Dead Men Don't Crochet

Tuesday was the official release date of Dead Men Don’t Crochet. It turns out that bookstores don’t like to do author events in December - that is unless you’re a superstar which I’m not.

But drop ins to sign stock or okay, so that is what I plan to do while I’m in icy Chicago.

57th Street Books was my first stop and they were expecting me. I’ve mentioned this bookstore before. It’s located in the basement of an apartment building and I set some of the action in my YA mystery Blue Schwartz and Nefertiti’s Necklace there. I also wrote an article about it for the Another Great American Bookstore feature in Byline Magazine.

These days 57th Street Books has a whole new identity going. Not only is it my favorite bookstore, but the Obama family’s as well. Actually my whole neighborhood is going through a flurry of excitement. There have been lots of Nobel Prize winners around here and well known writers like Saul Bellows, Sara Paretsky and the woman who wrote the Mrs. Pickerall Goes to Mars series. I can’t remember her name, but she lived in our old building. And my high school French teacher wrote the children’s classic Mr. Popper’s Penguins. But having a President- Elect seems to have turned a special spotlight on Hyde Park.

Laura Prail brought out a stacks of Hooked on Murder, Dead Men Don’t Crochet and Blue Schwartz and Nefertiti’s Necklace for me to sign. While I signed I asked her about the Obama effect on the bookstore. Of course, business was up and she said some people just came in wanting to buy a book from the store the President-Elect shops in. I thought it was kind of cool that without even knowing he was doing it, Obama was helping authors.

When all the books were signed, Laura showed me the poster of my bookcover hanging on the wall. She said she was going to make a display of my books below it. All I could think was wow. And as an afterthought I wondered if Michelle likes cozy mysteries.

Blocked No More

What is my blog going to be about this week? The blinking curser moves on the blank screen and I watch with my blank mind. Whenever I feel so-called writers block, there are two ways out. They both start with E, and are sort of complimentary and opposite at the same time.

What are they? Eating and exercise.

Since I’m in Chicago, eating means a short trip across the street to a neighborhood restaurant. I have my notebook and pen. Sure enough, as soon as I order, the doors in my mind open up and ideas begin to tumble out. My french toast comes and I balance my notebook on my knees and write between bites. I’m not a syrup person. The ball of butter melts and slides over the triangles of grilled bread and I know the other E will come in handy to take care of all those calories when I finish.

This restaurant is filled with memories as is everything else in my old neighborhood. This particular spot used to be a different restaurant where I waited tables when I was in college. Random thoughts and memories pour out of my pen. Though I have lived far longer in Los Angeles than in Hyde Park, between growing up here and maintaining a connection, it still feels like home.

The french toast is gone in no time. If I were in L.A., I’d head for the gym for the exercise part of the unblocking, but here I just hit the streets. No car, all feet. There are choices about where to walk. I could go to the beach and walk along the jogging- bicycle path that leads toward downtown. I could go to the Museum of Science and Industry and walk around inside and see cool things like a giant heart and hatching baby chicks. Instead I head along 57th Street toward the University of Chicago campus.

As usual there is lots of action on the street. Is it my imagination or is there a higher level of excitement in the air. It’s not just my old neighborhood, but Barack Obama’s current one. Though I think he’s off somewhere else just now. When I look in the window of the Medici bakery, the counter staff are wearing shirts that say Obama Eats Here.

He’s not the only famous name connected with this piece of real estate. When I was a kid the bakery and the Thai restaurant next to it were Steinway’s drugstore. It had a small cafeteria and was where we went for cokes after school. There’s an oft repeated story connected with that cafeteria. It seems that one day a group of men were huddled in one of the booths, talking and scribbling on napkins. Apparently, they had been sitting there too long and the manager threw them out.

Who were they? How about Enrico Fermi and his colleagues. And their napkin scribbles were the atomic bomb.

Their lab was a few blocks away tucked under the athletic field stands. The stands and field are gone, replaced by a library.

It is quiet inside the confines of the campus. The students aren’t back yet. I stop at Botany Pond. And sit on the arched bridge that was a gift of some graduating class. Another spot loaded with memories. I used to bring my fox terrier here when I was a kid. He loved to go wading in the water. Much later, I brought my son here when he was small and he fell in. It’s only about a foot deep, so he was more embarrassed than in danger. My YA mystery BLUE SCHWARTZ AND NERFERITI’S NECKLACE is set in Hyde Park and has several scenes at this lovely little pond.

I pass through the heart of the campus and exit onto 58th Street. The Oriental Institute is open so I stop in. A lot of Blue Schwartz takes places in this museum and I remember stopping by and checking out the exhibits when getting the book published was still just a hope. I have spent so much time imagining Blue and all the action that goes on in this small museum that even now when I look around, I half expect to see her sneaking through a door.

On the way back, I swing by 57th Street Books. As you can see by the photo, it is located in the basement of an apartment building, but don’t let that fool you. Even though the windows offer a view of people legs as they go by, the inside is inviting and goes for rooms and rooms. Okay, I admit it, I checked the mystery section for HOOKED ON MURDER. A copy was sticking out as if someone had just looked at it. And I went in the kid’s section and made sure they had a copy of BLUE SCHWARTZ. Of course, I didn’t leave empty handed. I really did need another crochet book. This one even had a pattern for crocheted sushi. How can you pass that up?

By now ideas for all sorts of things beyond this blog were floating around in my head. Between the notes I had and all the ideas, I couldn’t wait to get home to the blank screen of my computer so I could fill it up. The double Es always work.

Signing in the Rain

There must be something about the combination of outdoor book signings, Chicago and me that courts disaster.
BLUE SCHWARTZ AND NEFERTITI’S NECKLACE came out in September. It takes place in my Chicago Hyde Park neighborhood and the release coincided with a local children’s book street fair. The fair was even sponsored by 57th Street Books which happened to be Blue’s favorite bookstore. It would seem that all the planets, or whatever it’s supposed to be, were in alignment.
I remember that afternoon thinking how this was to be my very first time on the other side of the signing table. My friend Judy Libby even drove up all the way from Springfield to share the moment.
My signing time was toward the end of the fair and it was to be at a table on the street. The sky was white, but non threatening so I wasn’t worried. This is no lie, but as Judy and I walked the two blocks to the fair, something happened in the last half a block. It started to pour. Not drizzle, not light rain – pour. The kind of rain where it seems someone unzipped the sky and let a deluge fall out.
By the time we reached the signing table, it was covered with a tarp and frantic people were carrying books inside. Most of the fair goers were fleeing for someplace dry. The bookstore people were very nice and moved my signing inside. Meanwhile Judy troweled the bookstore for customers. She found some wet girls waiting to be picked up. They were just the right age for the book and several of them got copies.
When the mother’s showed up and the only shoppers were a couple of men, Judy and I left and went out to dinner. When we walked outside, the rain had stopped and the puddles were already drying up.
Flash forward to last weekend and my first signing of another book in Chicago at a street fair. This time it was the Printers Row Fair which is held in the South Loop. Julie Hyzy, the president of the Chicago area chapter of Mystery Writers of America as nice enough to give me a signing slot for HOOKED ON MURDER, a crochet mystery in their booth.
The sun was shining when I arrived at the MWA sideless tent. I took my spot at the table and all four of us signers had a stack of books and a ready pen. Lots of people came by and many of them stopped. My friend Mike Caselman came by with his family. Things were looking good and books were moving and then the wind started. Someone mentioned a coming storm and that we should cover everything with plastic when it came. It was hard to believe bad weather was on the way. The sky was still blue, though there were some big clouds.
The thing they say about Chicago weather – if you don’t like it, wait a minute – is no joke. Within minutes the dark turned dark and ominous. The wind snapped all the tarps people were putting over their booths, and the doors on the porta potties blew open and shut. A garbage can did cartwheels past our booth.
And then it started to rain. No drizzle or a few wet spots, it went directly too pouring again. It was raining so hard, it honestly looked like a sheet of water.
We covered our table with plastic and bravely held our signing spots. Though by now most of the people going by were running.
When I looked around, there were clumps of people under the canopies, and huddled under building overhangs. We all had the same idea. It rains, it pours, it stops.
Not today.
When the lightening started, a fair official came by and told us we had to evacuate our booth. Apparently the metal rod sticking up in the middle did a good job of attracting lightening and could have fried us if we stayed put. I found an awning on a building and hung out with one of my signing mates.
Could it get worse? The tornado siren sounded and then I heard a lot of emergency type sirens in the distance. The woman from the next booth, also under our awning screamed every time the lightening flashed.
As the rain finally began to let it, there was another tornado siren, but this time further away. When the rain turned to drizzle and people began to come out of their shelters, I looked at my watch. My signing time was over. I headed for the train and went home.
It turned out there was a damaging tornado on the south end of the city.
The funny thing is if both signings had gone by without incident, they certainly wouldn’t have been as much of an adventure or given me anything to write about. Who ever wants to hear about a good time? I guess there is definitely something to be said for disaster. But next time I do a signing, I think I’ll try inside.