David Thayer

She’s in your time, she’s gold and blue, she’s in your dreams, the color of night, where cowards dwell, in the color of night. This dance, deep in the shadows, you see her face, she’s the color of night, gold and blue, your fingers disappear to touch her face. You lean to touch, you lean to dance, you disappear where she begins, in the hues of night, where cowards hide, where you hide waiting. There is music now and there was music then, when night was slack, when she was dreaming, when you were dancing, your fingers longing to touch her face, she’s gold and blue, her eyes belonging only to you, in that dream, that life you spent, where you disappeared, where you held her hand, where life began, where night awaits, it is gold and blue, it disappears where she begins, in her time, to look at you.

In case you missed it, Hard Case Crime released The Colorado Kid, written by newbie crime writer Stephen King. I think this is quite a coup for Hard Case and I would love to see established writers publish works with smaller presses more often.

As Sarah Weinman noted today, Ben Sevier at SMP-Minotaur bought Marcus Sakey’s novel The Blade Itself at auction via Scott Miller. Sarah met the author at the Backspace Writers Conference last June in NYC. Karen Dionne, the organizer of the conference and co-owner of Backspace. Org. deserves some props for putting both the organization and the conference together. The conference is scheduled for June 2006 so head over to her site at Backspace. org. or go to Publishers Marketplace and click on Karen’s blog called Backspace and read all about it.

The Earl has handed me a note. He would like to attend the conference next year amd wants to know if Barry Eisler will be attending. Yes, Barry was there last year and is will be back in 2006. I don’t know if the hotel has a rooftop garden suitable for groups of five hundred or more.

I’d suggest to the Earl that he contact Karen directly, but she’d never forgive me.

Waltraud Frothingmunster here. I’m a afraid I insisted on being heard after reading the Earl’s dreadful advice to that poor man, Don Donphil. Struck by a meteorite! I think it would be a fascinating tale of nature’s fury, if, in fact, the meteorite can be thought of as natural. I do. How about you?

Visit my blog The Earl is a Fool. Drive my ‘page count’ higher and higher. Already the city of Bognor Regis is advertising on my blog. What about you, little old New York? Paris? It is a heirarchy, you see, with blogs such as this one mired far down the tables, relegated, as it were, to the lower echelons.

Don’t forget the phrase ‘dot-com.’ And do stop by and visit The Poore Lambe if ever in Milton Keynes upon Humber. Thank you!

In school I was accused of not sharing ( my essay, J’Accuse). To put this assertion to rest, I’ve decided to share some Letters to the Earl, herewith:

Dear Earl, Last year I was struck by a meteorite near Vermillion New Hampshire ( the town name is fictitious). Should I write a book about the experience? Don Donphil ( Not my real name.)

Dear Don, I’ll maintain the fiction of your name so as to provide a jumping off point for my reply. A meteorite striking a man in New Hampshire is an excellent example of books that I tend to avoid whilst browsing. Such efforts, whether labeled “as told to” or “based on a true events” conjure in me a lurid curiosity best left fallow. That said, this is a subjective business, and in this crowded marketplace, not literally, of course, but figuratively, Don, think of the marketplace as an amorphous version of your own village shopping emporium stuffed to the gills with objets d’art and unpredictable children, adorable yet prone to manic outbursts, weeping, coughing, tiny fingers covered with gooey food…you get my drift. Perhaps your injuries were heinous enough to require treatment? If so, hire a professional rather than writing the treatment yourself.

Dear Mr. Earl, I like the blog The Earl is a Fool. It’s funny and you’re not. Signed, Michael Ovitz.

Dear Michael, Yours of the ninth ultimo was read aloud by Depew at a recent conclave of barristas near Stoke upon the Avon. I can’t control what the man does in his free time, although I will confess to being shocked that a man with your literary signature, to coin a phrase, would have confused a barrista assemblage with that of the barristers convention in Penzance. I remain, however, yours in sychophantic adoration, The Earl.

All better now! The horrible Depew is being transferred to the gardener’s shed, and his sub rosa contacts with Miss Snark and Agent 007 curtailed! I worry now that he’ll develop a Heathcliff persona and drive us all mad with his sulking. It’s a wonder I’ve been able to get any work done on my Roman a clef, The Dutchess Wore Prada. After a consultation with Haskell as to the nature of this Prada business, we have concluded the following:

It’s a line of fashionable clothing. Haskell’s market research reveals an underlying demand for the type of book The Wall Street Journal calls ‘glam lit.’ The Wall Street Journal…is there any higher authority?

Depew, my nemesis, has made off with the recent copies of Elle and Paris Match. Once again, rather than writing, I’m forced to deal with an insurrection among the staff. Meanwhile Haskell has telephoned Vogue editor Anna Wintour for some deep background. He fears ‘we’re too late to the party.’ I very much doubt that Haskell has ever attended a party, and God knows what he may have said to Ms. Wintour.

By the way someone is jamming my ham radio. Possibly the Malboro & Devises Rhododendron Society, they are capable of such underhanded tomfoolery. I blame Mrs. Frothingmunster for the stark reversal of decades of civility in this regard. Her blog, The Earl is a Fool, may be a thinly disguised roman a clef in real time; I think she finds Depew attractive. I’ll say no more.

This post was posted entirely by error. Human error. Now that the train has left the station, it might be time for some housekeeping. Anyone who is anyone can readily see that chaos reigns here at One More Bite of the Apple. The pitched battle over editorial control exposes the dark underbelly of blogging…ego. Yes, that and conflicting points of view force me to make a few announcements.

The earl apologizes to the city of Torquay, its governing council, citizens, His Honor, the Lord Mayor, the Cornish Arts Conservatory, the nation of Scotland, Exeter University, TG & BS, Zadie Smith, Ian Rankin, Miss Snark, elements of reform inside the Vatican, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Friends of the Woodlland Park Zoo, and the woman at Paddington who mentioned Jimi Hendrix.

To quote the earl directly: “woe am I. Though sexy, hip, and now….shopping, nannies, these elements of drama, quotidian in their sphere….”

” a panorama of appalling prose..”

“beloved members of the Red Dawn fan club, one hastens to add a hearty welcome to our friends from the San Francisco Bay Area, whose journey to this emerald realm was fraught with shopping…welcome!”

I think that lays much of the controversy to rest. The earl’s ham radio is being jammed. Sorry for the garbled messages of apology.

This is my first post, so I beg your indulgence. Several weeks ago I purchased a powerful new home computer from Best Buy, a remarkable store in both dimension and auditory input. I was directed from the collection of designer refrigerators by a helpful fellow from Merrill Lynch. Having installed my powerful home computer I subscribed for Internet service using the Earl’s Own Dial-Up and Home Counties telephonic services privatised at some point by a deluded Parliament. Don’t get me started as Joan Rivers says! The service fellow was an Elvis impersonator and terribly amusing.

As chair of All West Book and Literacy Society, I was keen to begin reading the online diaries of those interested in literature. They span the globe! Once freed from the shackles of our local rag, whose book reviewer shall remain nameless, I proceeded to utilize RSS feeds from the earl’s recently renovated garage at the rear of his property. To celebrate we rented Red Dawn and consumed popcorn.

Being utterly new to this endeavor I was shocked by the Salon article in which one young fellow attacks another young fellow and the many comments ensuing therefrom. Yes, there have been All West meetings where members have become physical, usually Virginia Wolfe supporters, if I may say, unmoored from civility by her prose. We had to cancel the entire Female Eunich program after Mrs. Aemilia Bell throttled Lord Carver-Ulmstead atop the punch bowl table. Not a drop was spilled! The earl says we should charge admission. My dear fellow, we do.

I am a bit shocked by the bickering, more pleased to see the sort of discussion that The Rake and Tingle Alley have sponsored. Splendid! More of that, less back biting. The Earl will be pleased to learn that my cousin, Ursula, is blogging the NFL this season. There is, apparently, a dearth of linebacking skills she deplores in real time. Ursula is quick to note the plethora of three deep zones on long yardage plays. It’s all fascinating.

No Country for Old Men is a novel that came and went awfully damned fast this summer. The reviews were mixed, ranging from dismissive in the New York Times to a Kirkus review that compared McCarthy to William Faulkner. James Woods in the New Yorker observed that is tough to write a shoot ‘em up then duck for philosophical cover at the end ( paraphrasing). Michiko Kakutani wanted Bell’s long winded monologues left on the proverbial cutting room floor. Of course if McCarthy had done that, he’d have none of the thematic integrity Woods alluded to, just a lot of bodies rotting in the noon day sun. The carnage that results from the discovery of two million dollars in the wild dominates the first half of the novel, a burst of ominiscient prose that could summed up with the phrase ” and then he shot him.” McCarthy has moved beyond the need for quotation marks in dialogue. Yup. He’s a goner.

Bell’s speeches are the most interesting passages in the book. What occurs after the action in the novel is resolved is that Bell reverts to narrator without a cause, a man left high and dry by his author. The suspense that could have been created by the book’s set up vaporizes a full thumb length before the story ends; the last fifty pages are designed to repudiate the opening two hundred and fifty. McCarthy drove down a well paved highway before veering off to explore the hinterland. All the kids in the beackseat needed a bathroom break.

McCarthy ducked the genre he chose to work in, a brutal yet interesting crime novel, and dragged in a literary finish. Like Budweiser in a champagne flute this is a story that can’t wait to escape, find a barroom floor to puddle on. McCarthy wrote a novel. Then he shot it.

A calamitous weekend is salvaged only by the completion of my chapbook, The Moderne Query. It was left to my valet, Depew, to organise and bind the modest effort. His imagination got the better of him and he made several critical errors in my absence. I thought that sharing these lapses in judgment might assist the solitary wanderer along these rocky shores.

First Mistake: In my letter to Miss Snark, Depew felt the salutation left something to be desired, and, tragically, altered it to read “Immortal Beloved, Whose Powers Become Magesterial When Viewed From the Perspective of the Novitia, I greet you!” I think that “Dear Miss Snark,” might have conveyed the depths of my enthusiasm in a more conventional and restrained manner. Since the letter has been posted, I can only hope she understands that Depew is utterly mad although a wiz with a Shop Vac.

Second Error: references to other works. “Henry James meets Jenna Jameson” hardly conveys the thrust of my tale, although Jameson displays a certain elan and the reference reveals a subtle mix of classical training and market awareness agents truly crave. It says. “I’m now, I’m hip, I’m sexy.” All of that is certainly true of me, but it is somewhat alarming to observe these qualities emerging in Depew.

The Author Photo: Here Depew has all but doomed our enterprise with the inclusion of an author photo, myself in the regalia of a Roman centurion. The photo is several years old, taken at LadyEnderby’s birthday soiree at the Royal Crescent. The invitation read ‘mask’ so I naturally assumed that the event was a costume party. Don’t make the mistake of including an author photo with your submission ( page two of my chapbook.) I will say, however, it is a dashing photo, wherein all of East Somerset lay at my feet.

The phone is ringing! It could be her…she’s forgiven my lapses, Depew’s lapses, and she’s calling!

My ridiculous neighbor Hornbrook is calling to complain about rotor wash. I remain,

Your Servant.