We had a good soaking rain overnight. We need it. However, the dog next door didn’t seem pleased to be outside during the heavy rain, thunder and lightning, which meant we didn’t get a great night’s sleep.
You know how, in those courtroom dramas, the prosecution will finish its case and the judge will turn to the defense lawyer who then, to everyone’s surprise, stands up and says, “We have no witnesses. The defense rests”?
That’s sort of what happened to me this week when I received an email from the editor working on my next book. He said he’s ready to pass it on to the copyeditor. “Everything looks good to me.” I was expecting that I’d get it back marked up with red ink and I’d be facing significant rewrites. But nothing! Nada. Caught me by surprise. I told him I’d like to spend a few days rereading it with fresh eyes (I haven’t looked at it since April 1) before we advance to the next step.
David Ellis has written a long article about Alfred Hitchcock in poetry, which includes good (complementary) coverage of A Sea of Alone, the book Chris Conlon edited that contains my first professionally published poem, “24 Hour Psycho.” The article appears in CADS Magazine #62 in the UK (Crime and Detective Stories).
I zipped through Chelsea Cain’s forthcoming Kill You Twice over the past few days. It’s the fifth of her Archie/Gretchen novels and, in a way, it’s an origin story for her sociopath, Gretchen Lowell. Fortunately, Cain doesn’t go to the same lengths to explicate her villain that Thomas Harris did with Hannibal Lecter. The book has a few surprises. I was very suspicious of a certain character, who proved to be the perfect red herring. Whereas the previous book had a pervasive mood of sogginess (because of a flood in Portland), this one is hotter than hot, and no one has A/C. She does a great job of conveying the climate.
Now I’m reading The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen, her latest Rizzoli and Isles novel. The timing is good because the TV series is back. The first episode was quite good, dealing with Maura’s anger with Jane over shooting her biological father. The emotions felt genuine. It’s funny to see Jane’s mother (played by Lorraine Bracco) again after watching her in The Sopranos for the past several months. I maintain that Bracco is not a very good actress, but she seems more comfortable in the role on Rizzoli and Isles than she did before. All in all I was pleased with the first episode. Hope they maintain the strong writing.
I’ll probably go see Prometheus tomorrow. It’s not a film my wife would enjoy, but she’s going off on a social outing so I’ll take advantage of the alone time to throw on the 3D specs. I saw Alien in the movie theater when it first came out, and I’ve seen Aliens, but none of the other films in the series.
