The mention of prologues rekindled a memory of why it's so
much fun to write mysteries. A few years ago I was invited to
sign at a California University campus bookstore along with
four other local crime writers. One of them was a recent
graduate of the university. The store manager thought the
lunch hour would be a good time. She hadn't realized how
perfect the day would be -- sunny but cool, with nary a trace
of that dreaded California smog. Or that a rock band would be
playing a set in the quad. For all I know, Wolfgang Puck was
preparing lunch in the cafeteria that day. Kurt Vonnegut may
have been lecturing nearby. In any case, nobody was in a
bookstore mood. We sat around amusing ourselves with
anecdotes about how cheap and duplicitous our publishers were
until, finally, as the hour was just about up, one guy
entered the store. Appropriately, he was dressed in black.
Our table was immediately silent, all eyes on this potential
customer. He took his time circling the store before
"discovering" us at our table. "Ah, mysteries," he said,
staring into our game faces. "Well, let's see." Beginning
left to right, he picked up a book, studied its cover, turned
a few pages, put it back down, moved on to the next. When he
was finished, he gave us all a brief smile and turned to go.
His last words were, "Whole lot of prologues."
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 23 Jul 2001 EDT