Dreamlands

Just back from the post office, having delivered the package containing six copies of “Beyond All Doubt” into the hands of the USPS. The deadline for submissions to the Mystery Writers of America anthology is next Tuesday, so I’m comfortably under the wire. Five copies are distributed to a group of judges, who winnow the blind submissions down for the guest editor, who this time is Linda Fairstein.

We watched Bobby last night. Decent film. Oddly, the weak link when it came to acting was the director, Emilio Estevez, who seemed grossly out of his element. I didn’t even recognize Sharon Stone, and we were astonished to see her name come up in the film credits. That’s what I call melting into a role. Obviously I knew where the film was heading, but I hadn’t realized how much collateral damage there was from the shooting. Bobby himself barely appears in the film, and almost always from news footage. In a few cases, there’s a stand-in who’s never shown face on. The approach was fascinating: all these ordinary lives, the banal and the remarkable, that converge in a moment and then scatter again.

I was only seven when RFK was shot. My lone memory of the incident was a graphic on the front page of the Saint John Telegraph Journal that showed the trajectory of the bullets in his body.

We had hail last night, just as Bobby was beginning. Didn’t last long before turning into rain, but it made a helluva racket.

Into the Dreamlands is now available for preorders from Shocklines. This collection, edited by Jason Andrew for Simian Publications, has stories by: Caitlin R. Kiernan, Christa Faust, Bev Vincent, Jane Gwaltney, James S. Dorr, Amy J. Benesch, Gary McMahon, Gill Ainsworth, Larisa Walk, Louise Bohmer, Lisa Mantchev, and AC Wise. My story is called “Before the Fall,” and has to do with that annoying falling sensation dreamers sometimes experience.

Didn’t see Survivor or any of the other programs from last night. All on tape—I’ll get around to them this weekend, though I have a fairly extensive to-do list on my desk. Very happy to get “Beyond All Doubt” erased from my white board.