A meta-mystery

RIP Donald Westlake. He was one of the truly great ones.

The Sleuth channel seems to have vanished from my cable system. It used to be right there at #227, between BBC and Biography channels. For the last two days, it’s been absent. A real mystery. Comcast still shows it on the channel lineup. Maybe it’s been channel-napped. Apropos of nothing else, I wonder if anyone has ever considered the idea of sorting the channels alphabetically rather than by some randomly assigned number.

I received my first acceptance letter of 2009 for an annual anthology I’ve been trying to crack for a number of years. I won’t divulge the details until the contracts and other business are finalized and the editors announce the lineup, but I’m thrilled to be part of this project. I had to review a handful of requested edits, but other than that it’s a done deal. The editors had previously requested that I revisit the ending, which was a tad too abstract and inconclusive for them. I was happy to do so.

We had a hibachi (Japanese for “fire bowl”) dinner last night, along with sashimi and sushi. It’s really more of a teppan (as in teppanyaki) than a hibachi—the sort of flat metal grill where the chef cooks meats, vegetables, rice and sea food for a circle of patrons and does a few antics with his knives and ingredients. For me a hibachi will always be a small cast iron charcoal barbecue.