Across the River...with Joyce Carol Oates

Well, blow me sideways! In the years before my mystery novel was published, it was rejected (despite glowing praise for the writing, characters, setting, etc.) for having a plot too much like the real Jon Benet Ramsay story. Yes, that still-unsolved tabloid case was part of the inspiration, though it was merely a jumping off point for other issues I wanted to explore.

Today I read that Joyce Carol Oates, the Morticia Addams of the literary world, has written an even more blatantly ripped-from-the-headlines fictional account. Hey, Joyce, I was there first! I thought up mine in 2000 and started writing seven years ago, while you probably came up with the idea last week and finished on Friday. (She IS notoriously prolific.) And her interview on BookPage could be mine, with its intimations of Christianity and tabloid hell.

Note to Joyce: Really, changing Ramsey to "Rampike"? Even I could have done better than that!

Across the River...and into the Blog

Did I mention I am a lousy blogger? Lousy, lousy, lousy. Across the River debuted at the Deadly Ink conference last weekend, I appeared on three panels that Saturday, and that night my Amazon.com sales rankings were like a ride on the Palisades Park Cyclone--from 427,983 to 37,634! Of course, it sped downhill to 163,984 the next day, but, oh, what a thrill! I may have wet myself.

On the following Monday, my iMac imploded, just as I was about to send out an E mail blast for ATR's official release date, Tuesday, June 24. Luckily I had a full arsenal of curse words, in English and Italian, at my disposal. So if you saw a mushroom cloud over northeastern PA at about 10 p.m. EST, that was me unleashing a 3.8 megaton blast of che cazzo's over the region. I'm still working to restore my database on a spanking-new iMac with a screen as big as the old Hackensack drive-in.

Though my own efforts to get the word out are floundering, the absolutely hilarious and kind Terrie Farley Moran plugged MY book on her Women of Mystery blog. If Terrie's energy could be harnessed, there'd be no need to look for alternate fuel sources and the troops would be home tomorrow.


But I don't want to go too long before saying wonderful things about all the lovely folks who I reconnected with and others I met for the first time at Deadly Ink. Like gracious guest of honor Jane Cleland, who I had the last-minute good fortune of questioning in front of witnesses on Friday night; class act Robin Hathaway, who works both sides of the Delaware River with her Dr. Jo Banks mysteries and Dr. Fenimore series (she received DI's Lifetime Achievement Award last year, about 30 years too early--I don't care what her age, Robin looks like a teenager and her literary career is just getting started); that other Energizer Bunny, Chris Grabenstein of Grabenstein Industries, who's producing three books a year and somehow makes it look fun (but I know better); toastmasterly Troy Cook the One-Minute Joke Assassin; my fellow DI Press author and silver fox Ed Rand; my-brother-in-another-life Steve Rigolosi, of the ingenious Tales from The Back Page series; and newcomer Renaissance man Philip Cioffari, who still hasn't made up his mind whether Hiram's or Callahan's has the best hot dogs in Fort Lee. This was also my first chance to meet Chris Lupetti, who took the breath-taking view of the GWB on my book jacket, who is as nice as he is talented. We are related, but we haven't quite figured out how. A DNA connection, for sure.

Once I reconfigure my iMac, pictures will be shared. That should be easier to manage than blogging. I'm thinking that since my book is set in the not-so-distant past, I will blog in the not-so-distant past. Retro-blog. Write about what happened two years ago, until I get to the present day. Which will then be the past. About which I would blog. Does that make any sense to you? Nah. Me neither.