside from those who are having a crabby moment – are events and vignettes of stories that make me realize why Curtis called his film Love, Actually.

Titanic, Story Unsinkable

from James

I took my kids to the Titanic Exhibit at the Miami Museum of Science this weekend. They seem to have inherited a fascination with that tragedy from their old man. My fifth-grade daughter is currently reading “SOS Titanic” by Eve Bunting, and her younger brother’s favorite Magic Treehouse book is “Tonight on the Titanic.”
It was a well-worthwhile exhibit. At the entrance, they give each person a “boarding pass” with the name and age of an actual passenger on it. As you leave the exhibit, you check the names on the big board, and it tells you if you survived or not. I was a 28-year-old man traveling in third class on a ship where lifeboats were for first class passengers and mostly “women and children.” So I kind of knew my fate before we even started.

I’ve actually incorporated my fascination with the Titanic into my writing. I can recall at least two references to it in my novels.

The more obscure one was in my second novel, “The Informant.” A vicious serial killer is terrorizing Miami. After several murders, someone calls a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter at the Miami Tribune and tells him that he can predict the killer’s next victim—but he wants to be paid for his information. Is he the killer, or is he the clairvoyant evil genius he claims to be? And which is worse?

I’m not giving anything away by telling you that this scary guy went by the alias “Ernest Gill.” Gill was a real person. And he was involved in one of the most infamous cases of “checkbook journalism.” Gill was an Irish sailor onboard the SS Californian—the ship that many people claimed was near the sinking Titanic and ignored her distress calls. Gill’s salary was five English pounds a month. A Boston newspaper paid him five hundred dollars—this is in 1912, mind you—for his story that Lord Stanley, the captain of the Californian, saw distress flares fired from the Titanic but just kept going. Kind of an interesting historical tidbit in a novel that deals with a deadly game of checkbook journalism.

My other Titanic reference appears in “Lying with Strangers.” There, Kevin Stokes is a lawyer in a big Boston firm who has just sold his first novel to a major publisher. He has always dreamed of doing a reading and signing at a local bookstore called Book Lovers, but unfortunately, Book Lovers is about to go the way of many independent bookstores in this country. So he holds his event there before the store closes, even though his book is not yet published. Here’s how it goes . . . and Titanic enthusiasts will love this:

"Good evening," he said to a crowd of about a half dozen loyalists. "I’m Kevin
Stokes, and I have to say I’m more saddened than honored to be the last author
to speak at Booklovers’.”
"Excuse me" said a woman in the first row. "Your book’s not out yet?"
"Not yet. But I left a few copies of the manuscript here last week for anyone who wanted to check it out and read it. I see two of them are missing, so I guess somebody may have read it."
"I did." It was an old man, leaning against the bookshelves in the back. "Excellent book."
Kevin smiled. "Thank you. You read it?"
"Yes, and it’s a strange twist of fate that I did. Last Wednesday I got off the bus at the wrong stop, and it was raining, so I came into the bookstore. Resting right on the counter was this manuscript. I started reading it and couldn’t put it down."
"That’s great.
It’s supposed to be a thriller."
"Your wife’s a doctor, right?"
Kevin blinked. That was out of the blue. "Yeah."
"Pediatrics?"
"That’s right."
"I would guess she’s about twenty eight years old?"
He smiled nervously. It was getting a little personal. "This really isn’t about my wife."
"But it is. What do think, you have to pen an autobiography to reveal yourself though your writing?"
"I understand what you’re saying. But there’s no one like my wife in this book."
"She’s all over this book. You just don’t know it."
The tone was a little accusatory, the old man’s stare not exactly friendly.
Kevin averted his eyes and checked his notes, just to break away. "Anyway, the
rest of the crowd is probably wondering what we’re talking about, so let me tell
you something about the book."
"It’s about a beautiful and successful woman who is forced to make a life or death decision," the old man said.
"Well, there’s more to it than that. It’s about trust, betrayal, and—"
"A kidnapping. That’s the most important thing."
Said Kevin, "I think the characters are most important."
"Hah! You’ve preordained a tragedy. That’s what’s most important."
"This is a novel. I haven’t preordained anything."
"Is that what you think? Just write the story and wash your hands of it? Fourteen years before the Titanic went to the bottom of the ocean, there was a novel written about the exact same thing. The Wreck of the Titan or Futility by Morgan Robertson. Some called it prophetic, but prophecy merely foretells the future. I believe Mr. Robertson’s book actually shaped it. It’s in the Bible, mister. Nothing new under the sun. By writing this story, you’ve sealed someone’s fate."
"It’s a story. It’s all made up."
"Where do you live?"
"I don’t think I want to answer that."
"I know where you live."
He was glaring with contempt from the back of the room. No one in the crowd
moved. Finally, the owner approached the angry old man.
"Excuse me, sir. But
I’m going to have to ask you to leave."
He was frozen, his eyes locked onto Kevin.
"Sir, don’t make me call the police."
He scowled and said, "I was leaving anyway."

Now, the most remarkable thing about this scene from Lying with Strangers is not that there actually was a book called “The Wreck of the Titan or Futility” that seems to have some eerie foretelling of the Titanic’s fate. To me, the really creepy thing is that this scene, as I wrote it, is based on an actual event in my own life.

I was on tour for my third novel, "The Abduction," having a wonderful time at a terrific bookstore called Liberty’s in Boca Raton—another independent that has since bitten the dust. Some guy joined us late and became unruly. He kept raising his hands and asking questions out of turn, rattling me much the same way this guy rattles Kevin in “Lying with Strangers.” It wasn't quite as bad as the fictional version, but it upset me and the store manager a good deal at the time. I even notified my publisher about it, and wasn't sure I wanted to continue my tour. I did continue, however, and ultimately, I decided to deal with that incident the way all writers deal with things that scare them, haunt them, bug them, or nibble at their paranoia.

I wrote about it.

Talk Story

By Cornelia

alutations and thank you for being here today, O Esteemed Naked Readers... Friends... Romans... Members of the Jury... Persons Who Just Happened to Accidentally Click Through When We Accidentally Showed Up After You Accidentally Googled "Naked Weekend/Nurses/Rodeos/Operas/Feet/[Fill in the Blank]"... Meine Damen und Herren....

I am today both honored and pleased to share with you the news that (God willing and the creek don't rise, etc.) I shall, one week from tomorrow afternoon, be endeavoring to make a success of my first-ever paid speaking engagement, at the kind invitation of the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley, California. As such, I have been reflecting on past occasions during which I've found myself behind a podium, beginning with the debate in eighth grade social studies class when I donned a tam-o-shanter, Elvis-Costello-esque glasses, and an eyebrow-pencil moustache in order to more effectively impersonate Dr. S.I. Hayakawa, the Canadian-born semanticist then campaigning to unseat incumbent United States Senator John Tunney.

(seen here without his preferred headgear, but he totally did
wear tam-o-shanters at the slightest provocation--pinkie swear)

Despite my success in swaying the parental audience in Hayakawa's favor that evening, I take no responsibility for his part in the passage of Proposition 13, the property-tax initiative which many blame for the subsequent implosion of California's public school system.

aving survived this maiden speech without mishap, I eschewed the lecture circuit for the remainder of junior high in order to spend more time with my family and concentrate on my studies--not least since there wasn't exactly a plethora of local venues clamoring for appearances by an underage impersonator of small-statured Asian Republicans, no matter how limelight-mad she happened to have become following that first heady taste of public acclaim.

During my freshman year at Carmel High School, however, I reluctantly came out of retirement, feeling it was my duty to try the patience of the local Lions Club, seeing as how they had announced the advent of their annual student speech competition. The topic was "Tomorrow's Energy, Today's Dilemma," so after a potluck dinner and an all-hands round of patriotic songs, I walked across the cafeteria to deliver prepared remarks on solar panels, Stirling engines, wind turbines, biomass power generation, and the general need to diminish our nation's reliance on coal and petroleum.

I trounced fellow C.H.S. students Laura Edmonds and Nicole Hydorn, but had my butt handed to me some weeks later by this way-older chick from Santa Catalina in the Monterey County semi-finals. Bloodied but unbowed, I returned home with a commemorative pen-and-pencil desk set, which I cherish to this day.




pportunities to hone my oration chops were paltry-verging-on-nonexistent for the remainder of that year, though I was quoted in The Carmel Pine Cone after having leapt to my feet during the Q&A portion of a town council meeting to protest the proposed designation of "Carmel Rancho" as the official name for our secondary village zip code, on the grounds that "it just sounds really tacky."

Denied further excuses to trot out my burgeoning Inner Churchill, I fell into a despondent funk. Still, I kept all appendages crossed that I might someday discover an auditorium willing to have me... not like I want anything huge, I maintained during my nightly petition to the fates for a chance at more juvenile airtime... I mean, seriously, I don't even need a microphone or whatever. But my pleas fell on a deaf-eared cosmos until I lit out for New York as a sophomore.




ending my way eastward, I hoped against hope that this change in geographic affiliation might improve my chances at getting to babble in public. In retrospect, I'm thankful that Jerry Springer did not yet have a talk show to call his own, as I shudder to think what drastic measures I might have taken in order to quench my unrelenting monologue jones.

I was an odd child--the more typical thespic aspirations of my peers held no appeal. I didn't hanker after even the juiciest roles in some high-school-gym production of Blithe Spirit or You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Not for me those summer-drama-camp cabarets, those heartfelt juvenile-dinner-theatre star turns belting out "Tomorrow" or "The Surrey With The Fringe On Top."


he thing I wanted most to do was talk, unscripted. I wanted to pontificate, to expound--to speak, perchance to edify and amuse-- without the trammels of costume or character. Where the hell did that come from, my junior-varsity Bill Buckley-ness? My fetish for Robert's Rules of Order?

I confess I don't have the slightest clue. I was otherwise a shy kid, an outright geek. I still suffer from stage-fright when it's my turn to call the burrito place with a takeout order. I have no political aspirations, no impassioned agendas, no burning desire to rail against corporate skullduggery or the abnegation of the rights of baby seals or anything. I just really really like to stand up and spout random stuff in front of people. Wedding toasts, dinner-party anecdotes, diatribes when my sister was trying to get the zoning board to let her build a small addition to her old house. I don't plan what I'm going to say, I don't show up with a fistful of index cards or any prepared notes, I just love that moment when my buddies at a banquet-hall table tink their forks against glasses of ice water so I can stand up and ramble for a few minutes.


t's not like I'm always great at this, especially considering the no-notes part. There have been times when I totally fell on my flop-sweat ass, stammering and blushing my way through heinous chunks of utterly incoherent and unfunny blather. But oh, when it goes well! The rush of it, the joy... that surge of glorious feeling you get when you've tapped into a little piece of zeitgeist that matters for people who've been kind enough to lend you their ears. Nothing else compares, for those of us with a bardic bent. We want to step into Spalding Gray's or Perry Mason's hallowed shoes for just a little while, try our hands at conjuring down a skein of word-voodoo from the very air. I expect it's why people become trial lawyers, or cracker-barrel raconteurs, or shamans. It's heady stuff, when it works. I love to hear it done well even more than I enjoy the chance to offer up my own attempts at the art.



aybe I won't succeed at this a week from tomorrow, but it's really cool that the fine people at the Outdoor Art Club are willing to let me give it a go. I'm sure this speech-fetish thing is aligned very closely with the urge to write, but it's not the exact same compulsion. It feels like it falls somewhere between writing and acting, without being either.

It's not something that there's a whole lot of call for, in this day and age. Not to say we don't have contemporary lecture circuits, just that we don't see grand Chautauqua gatherings anymore, or clan dinners in the long hall at which a traveler might earn his keep for the night by reciting Beowulf. The heyday of Boston's Atheneum and even Manhattan's 92nd Street Y has passed. We have other entertainments, more readily accessible. And I don't say this to bemoan the loss of William Jennings Bryan while shaking my fist at the advent of iPods and HBO--I like my instant-gratification Sopranos fix as much as the next person. But there's something visceral about getting to "talk story," as the Hawaiians describe it, that isn't captured by any other medium.


ach time I've had the pleasure of listening to someone with a gift for the oral tradition, it has changed me--especially when I've heard it live. I can't imagine anyone is unmoved while watching Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, but it must have been a thousand times more gobsmacking to be standing on the Mall, taking in that golden arc of language direct from the source. I've been lucky enough to see a few raconteurs of world renown in action--Douglas Adams, Jimmy Carter, P.J. O'Rourke, and Madeleine L'Engle come to mind, as do the many fine mystery writers I've had the pleasure of listening to at conferences and book signings--but the speaker doesn't have to be globally famous to give me that pure hair-on-end pleasure of drinking in the spoken word. I have been moved to tears and/or shrieks of laughter by a great number of people who wouldn't consider themselves repositories of erudition, or even storytellers. Airplane seatmates, little kids, old dudes in bars, even this homeless guy my cousin Eric and I ran into outside a Manhattan deli at three a.m. one summer night when we were in high school--a raconteur of the highest order who spent half an hour standing on a milk crate describing this flock of dragons he swore was flying up third avenue by the light of the full moon.

I love it when people talk story, and as I've said herein I adore any chance to do it myself. The idea of actually getting paid for that pleasure is nothing short of miraculous, to me. I just hope I spout something worthy of the honorarium, though I worry it will make my Inner Winston swell up like a giant poison-toad pinata if all goes well in Mill Valley.