I don’t like gross monetary inequities. I firmly believe that the wrong people and the wrong professions are being rewarded, and rewarded absurdly, and that the hardest work the obscenely rich do is ensuring that they preserve their privileges, status symbols, and bloated bank accounts.
Late summer is perfect for classic mysteries – think of Raymond Chandler’s hot Santa Anas and Agatha Christie’s Mediterranean resorts – while big ambitious works of nonfiction are best approached in September and early October, when we still feel energetic and the grass no longer needs to be cut.
I’ve been slightly obsessed with paper and notebooks. Among my most precious possessions is a small light-blue, breviary-sized volume – four-and-a-half inches wide, seven inches tall – made by a company called Denbigh.
In classic noir fiction and film, it is always hot. Fans whirr in sweltering hotel rooms, sweat forms on a stranger’s brow, the muggy air stifles – one can hardly breathe. Come nightfall, there is no relief, only the darkness that allows illicit lovers to meet, the trusted to betray, and murderers to act.
People who’ve read my reviews know my tastes, know how I approach a book, know my background. I can write with believable authority. It doesn’t mean I’m always right.
I am something of an aficionado of thrift stores. In my youth, I regularly searched their shelves for old books.
The savagery and power of Edith Wharton’s ghost stories surprised me.
When I talk to friends and editors about possible projects, especially about projects that might come with a significant cash advance, they usually suggest a biography. Sometimes I’m tempted, but the prospect of spending years researching and writing about someone else’s life offends my vanity.
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the December issue of almost any general-interest magazine regularly featured a holiday horror or two.
My own particular feline companion answers, or rather doesn’t answer, to Cinnamon. One of my kids must have given her the name, even though she’s mostly gray and white.
I’m sometimes willing to put in vast, even inordinate amounts of time if I find a project that interests me.
With concerted effort, I can follow written instructions, but don’t ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone.
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