A Four-Cup Review

You're expecting one book review today and you get another. So goes the world of of book reviews.

I'd been told that there would be a review of Lost in the Ivy in today's Evanston Roundtable. Picked it up and found reviews for two books. Neither of them were mine.

The reviewer/reporter for the Roundtable had come out to my book signing at The Book Stall in Winnetka on Saturday and taken some pictures. She'd indicated that the review would be in today's edition. Having worked in the news biz myself, I know that stories get held for various reasons. Hopefully the review will come in the next edition, but you'll have to wait for two more weeks. As will I.

But there's no waiting at The Book Review Cafe, which today posted this four-cup review of Lost.

I'm typically a Diet Coke guy. But I'll take those four cups of joe today.

A surprise at every turn

How far would you travel to get your name in this blog?

For Dave Cripe, the answer is 100 miles.

Now let's backtrack a little here. A few weeks ago I posted a piece in which I led with the line: "Attention Dave Cripe: I'm coming to your hometown."

As I've noted before, Dave's name appears on this blog almost as much as mine. He promptly replied: "I will be there!!" And that's no typo. He pulled out the double exclamation marks.

A week or so later came an e-mail from Dave with the ominous subject heading: "Bad news." (Note: No exclamation mark.)

These are the kinds of e-mails you dread. You assume the worst. So I was incredibly relieved that his "bad news" was really not bad. He was letting me know that he wouldn't be coming to my book signing in Glen Ellyn because he'd scored tickets for the Notre Dame-Navy football game on the same day and time.

Was I disappointed? Sure a little. But as I wrote to Dave in my reply, if I were in his shoes, I'd have done the same thing. Notre Dame football versus Randy's book signing? Notre Dame wins by six touchdowns.

Dave mentioned that he was going to try to make it to another one of my upcoming appearances, as a way of making up for not being able to come to the Glen Ellyn signing. I wrote back: "If you are able to make it out for another appearance, that would be great. Don't go way out of your way, though."

I suppose every man's definition of "out of your way" is a little different. For some a trip around the corner is too far. Knowing Dave has family and job responsibilities, I really didn't expect anything from him. I thought there was a chance that he might make it to my upcoming appearance in Chicago, but that's about as far as I figured he'd be willing to go.

Last night, I traveled to Milwaukee where I stopped in at Richard Katz's Mystery One Bookstore, which almost seems like it came right out of the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel.

After making my way around a maze of books that climbed to the ceiling, Katz popped his head out from atop the second floor and apologized for not promoting my appearance as much as he typically would do for an author's event. Turns out he'd been laid up for much of the last month due to hip replacement surgery.

To make matters worse, the signing was scheduled after store hours, so you couldn't even count on casual traffic coming into the store and happening upon my book signing.

So I stood there as the minutes ticked away, talking baseball and politics with Katz and another bookstore worker. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Then surprise of all surprises, a customer walks in. He bears a striking resemblance to Anthony Hopkins and introduces himself as a friend of Dave Cripe's. Now I should explain that Dave had mentioned to me that he'd sent an e-mail to colleagues in his company's Milwaukee office and told them about my book signing. I figured there was no way that any of them would come so it was a pleasant surprise that one actually did.

But the real surprise came minutes later when Dave himself came walking in, wearing one of my "Have you gotten LOST yet?" T-shirts.

After selling ten signed copies of my book to Katz, Dave and I strolled over to the cafe next door and had a nice talk over a beer. 

The great thing about writing a mystery is that there are surprises at every turn. Dave's visit was one of the nicest ones yet. Thanks, Dave, for going out of your way.

Well, I'm off to D.C. on Friday. I can only hope that there are a few more nice surprises to come.

Almost Famous

You can rack your brain all weekend waiting for inspiration to come to you.

Or you can just sit down at your desk Monday morning and find that it was there all along. Right before your eyes.

In this case the inspiration was on a business card that had been sitting on my desk since Saturday.

On Saturday morning, I'd done a book-signing event with fellow mystery writer John Knoerle at The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, Illinois.
"Lost" in a bookstore  window display

Before he left, Knoerle handed me his business card, which I stuffed into my pants pocket. Upon returning to my ordinary life at home, I made sure to put Knoerle's business card on my desk so that I wouldn't forget to send him the pictures that I'd promised I'd send, something I've still yet to do (reminder to self: fulfill promise to send pictures).

At first glance, Knoerle's business card looks like a standard author's business card. There's his name, e-mail address, phone number and the cover art for his latest book, The Violin Player, a Chicago-based mystery that sounds like it would strike a sweet note for a genealogical buff like myself (reminder to self: order The Violin Player).

All weekend that business card sat on my desk. Occasionally I'd see it when I'd check e-mail but I never really looked at it.

Then this morning I saw something on the business card that I hadn't noticed before. This is what I saw:

John Knoerle

famous author

In my mind, I also saw Knoerle giving a knowing wink.

I'm sure, like me, he's had friends or family tell him, "Oh, now I can say I know a famous author."   

Not just an author. A famous one.

To be an author, you have to be a bit bold, I suppose. You are, after all, putting your words out in the public domain for all to see. Not everyone possesses enough confidence in their words to do such a thing.

To be a famous one, you just have to have a sense of humor about what you do. 

There's little doubt that Knoerle possesses a good sense of humor. If you read his bio, you learn that he began his creative endeavors as a member of the DeLuxe Radio Theatre, an early 70’s comedy troupe in Santa Barbara. He moved to LA and worked as stand up comic, opening for the likes of Jay Leno and Robin Williams at The Improv and The Comedy Store.

One of the great things about this weekend job of mine is that you get the opportunity to meet some of the most intriguing people imaginable. Like Knoerle.

One of the worst things about it is that you get paired to do your first public reading next to someone who not only has a comedy background but has a theatrical voice that rivals that of Kelsey Grammer. Like Knoerle.

Famous authors John Knoerle and Randy Richardson

Fortunately I don't think I embarrassed myself too badly. Although when I view the pictures, taken by my dear wife, I cringe when I see Knoerle's eyes shaking hands with the audience while mine hide under my striped blue-shirt.

Still, it was a good experience. Not only did I meet a famous author (see, it says so right here, on his business card) but I sold a few books, got to meet the wonderful people who work at The Book Stall (a true North Shore treasure), and even got a little bit of press coverage, which you'll likely be reading about here on this blog on Wednesday. 

Best of all, a friend that I hadn't seen in fifteen years came, albeit too late to witness my awe-inspiring reading debut (see, it was awe-inspiring, it says so right on his blog). On this blog you frequently see her name as the commenter, Marybeth. Way back when I was an undergraduate we exchanged notes back and forth between our library carrels. Anything to keep us from doing what we were supposed to be doing in the library: studying.

I still have all those notes with the Marybeth postage stamps drawn on them. They were in some ways the beginning of my writing career.   

A fringe benefit of writing a book -- one that I hadn't seen coming -- is its ability to draw people back into your life that you may have thought lost forever. It is perhaps the greatest reward I could have gotten from my words.

They all tease that they knew me before I became "the famous author." Sometimes that's all it takes to make you feel famous. Even when you're not.  

New Mystery Reader Magazine's Review of "Lost"

Check out the review of Lost in the Ivy in New Mystery Reader Magazine.

Pardon me, but I'm just a little giddy right now. And I haven't even had that first shot of vodka this afternoon.

Step in Time

All parents, I presume, have thoughts on what their kids will be when they're no longer kids. Some see their little one as a doctor. Others envision a lawyer.

Me? I picture The Toddler playing third base and leading the Chicago Cubs to a World Series in 2028. That’s a two-part fantasy, and I’m not sure which part is more plausible of a scenario: my son playing major league baseball or the Cubs playing in a World Series.

But The Toddler has another dream. He wants to be a chimney sweep.

Not to say that chimney sweeping isn’t a noble profession, and you hate to dash a young one’s dreams, but I must admit that I am not-so-secretly hoping that my son will reconsider his chosen line of work. Fortunately he’s only two, so he’s got a few more years to think about it.

How does a two-year-old come to the conclusion that he was born to be an ash man?

The answer can be traced back to just a couple years after The Toddler’s Daddy was born.

In 1964, Walt Disney brought Mary Poppins to life on the big screen. A little over forty years later that whimsical tale of a nanny who flies in with the wind to wherever she is needed has caught my son's fancy.

More precisely, it is a fourteen-minute sequence of that one hundred forty-minute film that turns The Toddler into a miniature version of Bert the chimney sweep (Dick Van Dyke).

You see, at the moment Bert calls out in his on-again, off-again Cockney accent from atop a London rooftop: “It’s all me pals…Step in time!” The Toddler is literally swept away.

Before The Toddler reintroduced me to Poppins, I had only vague recollections of it. Some of the songs I remembered: “Spoonful of Sugar,” “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” and, of course, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Strangely enough, none of the songs that I knew strike any kind of chord with The Toddler. To him they are inconsequential parts of the story which, thanks to the magic of DVD, can be swept aside.

“Step in time, Daddy,” he repeats like a broken record.

“How ‘bout ‘Spoonful of Sugar’? That’s a good song,” I argue.

“No, Daddy,” he says dismissively. “’Step in Time.’”

If you don’t know the lyrics, they go like this:

Step in time, step in time
Step in time, step in time
Never need a reason,
Never need a rhyme,
Step in time, step in time
We step in time.

But it’s not so much the song that seems to have captured The Toddler’s imagination as it is the lively dance number that takes Bert and his soot-coated mates on an acrobatic tour of London’s rooftops.

The Toddler has taken to mimicking the rubber-limbed dance moves wherever I take him. At the park, he no longer wants to play on the swings or the slide. No, he wants to jump on and off the wooden beams surrounding the park while singing, “Up on the railing, step in time.”

As best I can, I try to explain his behavior to other parents. “He’s a Mary Poppins addict,” I say. They nod decorously.
The Toddler mimicks   Dick Van Dyke

Me, I figure he’ll grow out of his Poppins fixation soon enough. It’s just a step in time, after all.