Apparently, I’ve already posted the main title I featured yesterday…so here’s another to make up for the flub.
Month: May 2008
The Sandwich
The towncar driver who picked me up at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan yesterday asked me if I’d like a Chinese sandwich before heading out to the airport.
"No thanks," I said. "I just had lunch."
"It’s not food," he said. "It’s the greatest experience of your life."
"What is it?"
"It’s two naked Chinese women covered with soap bubbles who hug each other…with you in between. You can go as far as you want with them."
"No thanks," I said.
"Are you sure?" he said. "It’s something you’ll remember when you’re old, sitting in your rocking chair, and it will bring a smile to your face."
"It’s not my kind of thing," I said.
"Are you gay?"
"Married."
"So what?" he said. "She’ll never know."
"I will," I said.
He grinned. "That’s the point."
"I’m really not interested."
Actually, I was very interested. Not in experiencing the Sandwich for myself, but I wanted to know if he’d done it, how many of the men he drove around took him up on the offer, and how many of them got a sexually transmitted disease. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
"You mean to tell me you’ve never played around?" The driver asked.
"Nope," I said.
"How long have you been married?"
"About twenty years," I said.
He stared at me in shock. "How do you do it?"
I shrugged. "It doesn’t take any effort at all."
"Because you don’t like sex?"
"Because I love my wife," I said.
He shook his head. "That’s really sad. You only live once, you know."
The Edgars
One of the great things about the Edgars, besides meeting so many terrific authors, is all the free books you get when the ceremony is over. I just lugged up to my room two bulging bags of books to send back home. But you don’t want to hear about that, you want to hear about the Awards…
Well, as Edgar chair, I’ve known who the winners are for a while now and I nearly bit off my tongue not leaking the news to Tana French and Susan Straight that they were winners when I met them at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last weekend. Also Matt Nix, executive producer of BURN NOTICE, won as well…news that my brother Tod (who is writing the BURN NOTICE books) and my publisher Kristen Weber (who is publishing the BURN NOTICE books) would have loved to have known in advance. That’s Tana and Matt in the photo to the left and the Southern California contingent of MWA in the photo to the right…
Jim Warren, Naomi Hirahara, Leslie Klinger, Pat Smiley, Doug Lyle, Deborah Atkinson and yours truly.
Al Roker was a funny host, and he even said "fuck" a few times, which is kind of weird to hear coming from him. As a number of people noted, he was like a thinner, blacker, Tod Goldberg. I sat with my agent Gina Maccoby and my publisher, which is always nice, and I did a lot of schmoozing before the event, though I was too tired to hang out in the bar afterwards.
Galleycat’s Ron Hogan has posted more pictures from the pre-Edgars reception here.
A complete list of winners follows after the jump.