CLASSIFYING THE CONSTITUENTS OF CHAOS - PART TWO

Lake Charles, Louisiana: 4,597 miles

Here's more pics:



Clarksdale, and for that matter, most of the Delta is pretty run down. Here we have two of the local landmarks: Wade's Barbershop, run for many years by a well known blues singing barber; and the former locale of Stackhouse Records, Clarksdale's most famous blues record shop, now defunct. Cat Head has taken over as the place to go for blues CDs in town, as well as information about local music venues and some very fine regional folk art.



Some places look like they couldn't possibly still be operating, but Bug's Place in Rosedale and Po Monkey's out a dirt road along cotton fields still crank out - canned, but blues - music and attract dancing crowds on some nights of the week. Po Monkey's is usually going on Thursdays and sometimes Sunday. Don't know about Bug's.



An orange moon was rising above the cotton fields across the road from Po Monkey's.


Melvin was sitting in a riverfront park in Greenville, between two casino boats, working up his courage, one cigarette at a time, to gamble. We were waiting around for the place we wanted to go to dinner to open. I walked into one of the casinos, won $70 at blackjack in short order, and we went to dinner.


Dinner was at the original Doe's Eat Place, famous for its steaks and tamales. It was originally a grocery in a black part of town, run by an Italian family. A friend of the family's - a white lawyer - took to coming around by the back entrance to have steaks cooked for him. Word got around, and eventually, the black customers kept coming to the front grocery for tamales and chili and other things, and the white ones kept sneaking in the back for steaks. Eventually the two sides got together and it's now one of the very best steak houses we've ever been to. As a matter of fact, the enormous t-bone that Eva and I ate has taken its place as the third greatest steak I've ever eaten.



After dinner, and after driving past Po Monkey's and ascertaining that, no, it isn't open on Saturday nights, we drove back to Clarksdale and went for a second night to Red's Lounge. There are several operating blues clubs in Clarksdale, the best known of which is Ground Zero that is owned by the actor Morgan Freeman. It's a big place with well known bands and has something of a House of Blues, faux feeling to it - but better. But better yet is Red's. It's the real deal. A run down - the roof literally caving in - tiny little funky place with mostly Budweiser and Heinekin in a nod to the outsiders crowd that shows up there. They have more down home, hill country blues, the sort that you find on Fat Possum records. The first night we saw T-Model Ford, an 87 year old bluesman who plays a very mean electric guitary mostly by himself. The second night, when these pictures were taken, it was Robert Balfour, another 80-something blues guy who really works wonders with his guitar, in a strange, sort of trancelike, heavy bass underpinnings, hypnotic blues kind of way. There was another guy who accompanied him on the spoons. And his nephew Arthur, who fancied himself a dancer. He was more of a staggerer, but entertaining nonetheless so long as you didn't have to sit next to him for long and listen to his ramblings.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much of a black crowd for blues. At least in Clarksdale. Both nights the audience was almost all white. Near as we could tell, the black bars in town were playing either modern R&B or Hip Hop. Sad, sort of. Still, a great time was had.

Even more, later.

CLASSIFYING THE CONSTITUENTS OF CHAOS

Natchez, Mississippi: 4,380 miles

The whole quote is: "The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed." and it's from Moby Dick, which I am currently rereading.

A good road trip is something like that. You point your car here or there, pretty much at random but with an abiding sense of where you're headed, and soone or later you've made something of it. What? I'm not sure yet. But something.

And so far something very good.

Following two great meals in Chicago - one Italian and one Thai, a splendid time wandering around the old library building and Millenium Park and a frustrating time in the Art Institute (it was in utter disarray thanks to construction and exhibit installation)and a book event at which one person showed up (the bookstore was great though - The Book Stall of Winnetka - and the people who worked there warm, friendly and smart), Eva and I sat in the car and headed nine hours south to Clarksdale, Mississippi, the heart of the Delta and arguably the birthplace of the blues.

We stayed in a fantastic guesthouse that used to be an ice house. We met many interesting, friendly people, we heard some great, and some not so great, music. I hadn't expected much of interest to be left in the Mississippi Delta. I was wrong. It far exceeded my low expectations and now I'd love to go back and spend a lot more time.

Here's some pictures with captions:

The Chicago skyline seen from the prairie grasses garden in Millenium Park. (I don't know what caused the wacky stuff on the building, but I like the way it looks.)


Eva and me, reflected numerous times in the underside of "The Bean" in Millenium Park.


Back when they really put a lot of money into building libraries.


Art babble in the Art Institute. I think everyone who writes for art exhibits and catalogs, as well as about 98% of all the university professors in the world, ought to be sent, regularly, back to writing boot camp. Sheesh!


The famous "Crossroads" of highways 61 and 49, where legend has it Robert Johnson and a number of other blues phenoms sold their souls to the devil for their musical prowess. There is a great deal of controversy as to which crossroads in the Delta is the "real" one, but this is the only one with a crossed guitars monument. It's in Clarksdale. Abe's BBQ, is here and has been here, run by a Lebanese family since 1924. It's a very nice place with, I'm sorry to say, mediocre bbq. Supposedly, Messenger's on the wrong side of the tracks in downtown, is much better, but we didn't get there.



The Big Pink Guesthouse, on the other hand, is truly splendid. $125 per night for the gigantic King Suite - the whole front half of the building that used to be an ice house, then an ice cream factory, then an ice cream parlor, and now one of the very best hostelries we've ever stayed in.

More later. Right now we've got to hit the road from Natchez to Lake Charles, LA.

CRUISING & ABUSING THE ARTERIES

Merriam, KS - 2,186 miles
It's a good thing that my doctor isn't along for this ride. America's heartland hasn't confronted me with much traffic on its highways, but it's clogging my arteries.

Lunch yesterday was at Al's Chickenette in Hays, Kansas. It's famous for its fried chicken. So of course, that's what I had. The place looks great, old neon, been there forever, but alas, the chicken was pretty bland. Nicely cooked but without much flavor.

Dinner was a big salad that might have been somewhat healthful if it hadn't come loaded with bacon bits and cheese and a dressing called "Italian" that was rendered from something very fatty. None of which was mentioned on the menu. I ate it though.

So today, having failed to eat great fried chicken yesterday, I went to Stroud's in Kansas City. I've been there before, to their old location which was a truly wonderful old-fashioned roadhouse. It has closed down, and the remaining location is a sort of sprawling antebellum style manse in the far north of the city. The chicken was good though, although I fear my enjoyment of fried chicken has forever been tainted by having had what is inarguably the finest fried chicken in the known universe - that which is to be found on Soi Polo in Bangkok. But Stroud's is about as good as it gets outside of Bangkok - and, well, Ibu Nyanti's in Central Java where fried chicken was reputedly invented. I was hoping to photograph the kitchen - where a line of 20 or more cooks stand at stoves, each with two large, cast iron frying pans in their hands. But in this fancier set up, the kitchen is off limits. Oh well.

In the morning I stopped off at The Raven bookstore in Lawrence. It's a really great store and downtown Lawrence is just what you would want from a midwestern university town. Beautifully kept up buildings dating from about 1910 to 1940, and nary a national or international chain store in sight. There's a thriving, local, independent business community. It's the kind of place where, sometimes, I wish I'd be happy living. But I'm pretty sure I need a much bigger city to avoid insanity.

My event in the afternoon was at I Love A Mystery in Mission, Kansas. It's another really fantastic, large, comfortable store. There weren't many people who showed up, but I had a good time talking with the people who did and the people who worked there. There were a lot of questions about Asia in general.

So then I went to the downtown Kansas City Hereford House for dinner. By most lights, it's the place to go in KC for steak, and KC is supposedly the place to go for steak.

Well, sorry Ashley, no. It was good, but nothing great. The KC Strip is a fine cut of beef, but it doesn't come close to the Cattleman's Cut that one can find at the Sutton County Steakhouse in Sonora, Texas. Now that is the second finest piece of beef I've ever eaten. (The finest was three small bites of top grade Kobe beef at a ludicrously expensive Japanese restaurant.) I ordered the KC Strip in the recommended manor - covered with melted blue cheese and cracked black peppercorns. That was interesting, but the steak didn't have enough flavor of its own to stand up to it.

Afterward I took my hardening arteries over to 18th & Vine, the historic jazz district of Kansas City, which in the '20s, '30s and into the '40s was among the hottest hot spots in the country. They've been trying to restore some of it's former glory, but it's not quite taking. Still, there are some good places that seem to be doing okay. The National Jazz Museum is there, attached to the Negro Baseball Leagues Museum, across the street from the Gem Theater. The Blue Room jazz club is attached to the museum and it's a fun place for drinks and some good tunes, which tonight were provided by Ida McBeth, a local singing sensation.

I took surface streets back to the hotel. I didn't realize KC had such a large Mexican population. I passed a good assortment of taco trucks and taquerias and dance clubs.

Kansas City is a city I'd like to spend more time exploring. It has some truly great architecture, both historic and modern; supposedly has some great art museums; and I still need to consume a bucket of burnt ends - the local bbq specialty - but I don't think I'm going to get a chance before I need to leave tomorrow morning. Somehow bbq, unlike, say, cold pizza, just doesn't seem like breakfast food, as much as I might cherish the chance to further abuse my cholesterol level.

PITY THE ELK

Denver, CO: 1,576 miles
Luckily, the two grazing elk I saw along Interstate 25 last night - fleetingly, they flitted by at about 82 miles per hour - didn't leap out in front of my car. It might have been a mercy killing though. Of them, not me. It's hunting season in south Colorado and I couldn't find a motel room in Raton, New Mexico or Trinidad, CO. All the rooms were filled with people looking to bag their quota of elk. I passed by a lot of bars while looking for a room and there were platoons of hunters spilling in and out of them. I wonder how many elk are dispatched mercifully with one swift, fatal shot?

Monday night at Poisoned Pen went well. Now, you gotta realize, by "well," I mean well enough for me at this point. Which is to say that there were a dozen, maybe a baker's dozen of, people who showed up and seemed to enjoy the show and who bought books. And the store had sold even more books before I got there. They sold almost all the books they ordered. Barbara Peters, who runs Poisoned Pen, asked smart questions, and gave me an introduction that made it clear she'd read the book and found it interesting. Fun was had, by me.

The thing is, I like hanging out in bookstores talking with people about books and the issues they bring up. And other writers often show up and then I get to hang out and talk shop with them - which is great, since this writing biz is pretty solitary except when you're out on the road. So I like being out on the road. And at this point, I know a lot of the people at the stores and some of the people who come out to see me, and it's like visiting old pals.

Which is why I didn't mind too much today when there were five people at Murder By the Book in Denver - two of them friends and three of them the women who work there, who I've seen three years in a row now and who feel like friends as well. So it was like sitting around with five friends, showing them my pictures of Cambodia and talking with them about stuff that I'm interested in. Once again, I had fun. Although I would feel better if I could attract a large horde of customers to the shop for them. I guess part of the point of all this is that eventually I hope to do just that.

Earlier in the day I drove to Boulder and signed some books at High Crimes, the mystery bookstore there. Once again, nothing tangible or obvious came of it. But I enjoyed dropping in on the store for a visit and sooner or later, between me and the store we'll sell some books.

So, I guess this is my job, and as jobs go it's a good one. It's what I've always wanted to do. But it's more of an investment really. It doesn't pay worth shit so far.

The Drive-by Gets a Jump Start

Scottsdale, AZ: 569 miles
Gila Bend, Arizona, where highways 8 and 85 meet, is a place that doesn't seem to have many surprises in store. There's gas stations, motels, convenience stores, plenty of fast food chain outlets. Get off the main street and there's cacti and rattlesnakes, probably some gila monsters (how else was the town named?), plenty of sand and rocks. The Space Age Restaurant is impressive - it has a very large flying saucer parked on its roof.

What struck me as odd was the big banner across the main drag of town for the upcoming, November 3, Gila Bend Shrimp Festival. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to make it. I've got a book event in Tucson that afternoon, which is close enough that I might still be able to get to Gila Bend in time for the shrimp bobbing contest, but it would be close and I probably ought to spend some time with the Tusconians I know. Still, maybe I'll try to show up.

My 38 or so hours back home, between New York and hitting the road on the Drive-by Tour '07, was busy. First I had to do whatever I could to ensure that I didn't bring bed bugs home with me. I don't suppose I'll know until the house is infested, or not.

My first event on Saturday was at Mysteries to Die For, a very nice bookshop in Thousand Oaks. They turned out a good crowd, standing room only, maybe 20 or so people, only three of who felt any sort of obligation to me to show up. It was gratifying, the sort of thing that gives me hope for book touring.

Some big name authors spend all day and never stop signing books. When I attract 10 or more people and sign 20 or more books, that's good by my standards at this point. Then again, I like hanging out in bookstores talking to people. I'd do it even if it wasn't part of my job. Good thing, too.

Then it was off across town to Book 'Em in South Pasadena, another good shop, in a fast developing fun part of the city. 10 people there, pretty much all friends, but it was good to see them and there were a number of pre-order sales of books as well.

I stayed up late getting things ready for the big drive, packed the car, made sure the house was all set and ready for the housesitter, got into the car, turned the key, and.......nothing. The battery was dead. Not completely, but dead enough. Needing to be in San Diego in time for today's event, I panicked.

I called Bill to get him to come over so I could hook my jumper cables up to his battery and my battery. I called AAA in case it wasn't the battery. Luckily, it was the battery and Bill's tiny little red Mini provided the life giving juice that my car required. I hit the road.

I'm keeping track of the mileage at the top of each blog post. The mileage posted above was from driving to Thousand Oaks, South Pasadena, then to San Diego and on to Scottsdale, today. There won't be any mileage tomorrow since I'm being driven around from bookstore to bookstore by a friend of Janet, my agent, and I can walk to Poisoned Pen bookstore from my hotel. Plenty of mileage to come though.

Addendum on Monday morning: The benedryl and cortisone cream wore off and the itching woke me up. When will this go away? I gotta say, I've never been a huge fan of New York City and I'm even less so now. Over the years I have slept in all manner of places: a 35 cent a night hotel in a border town between Spain and Portugal that was overrun with rats; two different chicken coops in West Africa; 10 nights in a huge, wooden, communal longhouse in Central Borneo; a brothel in Bamako, Mali; the $35 a night "Presidential Suite" in the Hotel Cesar in downtown Tijuana, Mexico; a Chinese army jail cell; another jail cell in Quebec that had been converted into a youth hostel; driftwood huts on a beach on Vancouver Island; and more. And yet in none of these places, not one, did I ever leave with any sort of bug bites or infestation that affected me longer than a few hours or at the most the next day. Today is day four and counting. My body is covered with itchy bumps that I got in an "inexpensive" (meaning it cost $200 per night) hotel in New York City.

NEW YORK BUGS ME

Bed bugs, that is. A significant infestation of them. Eva is bit to within an inch of her life. They liked her better than me. Which is good for me, but I still didn't escape. For however long this lasts - I keep hearing different stories - I am going to be on tour as the itchy-scratchy author.

The Gershwin is, by New York standards (which are lower in these matters than standards in the real world), a very nice inexpensive hotel. A standard room runs a "mere" two hundred bucks a night. The best thing about The Gershwin is that it is in a great location, both for the business and the tourism sides of the city. The rooms are small, not quite Tokyo small, but with two people in one it can be fairly cramped.

Following a sleepless second night - thanks to the city government idiot who issued the build to 2:30 am construction permit for the site across the street - we moved to a quieter, inside room. That may or may not have been where the bugs got us on the third night.

The bites tend to appear after 24 hours, so it was inconveniently around an hour before we had to leave to go to an important dinner, that Eva began noticing she'd been assaulted. At that point, there was almost no way we could switch hotels. We called the manager, however, complained, and they put us into a suite. As to whether or not the suite was also infested, I couldn't say. I began to get itchy and scratchy that night, which was well before 24 hours.

The upshot was that we got plenty of bites for free, and the room was free, which saved me over eight hundred bucks for the four nights. I'd have happily paid more than that to not be bitten, or not have to worry about whether or not I brought any of the damn things home with me.

Apparently New York City has been hit with a major infestation of bed bugs. Google it, you'll see, even some of the swankest hotels in town are giving their guests that little something extra. We don't hear about this sort of thing much out here in California. Yet another of the many reasons this is the most populated state in the country.

So if you come to any of my book events, and I'm itching and scratching, please try to feel a bit of sympathy. And maybe buy an extra copy or two to make me feel better.

Here's what one of the nasty little buggers look like when filling up with your, or my blood:

NYC MOODS

I will never kill a cab driver in one of my books. I promised Preston. He was my hack yesterday, here in New York City. He was one of those taxi drivers who really make you feel good about being here: bright, funny, opinionated, knowledgeable, an excellent conversationalist. So when he asked what I do and I told him, and then he asked if I'd ever killed a cabbie in one of my books and I told him I haven't, he asked me to promise I never would. And I did.

On the other hand, the construction permit that allows the guys across the street from our hotel to rip things up and pound on them until 2:30 in the morning, then start again four and a half hours later at seven am, is not one of those things that make you feel good about being in New York City. It's one of those things that make me marvel at the fact that nearly everyone in this place is not a homicidal maniac. It's a testimony to something; hearing loss, perhaps.

I once had some upstairs neighbors in Hong Kong who decided it would be a good idea to tear up the concrete floor of their apartment at three am. With a jack hammer. I went up to talk with them. They were in a very festive mood; drinking beer, eating flattened, dried squid that they were grilling on a small hibachi in the middle of the floor they were destroying. They weren't apologetic, but they seemed understanding and they assumed I'd be the same. What else could they do? They had jobs to get to in the morning. When else were they going to be able to do the work? It took them the better part of a week. I moved into a hotel for the duration. One without construction going on across the street. Which wasn't easy to find in Hong Kong in the early 1990s. It was about half the price of this place, and the room was twice as large.

Why doesn't every tourist who comes to New York City become a homicidal maniac?

Maybe I should say, every American tourist. Europeans, Israelis, even Canadians are here in droves, gleefully spending their newly muscular Euros, Shekels and Loonies. I find it somewhat cheering to see many of them displaying the same sorts of arrogant and ignorant behavior that we Americans have been accused of for many years in foreign countries. We are not alone.

Is anyone ever alone in New York? Maybe everyone here is simply too sleep deprived to muster up the energy for homicidal mania.

We did have dinner at the Grand Central Oyster Bar last night. And it is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. And if it hadn't been pouring rain we would have walked back to the noisy hotel, and walking in New York City is one of the greatest urban treats to be had anywhere.

And in the morning you need to walk, long distances, to find a decent cup of espresso. You'd think that with all the exhaustion, the least New York could do would be to provide its denizens with readily available, high-quality caffeine. But good espresso is a rarity here. Even my coffee loving friends in New York are thankful for Starbucks. And that, frankly, is pathetic.

At least there's plenty of cigarette smoke to inhale on the sidewalks. In front of every office building there are knots of smokers, chased out of their offices and down to the pavement to indulge. I imagine a great deal of very real business transpires among the smokers. That, and perhaps skin cancer from standing around in the sunlight's glare reflected off the glass sheathed towers. It is my impression that smokers in New York look healthy - at least in the old-fashioned sense of skin with some color to it. Non-smokers tend to exhibit an office-bound pallor. They don't get outside much.

So, what is it that I'm doing here? Tonight I have my official East Coast Launch Party for GRAVE IMPORTS at Partners & Crime, one of my favorite mystery bookstores. I'm optimistic. I'm expecting as many as a dozen people to show up.

There are five Borders bookstores in Manhattan, each of which has two copies of each of my Ray Sharp books. So I've made the rounds, signing the copies at every store. What I tell myself is that by doing so, the stores will put them on more prominent display, or at least take them out of hiding, slap "Autographed by the Author" stickers on them, and so might have a marginally better chance of selling the books than they otherwise would. If they sell those four, maybe they'll order four more, or even more than that. If that works, and I could somehow do it at a thousand stores or more, I might have a shot at the lower reaches of some best seller list somewhere.

It they can get the books, that is. I'm supposed to drop by Mysterious Books tomorrow. It's one of the best known mystery bookstores in the U.S., if not the world. They haven't been able to get ahold of any of the hardbacks of GRAVE IMPORTS. Many of their customers are collectors who want first edition hardbacks. They have a few paperbacks, is all. I'll go there anyhow, to say hi, chat with the bookstore people (something I enjoy doing in any case) and hopefully if and when they finally do manage to get some books, I might get a bit more consideration than I would otherwise.

It's a very screwy business. New York is a very screwy place. I wonder if they'd let me sleep at a Starbucks?

HERE I COME

Yet another Eric Stone Drive-By Book Tour is getting underway. I've been warming up with events on home ground and am headed for New York tomorrow.

My last book tour, the Disoriented Express with Colin Cotterill, we added up the estimated weight of our assembled crowds. I don't think I'll bother with that this time. For one, I don't have Colin along to help me with the estimates. And unless something truly untoward or special occurs along the way, I'm not sure I want to spend a whole lot of time describing book events. (Although I might post the occasional picture.)


(There really were more than four people at last night's event at The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood Village (in Los Angeles.) There were, maybe, 40 or so. But bookstores are tough places to take pictures. This is me telling the assembled multitudes about prahoc - a Cambodian fish paste that is sort of like the stinkiest, most overripe French cheese you could possibly imagine - only it's FISH. Ray Sharp eats some in GRAVE IMPORTS.)

Suffice to say, I enjoy book events. It's a mighty fine job; showing up at a bookstore to talk about books you've written and about yourself and sometimes about writing in general or other books. I'd even do that if it wasn't my job. I'm strange enough that I even love doing it when no one shows up for a book event. I'm plenty happy just sitting around and chewing the fat with bookstore people. (My first job was in a bookstore. I've loved the places ever since.) Still, I love it even better when a lot of people do show up for my book events. So if you're reading this, take a look at the events schedule and show up when I'm nearby.

Here's what you'll get: Cambodian pop music by Ros Sereysothea (truly fantastic, late '60s / early '70s pop psychedelia.) A slide show of great (if I do say so myself, since I took them) photos of Cambodia - you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll ooh and aah. Me talking about GRAVE IMPORTS, my latest book, and maybe some about FLIGHT OF THE HORNBILL, my next book, and about myself. Maybe - I'll take a vote - I'll read something from one of my books (no more than five minutes though, I promise.) And you can ask me questions. And I will sign any books you buy - well, at least the ones by me. (A note about that: I have only once, in Anchorage, been asked by a bookstore for ID when I showed up and offered to sign books for them. I usually feel obligated to point out the jacket photo and hold it up to my face, but I suppose anyone could show up nearly anywhere and sign any book they want.) I don't recommend it, though.

Today I'm at Metropolis Books in downtown Los Angeles. It's a brave little bookstore, founded by a fellow writer, in an area that is just beginning to develop. Anyone, anywhere in the vicinity, should support the place. Independent bookstores need us.

Speaking of which - Eso Won Books is one of Los Angeles' great treasures. It is a store that specializes in African-American books and has been a vital part of the Black community around these parts for a number of years. It's in trouble. It might have to close down by the end of the year unless things significantly change. When Bill Clinton came to L.A. to sign his memoir, it's where he went. Eso Won is at 4331 Degnan Blvd. (Just off Crenshaw in Leimert Park, Los Angeles.) Do yourself a favor, do Los Angeles a favor - go there, soon, buy books, buy a bunch of books. It's a great store. It would be a tragedy to lose it.

You can also buy from them online at http://esowon.booksense.com

MOOSE IN A RUT

I'm home now, in the safety and comfort of Los Angeles where the only dangers seem to be from crazed drivers and taggers who gun down grandmas who suggest they might want to engage in their art elsewhere. Nothing nearly so dangerous as bears and moose and eagles and such like. At least they don't have snakes. In the realm of deadly wildlife, that's one thing very much in Alaska's favor.

I don't have much time to write anything that anyone would want to read at the moment. I'm juggling all sorts of details to prepare for my upcoming gigantic Drive-By Book Tour '07, which kicks off any day now. In just a few minutes, I'm going to go get a haircut. Those of you who come to see any of my events, should appreciate that.

Meanwhile, having promised them once I got home to a computer that is friendlier to the particular 2 GB chip I had in one of my cameras in Alaska, here are the pictures of the famous (word has, apparently, been spreading) gay moose of the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center just south of Girdwood. (You might want to chase the kids out of the room if you don't want to answer any difficult questions about this.)

MOOSE NOT MYTH, AFTER ALL

I take it back. Alaskans were not simply having fun with outsiders by claiming that there's such a thing as a moose. Unless this is a guy in a really good moose suit. Which, considering how remarkable everything else has been in Alaska, could be the case. Still, I'm willing to accept that this is some sort of enormous, ungainly, clumsy, hulking overgrown relation to a deer.

We came across him yesterday while taking a bike ride along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage, which is a beautiful, interesting, 11 mile waterside ride along the edge of the city.

We also came across Earthquake Park, where various informational signs are posted to inform passers by of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake that leveled a lot of this part of Alaska. My favorite factoid, is that Seward - a lovely little port town in a magnificent setting on the Prince William Sound - was hit by 40 foot tall waves, travelling at about 100 mph - AND THEY WERE FLAMING! The earthquake had ruptured a number of oil storage tanks, the oil had spread out onto the water, something ignited the oil, and when the tsunamis struck they were on fire. Now that's an image I have yet to see in any Hollywood production. I can hardly wait.

Yet another instance of truth being stranger than fiction. Just try and write something like that in a novel. No one is going to believe you. You'll be accused of writing fantasy - 40 foot flaming waves, my ass. And I thought Hitler Wong - who makes a brief appearance in GRAVE IMPORTS, my new book - would stretch reader's credibility. (You can look him up on the IMDB - Internet Movie Database.)

Speaking of fantasy. Here's Wonder Woman with Eva and Em - Eva who I live with and Em who's a friend and is also here at Bouchercon in Anchorage.

Speaking of which, this is the last day, the last morning really, and I ought to get over to the convention center and perform some conventioneering. It's been great. I'll write more later.

Maybe A Moose

Talking to the locals you might get the impression that moose are as thick on the ground in Alaska as rats in Rome. They aren’t. Not that I can see. Alaska has lived up to most of the superlatives. But it has been something of a let down in the charismatic mega-fauna sighting department.
Three eagles, some white dots in the distance that seemed to be dall sheep, a couple of swans, otters – plenty of otters, both ocean going and river otters (you can tell the difference because the ocean going ones prefer the backstroke and the riverine ones the breast stroke), a red-tailed fox that emitted a truly horrible screech late at night in a parking lot, a lot of crows – or are those ravens?, drunken teenagers in the bar at the Alaskan Hotel in Cordova – but the word “charismatic” doesn’t apply, one bear, and maybe, just maybe one moose – or was it a log – way off in the distance below us from Haystack Overlook off the Copper River Highway. That’s it so far for the animal viewing.
We’ve been told to expect moose along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. Urban moose, I guess. They also, apparently, like to walk along railroad tracks in winter – so as to avoid slogging through high snow. A lot of them get turned into rail kill that way, and end up being fed to sled dogs.
We had dinner at The Pipeline Club in Valdez. It was where Captain Hazelwood got tanked up before that fateful night when he piloted the Exxon Valdez onto Bligh Shoal (named after the Captain Bligh.) Dinner was good. They pretty much left the salmon alone after a little bit over-grilling it. That’s not so easy to find around here. Like many places with unsophisticated palates, they wreck a lot of their food through ill-conceived attempts at sophistication. Cream sauces, and such like. This would be a great place to buy fresh seafood – well, limited sorts: salmon, halibut, crab, scallops, maybe a little shrimp, a few clams, I guess they’ve got some oysters sometimes, but that’s about it – and cook it yourself. So long as you didn’t want to accompany it with any fresh vegetables. Those, so far, are about as thin on the ground as the moose.
Last night, the place we wanted to go for Copper River salmon in Cordova being closed for the annual Ducks Unlimited dinner; and our second choice being closed for a private wedding party; we ended up at the OK Restaurant, which was okay. It is run by a Korean couple and serves Chinese, Korean and American food. It’s the first time I’ve eaten anywhere like it in many years, and it was surprisingly tasty. They made an honest effort at accomodating both the local tastes, and their own – and ours. A little innovation would have been nice though. If I ever go back to Cordova I’m going to make it my mission to show them that it might well be possible to cook salmon or halibut steamed with ginger and scallions, even in a small Alaskan fishing town.
Reindeer sausage is pretty good eating though.
During the day we had rented a big, powerful, high off the ground Dodge V-8 pickup to drive the 50 miles out to the Million Dollar Bridge and Childs Glacier. It was well worth it. The bridge spans a river with views of the enormous – but receding – Miles Glacier to one side, and the smaller, but up close and personal Childs glacier on the other. One can stand or sit around across the river from the Childs glacier and watch, and listen, to it calve. I have yet to get a chance to look up the derivation of the word “calving” to describe huge hunks of ice falling off the face of a glacier, but it’s pretty impressive. While we were waiting to watch the glacier fall apart, a grizzly bear trundled by, no more than about 150 or so feet away. He seemed a small, adolescent bear and paused only briefly to peer up at the six humans at the viewing area, before continuing to pick his way upriver through the rocks, no doubt in search of a simpler meal than we would have made.
As I write this we are on the good ship Chenega, a high-speed, catamaran ferry in the service of the Alaska Marine Highway System, on our way to Whittier. The entire population of Whittier apparently lives in one high-rise, hideous building. Which might be interesting but isn’t why we’re going there. We’re going there to drive through the three mile long, one way at a time, tunnel that will take us onto the Kenai Peninsula. Then it’s down to Seward, passing more glaciers and some Russian villages and varoius other Alaskan things to see and do. The highway guide cautions us to watch out for moose at several points along the road.
I’m hopeful.
Here’s some pictures. They can speak for themselves.

Ships and Other Big Things At Sea

Attempting to beat the heat - 107 (41.666 celsius) in our neighborhood yesterday - Eva and I and a couple of friends took to the water. We drove down to Long Beach, boarded a large catamaran and motored out to the channel between the mainland and Catalina Island. It was a whole lot cooler on the water. In spite of which - and a liberal slather of sunscreen - I got viciously sunburnt.

We did see whales. Blue whales, the biggest animals on Earth. We saw five of them, three for more than a fleeting glimpse. And even though we only saw small parts of them at a time, it was evident that at about 90 feet long they were nearly 30 feet longer than our boat. Faster too, if they wanted, but they were being pretty lazy while we watched.

For the most part, they looked like this:

Which, admittedly, isn't all that impressive. But there was something remarkable about them, their presence, the sounds they made, their grace through the water, the apparent, if not evident, size.

According to our captain, blue whales have hearts the size of Volkswagon bugs and arteries wide enough for a kid to crawl through. (I guess cholesterol isn't an issue for them.) That's pretty big. I wonder how many shipping containers could fit in one? Or on one.

While we were watching the whales, a large container ship hove (I like that word. It sounds very nautical. According to the OED it's been in use since about 1390.) into view. You can see it here in the distance.

The ship was headed into port at Long Beach - the largest port in the U.S. It was, of course, coming from China.

It's amazing how many mixed-feelings container ships from China conjure up these days.

Are all those giant metal packing crates full of toys that will hurt American kids? Are they full of food that will poison us or our dogs? Are they full of t-shirts, shoes, socks, linens, plates, glasses, stereo components, sex toys, tires, school supplies, and a million other sorts of geegaws, doodads and necessities of daily life that will a.) put more Americans out of work; or b.) allow Americans to keep buying stuff at cheap prices compared with the rest of the world?

What if the shorts I'm currently wearing were made right here in the good 'ol USA by good ol' American union labor? Would they have cost the $4.95 I paid for them at Costco? What about my $9.95 JC Penney t-shirt? What about the IBM Thinkpad computer I'm writing this on? (It's made in China, by Lenovo, the company that bought IBM's personal computer business. It's still expensive, but is it as expensive as it would have been if it was Made in America?)

If American workers made those shorts and t-shirts - and shoes and computers and everything else - could they afford to buy them at the higher prices they'd sell for, having not been made by cheap foreign labor?

But the whole thing really gets confusing when you start looking deeper into it. I bought the shorts I'm wearing because of the material they're made from and the design - especially the location and size of the pockets. It was an American company that made those decisions and outsourced the manufacture to China. Same with the t-shirt. I'm writing this post on software owned by Google and invented in the U.S., on a browser from Mozilla, using an operating system by Microsoft - all American companies. I ran the photos in this blog through Photoshop - more American made and owned software.

The thing is, one of the stupidest things that any country can try to do, is to be completely self-sufficient. India tried it for years. It is one of the major reasons why India is so poor today. If one country can do something just as, or nearly, as well as another; and it can do it cheaper and more efficiently, in the long run it benefits both countries to let the cheaper and more efficient one perform the task. There may well be temporary disruptions along the way, and there will be casualties - and those casualties are people who will lose their jobs and face hardship - and yes that's terrible. But it's necessary to make things better for everybody down the line, including the same people who are initially hurt by it.

Every single country, throughout history, that has opened itself up to greater free trade - and immigration for that matter - has prospered from that opening. No country, ever, anywhere, has totally eliminated poverty and hardship, and probably no country ever will, but the countries that have come closest to that goal, are the ones that have opened themselves up, not closed themselves off.

I wondered and marveled at the blue whales. And I wondered and marveled at that gigantic overladen freighter hoving into view. And I thought to myself, for all of its foibles and stupidities and misery - ain't the world a grand place.

Then I got home and it was 98 degrees and humid in the kitchen. I quickly drank a glass of cold water, then got back into my air-conditioned car to go out in search of somewhere with a larger - and so cooler - carbon footprint.

NEW BOOKS COMING - THE SET UP

I wonder what a book tour is like in Africa? Take a look at this picture. It's from the current issue of The Economist. It's a satellite view of Europe and Africa at night. The Africans are certainly doing more than their fair share of the work to combat global warming.

I don't know how many inches of glacier I've melted with all the emails I've already sent out to lay the groundwork for my upcoming book launch. I am driving for most of the upcoming tour. That's not good, but it's not as bad as if I was flying to the 20 or so cities where I have events planned. At least my office isn't air-conditioned. (Which is something I've regretted during the past week.)

The problem with book promotion these days is that you never know what's going to work. Lately I've heard that the only guaranteed book sellers these days are appearances on Oprah, The Daily Show and on the display ladders at the front of Barnes & Noble and Borders. (B&N and Borders sell 85% of the books they sell, from within the first 20 feet of the front door.) Supposedly, even The Today Show and Good Morning America can't guarantee book sales anymore.

Everyone's talking about viral marketing and every new book seems to come complete with a "book trailer." Click here to see mine. If your book trailer hits on YouTube, you'll supposedly sell a lot of books.

But, there's no way to guarantee a hit on YouTube, or anywhere else. Not long ago a publisher spent, by its own admission, $60,000 on two one minute short films to get a buzz going online about a new book. It didn't help. So far as I know the book hasn't earned back its advance, much less that extra sixty thousand bucks.

I suppose getting arrested could help, a little. Getting arrested in a compromising position with Paris Hilton might help even more. But maybe people are getting sick of Paris. I know I am.

So what can a writer do? What sells books?

I'm opting for the machine gun approach. Jam as big a clip as I can into the thing, set it on full auto, hold down the trigger and blast away in as many different directions as I possibly can. Surely I'll hit something. If I was a big name author like Stephen King or somebody, my publisher could afford the hydrogen bomb approach, laying waste to readers all across America - and the world. But they can't afford that, and neither can I.

So, here I am again, a blind man with a gun. (Oh wait, there's a Chester Himes novel called something like that - Blind Man With a Pistol.) Only this time, having been through this a couple of times in the past with previous books, I've got a bigger magazine of bullets and I might be able to conserve some by shooting in controlled bursts.

And I've got some booksellers on my side. They're good allies.

So if in the next few months you get more emails than you want from me, you see my name more than seems seemly on websites and bulletin boards (and maybe some restroom walls), and I show up in your town and pester you to come see me in person and buy multiple copies of my books and it all seems like too much shameless self-promotion... Tough! A writer's gotta do, what a writer's gotta do

Why I Don't Have Any Tattoos

Commitment issues, it's as simple as that. I can't come up with any particular image, word or symbol that I want permanently on my body. I know myself, I'd change my mind sooner or later and getting tattoos removed is painful and not all that effective.

The closest I ever came was when I was in college in Olympia, Washington. I used to hang out on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma and I had befriended a tattoo artist named Painless Brenda. One night I was drunk. I walked in to Brenda's shop, sat down and told her that I wanted a mushroom cloud on my right bicep, with the words, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" written below it. In my inebriated state it struck me as an existential badass tattoo.

Brenda looked at me, shook her head no, then threw me out of her parlor. She told me that she didn't permit "cursing in her presence" and to come back when I was sober.

I did go back when I was sober. I brought her a bottle of the wine she liked and thanked her for having tossed me out.

I like tattoos. A good tattoo can be beautiful, and sexy. There are plenty of others that are just plain interesting, fascinating even. There are plenty of bad ones though. Sooner or later some of the chain tattoo removal parlors are going to start making lots of money. There wasn't, however, any traffic at their booths yesterday at the Tattoo and Body Modification Expo at the L.A. County Fairgrounds.

Every chance I get, I go to tattoo expos. What's great about them is that everyone who's there, shows up to see and be seen. They take the word "expo" seriously. It's a photographer's paradise. A whole crowd of people who love it when you take their picture; who are comfortable with their bodies; who are, often literally, colorful.

Here's a few photos from Friday and Saturday at the Tattoo Expo. (If you want to see a lot more, I've put them on a Flickr page. (I suggest using the slide show function.)

But, for those of you who don't want to go to the Flickr Page here's a preview:

Emma and Immigration

Emma Goldman has long been one of my heroes. The beliefs that she so clearly and beautifully articulated, speak to the best sides of human nature. As I've grown older - my 55th birthday was on Wednesday - I've come to regard some - not all, not even the majority, but some - of her beliefs as naive. That's due, I suppose, to the growing cynicism with which I regard the world around me.

And it's a shame. This would be a far better place if Emma's vision could realistically be fully implemented.

Whether her vision for the world was realistic or not, Emma Goldman's writing and speeches still resonate. June 27th is the 138th anniversary of her birth. As a donor, I received the following quote in an email from The Emma Goldman Papers Project at UC Berkeley. It is from her closing statement at her 1917 trial for speaking out against the World War One draft. She was convicted, imprisoned and then deported. Her words, from 90 years ago, speak very loudly to the issues of today.

“Gentleman of the jury, we respect your patriotism, we would not, if we could, have you change its meaning for yourself. But may there not be different kinds of patriotism as there are different kinds of liberty?

"I for one cannot believe that love of one’s country must... consist in blindness to its social faults, in deafness to its social discords, inarticulation to its social wrongs. Neither can I believe that the mere accident of birth in a certain country or the mere scrap of a citizen’s paper constitutes the love of country.

"I know many people — I am one of them — who were not born here, nor have they applied for citizenship, and who yet love America. Our patriotism is that of the man who loves a woman with open eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty, yet he sees her faults.

"So we, too, who know America, love her beauty, her richness, her great possibilities; we love her mountains, her canyons, her forests, her Niagara, and her deserts — above all do we love the people that have produced her wealth, her artists who have created beauty, her great apostles who dream and work for liberty.

"But with the same passionate emotion we hate her superficiality, her cant, her corruption, her mad, unscrupulous worship at the alter of the Golden Calf...We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America."

If you want to know more about the Emma Goldman Papers Project - they are producing a remarkable set of volumes of her writing, speeches and articles about her - you can click here and be taken to their website.

Libraries, tacos (yet again), and the meat to dollar ratio

I have a writer friend who hates libraries. She, thinking of her royalty statements, refers to them as "parasites." This strikes me as very short sighted. First off, unless you are a very well known author, libraries buy more hardcover copies of books than pretty much anyone else. Sure, they then lend them out free to people - which is, I gather, her complaint; but how many of those people are likely to buy the book anyhow?

And libraries promote reading. As a writer, I'm all for that. And sooner or later, readers are likely to buy some books, maybe even mine. And as for those people out there who can't afford to buy books, I'm glad they've got a chance to read some for free. Even mine. The more that people read, the better it is for all of us; writers and non-writers alike.

So I like libraries. On Monday I was the guest author at the Newport Beach Public Library's annual Friends of the Library luncheon. I consider something like that an honor. It was arranged for me by my aunt Adele, who is an active member of the Friends. They're an effective group too. Over the past six years, they've raised more than $1.44 million for the library. As you can imagine, it's a very well-equipped, well-stocked, well-staffed place.

Prior to my appearance, I was cautioned not to swear. I was cautioned a dozen or more times, by three different people. It seems that whoever their author was last year - they wouldn't say - swore a blue streak and bothered them greatly. Now I don't have a particularly foul mouth. A dirty mind, sure, but I'm pretty good at judging my audience and adjusting my presentations accordingly. And this audience was 95% women of an average age of about 76.3 years.

So I went, and I presented, and they loved it. I read an excerpt from GRAVE IMPORTS. I showed them my PowerPoint of photos with music relating to the book and about Cambodia. They oohed and aahed over the photos. They gasped at the horrors of the trade in stolen Cambodian antiquities. (Which is what the book is about.)

Anyhow, as I'm packing up to go, a woman tottered up to me to ask if I'd be interested in leading a tour group to Cambodia. She thought I"d be an excellent tour guide. And that I could make some good money leading a group. And she'd happily sign up for it herself. And I'd for sure know all the good places to buy authentic Cambodian temple art and would know how to help them get it out of the country.

SAY, WHAT?

As gently as I could - I am quite certain that I had made myself clear on the matter in my presentation - I explained that one of the points of the book was that the trade in Cambodian temple art was a bad thing and that it needed to be stopped. I would certainly never do anything to help someone buy or smuggle the stuff. She looked terribly disappointed. I think she had cheery visions of her living room stocked with stone apsaras and Buddha heads. This was in Orange County. I expect she went off in disgust to donate more money to the Republicans or something.

And I imagine she'd have had a thing or two, that I didn't want to hear, to say about the place I had tacos the other night.

Now if you've read my blog for any time, you know that I regard tacos as one of the perfect foods. A good taco is simple, a blend of flavors adding up to a whole lot more than the sum of its parts. And al pastor - spit roasted, highly marinated pork - tacos are my favorites. If I'm ever going to be executed and given a choice of my last meal, a good al pastor taco will be very high on the list.

So the other night, accompanied by Eva and our pal Bill, I went out in search of an illegal taco vendor of whom I had heard. We found his push cart surrounded by a modest-sized crowd (but still a crowd) along one of the far east stretches of Cesar Chavez Blvd. (East of Gage, for those of you hoping to find him for yourself.)

I may have had two better al pastor tacos in my life. One is at my favorite taco stand - all they have is al pastor - in Tijuana. It's open 24 hours a day and always has four big spits of pork crackling and roasting in the open flames. The other was from a street vendor in Mexico City.

But these East L.A. tacos can pretty well hold their own with those. They are sliced off an enormous spit of bright red - and black from the charred bits - pork, topped with a large onion on the spit and above that a scored whole pineapple. The tortillas are dipped quickly into the dripping pork grease, warmed until they're just pliant enough, then the chopped meat is spatulaed on. There's a condiment table with truly incredible red, green and avocado salsas, as well as chopped onions and cilantro. There's a big plate of roasted-to-perfection whole jalapeno peppers.

There's some stuff to drink, too; as well as a variety of other meats that I ignored. The 20 or so people milling around on the sidewalk were happily eating.

Now this isn't to say that any of this is legal. It isn't. The cops could bust this poor taco artisan if they so choose. He doesn't have the requisite permits. He didn't want me to take his picture. His business doesn't have a name, at least not that I could find anywhere. But this is one of the joys of life in Los Angeles.

As are, while we are on the subject of food, burgers. I don't know why anyone in L.A. would ever go to a chain burger place when there is such an extraordinary selection of independent burger establishments around town. Some people swear by In 'n' Out - a local chain. They're wrong.

Not so long ago I was in South Central L.A. - a place they tell us white folk we're supposed to be afraid to go. I'm sure there are some scary parts of town around there. And maybe it's a case of me being too dumb to be afraid. But when someone tells me not to go somewhere, that's a sure fire way of tempting me to go there.

So I was in South Central for lunch on Western Ave. just south of Vernon, at Master Burger. There's something to be said, I'm not quite sure what it is, for considering the ratio of meat per dollar in one's dining experience.

At Master Burger I did not eat the "Double King Combo." That's two, one-pound patties with the requisite fixin's, fries and a drink. It costs $6.99 plus tax = $7.58. That's a mere $3.79 per pound for the meat. Subtract the potatoes, oil, salt, drink, cup, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, mayonnaise and mustard, bun, paper wrapping, brown paper bag, straw, cup lid, napkins - and it's even cheaper than that. A whole lotta beef for your buck.

It has been many years since I have been to a McDonald's, but I seem to recall that the standard patty is one-tenth of a pound. (I recall this because I remember that when they brought out their quarter-pounder (one patty) they claimed that it was their burger with the most meat, even more than their double burger. If two regular patties didn't add up to a quarter of a pound, well, you get the picture, do the math. If, as I recall, their standard one-patty burger sold for 79 cents; multiply that by ten and you get $7.90 per pound - or $15.80 to equal the meatage of just one "Double King Master Burger."

The regular, half-pound, Master Burger that I had was good, too. Excellent even. Now it is most definitely not a plate and waitress sort of place, where you sit down and have your burger brought to you along with a cocktail of your choice - hopefully something without an umbrella or fruit that would be cause for embarrassment with a burger. But it could easily hold its own against any burger stand burger I've ever had.

My Editor and a Cambodian Saturday in the Park

This is my new editor, Alison Janssen at Bleak House Books. She is way cool, and way smart, and apparently hell on skates too. You can watch an interview with her here.

Working with an editor can be a tricky business. I ought to know, I was one for a long time - magazines, not books. We writers love what we write and don't usually cotton to someone messing with it.

I've been lucky. Win Blevins, my editor at Forge Books for The Living Room of the Dead truly helped make that a better book. I learned from him and the book benefitted.

At first, I was a little nervous about working with Alison. She's obviously smart and all that, but I'm old enough to be her father. (I can't believe I just wrote that. I must really be getting old.) Just before we started working together on the book I jokingly asked if I should be concerned. She "reassured" me - jokingly (I think) saying that I didn't have anything to worry about, she didn't think she'd want me to do much with the book, but she did feel it could benefit by my adding a cookie-selling girl scout to one of the scenes in Cambodia; which was, of course, ridiculous.

Alison then gave me her notes. And they were good, very good. Following her notes and some of her suggestions have made Grave Imports an even better book than the one I'd originally written. I learned some important things about my writing from her. That's the way it's supposed to work. (Maybe I'm not old enough to be her father after all.)

And I showed her. I tossed in a cookie-selling girl scout, sort of. And I did it in a way that helped satisfy one of her editorial notes. She liked it. I liked it. You'll have to read the book to find our girl scout for yourself.

Having worked with her, I can now hardly wait to see Mel Ignant, her roller derby alter ego, in action.

As for Cambodians, they feature significantly in my new book Grave Imports (this is my blog, I have to get in plugs whenever I can) that's coming out in September. A lot of them, more than anywhere else other than in Cambodia itself, live in Long Beach, California - about 35 miles from my house. And a whole lot of them were in El Dorado Park last Saturday to celebrate Cambodian New Year.

It was a reminder of a couple of things. One, how much I miss Asia, some countries - Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Macau and Cambodia in particular - more than others.

And it was also a reminder of how great it is to live in a big city in the U.S. where there are large groups of people from all over the world. In the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area we have the largest immigrant populations in the world from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines (I think), Mexico, most Central American countries, Iran and Armenia. We have increasingly large immigrant populations from Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, the Middle East and other countries in Asia as well.

Despite all the problems, in spite of all the political arrogance and stupidity that this country inflicts on people all over the world, this is still, particularly in Los Angeles, a truly great and exciting place to live. And a whole lot of people around the world know that, or at least suspect it. Which is why they keep coming here and adding to the good things about living here. Here's some more pictures from what is not really an unusual (at least in L.A.) Saturday in the park:
There were kids with cool hair.


For some reason, there were a lot of women with streaked hair.



There were men playing traditional games.




And women on the receiving end of those games.







There were kids beating each other up with American flag clubs. (I'll leave any political implications up to your imagination.)

There was a temporary temple.

And live bands.

And beauty queens, of course.

And families cooking satay on portable grills.




And some nasty geese. I'll bet they'd be pretty tasty.








And strutting herons. You wouldn't think it, but L.A. is lousy with herons.