Scarlet Letters

Hey look, I still have a blog! The Fall Deathmarch Tour ate me. I was going to blog about New Orleans, and Memphis, and Louisville, and Dupo, and all the other places I've traveled for the last six weeks. (One of those things is closer than the others.) About searching for non-spicy non-seafood on Bourbon Street, trying to find our way out of Louisville in the middle of a marathon, my first photography award, and getting censored by Facebook. Somehow none of that got written down... In the meantime, have these. JIM: Trying to read Emerson. I want to die. ME: Why? JIM: Boooooooorrrrriiiinnnnngggg! ME: You mean complex. Multifaceted. Challenging. JIM: Boooooooorrrrriiiinnnnngggg! ME: Stimulating. Formidable. Demanding. JIM: Boooooooorrrrriiiinnnnngggg! Long overstuffed windbaggery! ME: I'm not sure windbaggery is a word. JIM: It is now. ME: I'm pretty sure you're not just allowed to make up your own words, English major. JIM: Yes I can. CHARACTER 1: Yo...

How terrible for his ghostwriter. In case you missed it a few weeks ago, James Patterson called off his novel The Murder of Stephen King .  It was actually a concept with potential, though not terribly unique: a serial killer is reenacting the deaths in a famous writer's books. Too bad Patterson decided to base it on a real-life writer, one who has already done this story a couple of ways, who has actually been stalked and terrorized by crazy people, and who isn't much of a Patterson fan. Okay, it was maybe a little unkind (or at least impolite) for King to call Patterson a terrible but very successful writer. Largely because it's public knowledge Patterson doesn't write his own books anymore. If his books are terrible, then he should probably hire better ghostwriters. Still, this was a tacky novel concept, so I'm glad he pulled it. I name characters after real people all the time, but only with their permission. And while my friends are largely delighted...

For the second time, I've reserved a room in a Chicago library. Um, not me. The other me. I've often joked that I must be two people at any given time, because the ethical and practical restrictions of my job require a separation between Elizabeth-me and Reporter-me. My worlds do collide, but rarely. Most of the time, the author-editor-person is doing one thing while the reporter-ethicist is doing something else. I've sometimes referred to one as my evil twin. (Note: the author is the evil one.) But unless I've developed a serious psychological problem heretofore unknown to me, I am not reserving study rooms at a library in a Chicago suburb. However, someone is doing so with my name and email address. The first time this happened, I received the email notification while I was on the road in.... you know, I honestly don't remember. It might have been Nashville, or Atlanta, or Kansas City. I only remember because I was sitting in my hotel room when I called th...