Michael Stephen Fuchs, author of THE MANUSCRIPT from Macmillan New Writing, dropped by to congratulate David Isaak and brought up the question of the launch party. Now that the earl is out of jail and Gus of Goth is between jobs, your reporter interviewed the earl who once remarked that “Thomas Pynchon is a party animal.”

“Given the distance between the UK and the US I suggest a cruise ship be hired,” the earl said. After shooting the stars with a sextant he pointed to a spot on the map. “Bermuda,” he said. “The launch party should be held in Bermuda.”

The earl envisions all of Macmillan New Writing’s cast of authors be “whisked” to Bermuda for ten days of company sponsored revelry. He recommends Southhampton where Waltraut Frothingmunster honeymooned, a trip captured in her memoire “Pynch Me, It’s Pynchon.”

Gus of Goth can handle the catering. “I’ll get Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson for the launch party,” Gus said. “They owe me big time.”

Several rows erupted among lit bloggers in the 24 hour news cycle that ended with Seattle’s abrupt move to northern Arizona ( only temporary, but not a bad idea.) The rationale is obvious: northern Arizona needs a big city. Let the orcas play on First Avenue. There’s plenty of water. Anyway here’s Fight Night.

NaNo: The Rake compares NaNo to eating too many shrimp in too short a time while Eric Rosenfield rips it and Max of The Millions offers a tepid defense. Perhaps these gentlemen have forgotten t-ball wherein the very young and the very short whack balls off a tee. It’s all about the swing, boys, the hand and eye. My goodness did you think Jose Canseco emerged from someone’s laboratory?

Boyz against girlz: Maestro Frank Wilson has a comment thread about novelists, who’s better men or women. Lots of heat expended, but I remember a schoolyard incident where a girl hit the ball and ran directly to third base. Her logic? It’s closer to home. Even in the ensuing hubbub I admired her reasoning. Break some rules!

Finally Ed Champion tackles Kim Bofo for her op-ed piece about free books for bloggers. Kim feels that lit bloggers should reveal all when it comes to books sent by publishers for review. This may be viewed as the purist argument that free books undermine the bloggers’ free will, ensnaring them in the machinations of corporate greed and attendant evil. ( Oh Happy Day.) Food for thought. Your reporter uses his free books to climb to great heights. I can see clearly now. It’s raining.

The Black Forest is a crime novel set in New York City in 1964. A teenager, Brenda Antonucci, witnesses the murder of her father outside a Hells Kitchen restaurant. Brenda is assaulted before being spirited out of the city to her parents suburban home. She remembers little of what happened, to the relief of the mob and the police.

Dylan Farrell is the first officer on the scene. He ignores his partner’s advice to call first before responding. He discovers Brenda in the back room of Musto’s a mob joint on Ninth Avenue. Detectives from the Special Investigations Unit are shaking the place down. They don’t want an active investigation. Dylan is expected to play ball to protect his fellow officers.

Dylan’s been down this road before. In 1956 his tank unit took part in Operation Reforger, an exercise designed to block Soviet troops entering West Germany through the Fulda Gap. In a tiny village in the Black Forest his tank kills a German girl on a bicycle. The accident goes unreported and the tank crew conspire to keep the secret.

Section One of the book is called “The Grasseaters.” This is a phrase from the Knapp Commission investigation into police corruption based in part from testimony from Frank Serpico. Grasseaters and Meateaters described two kinds of corruption from the casual to the methodical. Dylan Farrell is an ordinary guy who has to make a terrible choice: send his friends to prison or go along and become a grasseater.

Here’s the opening.

Chapter One

It was hot the night Brenda Antonucci was attacked, hot the way Hell’s Kitchen could be hot, buildings dripping with dark moisture, residents impatient and restless. Brenda had gone to Musto’s on Ninth Avenue, a ristorante with a limited clientele, a limited menu, and a room in the back for cards.

August of 1964 marked the tenth year of the war for control of the Westside book. Brenda heard her father mention the book many times, when he was on the telephone, his back to the kitchen table. She wrote a poem about the book in fourth grade, a poem her father had slapped her for, the nuns had slapped her for. Her mother had dragged Brenda through a novena about the poem, coughing through prayers, rosaries, gin, and cigarettes.

After that they didn’t talk about daddy’s book.

Her mother died in the spring of ’64, a week before Brenda graduated from Tenth grade. Brenda’s Sweet Sixteen party was canceled and the house swelled with relatives, friends, men with open collar shirts who told Brenda what a fucking shame it was about her mom. Vivien was a happy girl, a party girl, not a ball breaker like some. “She didn’t break balls,” her father moaned in eulogy. “Not my Viv.”

Big Dan Antonucci broke a lot of things on his way up the ladder in the Profaci family. It was his cursed luck to throw in with Joey Gallo, Crazy Joe and his brothers, Larry and Albert. After Vivian’s funeral some Gambino men came around for a meeting of the minds, to ask Big Dan if he renounced his allegiance to Joey. They sat in the back yard where the inflatable pool sagged in a turquoise mound. The men sat on lawn chairs borrowed from Brenda’s grandmother who lived in the old neighborhood where lawn chairs served a limited purpose.

Brenda gave them iced tea. Big Dan hung his head, rubbed his large hands together, allowing his iced tea to melt on the plastic table with the sunflower design. His glass sweated, Big Dan sweated, the Gambino guys fanned themselves with magazines.

They offered condolences. What a pisser, huh? She was too young, thirty-five years old, too young to go like that. A total pisser.

Viv looked good at the service, someone said. The sun beat down as they talked about traffic on the Southern State. Brenda listened while her older brother, Little Danny, sulked. He’d smashed her Ricky Nelson 45, the one with Waitin’ in School on the B side. Danny broke a bowling trophy by throwing it against the wall. Doctor Campo had given them a few sleeping pills, just in case. Brenda had taken a few but nothing had happened. She tried Scotch and threw up. Real grief seemed to elude her. Mrs. Donatelli had shrieked when Vivian’s casket was lowered. Brenda felt astonishment at the outburst; Mrs. Donatelli and her mother had never been close, although they were prominent in the Holy Names Society at the diocesan church.

Brenda’s focus turned to her father. Big Dan displaced all others in her small universe; his sorrow was that of a wounded animal, powerful, misdirected, confused, self-absorbed. Her father head locked the parish priest, demanding a full accounting from God for Vivian’s abrupt departure. Dan wept over his wedding album, shredding photographs until Brenda tugged the scrapbook from his scarred hands. Between outbursts Dan spoke about business. Brenda fed him veal shank while Dan railed about this guy or that guy, he named names, even joked about going on television with Estes Kefauver.

She prayed her father would settle down. He was the breadwinner. Brenda did the Stations of the Cross, offering her body to Holy Office, commending her spirit in contemplation of sin. Big Dan made indiscreet remarks on the telephone. Brenda cringed when she heard him say how fed up he was. Dan spoke to bosses and under bosses in a vigorous new way, offering candid opinions about their leadership abilities, their generosity, their testicles.

Dan said he was allowed a three day mourning period. He didn’t go to work. Brenda worried about the west side book. What was happening to it? She knew the book required Dan’s constant attention, otherwise rats and chiselers would take the food from their mouths, the clothes from their backs. Her mother had understood the nature of Dan’s dedication, his attention to detail. Vivien had spoken to other women in hushed tones about the press of affairs, fucking cops, fucking deadbeats.

Brenda had the wild fear the men visiting from the city might do something to her father. Her father wasn’t making eye contact, speaking to them with his eyes turned downward.

One of the men became agitated. “Come on, no more bullshit, Dan. This thing is out of control.”

Brenda waited around in the kitchen in her one-piece bathing suit, a pink suit her mother had bought her for her fifteenth birthday, because a bikini was out of the question.

“You want to be a slut?” he mother asked.

Brenda cracked the ice cube trays, emptied them, then refilled them with water. Four grown men might need a lot of ice. Yes, she wanted to be a slut if that meant being a grown woman with the ability to choose her own clothing, her own friends, her own life. She’d almost said that to her mother that day in A&S with the snotty sales girl watching; yes, I want to be a slut.

Good thing she hadn’t. She be doing stations of the cross for the rest of her life, pondering Jesus’ sacrifice when all she wanted was a sexy bathing suit or at least some breasts. She was flat as a pancake where her mother had been well endowed, full figured, a regular Rosalyn Russell according to what she’d overheard.

“Bring us some wine,” Big Dan bellowed.

She hurried outside with the bottles. The Gambino men didn’t smile at her this time. They didn’t make jokes or ask how she was doing.

“Leave it,” her father snapped. “Bring some glasses.”

Big Dan had been quiet after the guests left, quiet in a way Brenda decided constituted fear. Her anxiety grew when her father began to pace in the family room. He snatched the car keys from the hook above the telephone, started to say something to her, juggling the keys in his left hand, his expression pained. “I’m going in to the city,” he said.

“Is everything all right?” Brenda asked.

“Sure. I won’t be back till late. Here’s a couple of bucks for you and your brother.”

He handed her a twenty.

“I don’t need this much,” she said.

Her father shrugged, kissing her forehead. “Keep an eye on Danny. If anything comes up, leave a message at Musto’s. You got the number?”

Brenda nodded. Standing close to him, she caught the tang of sweat under his shirt as he hugged her, the rough stubble of his beard, tobacco and wine on his breath. “If Bobby Forks calls…ah, forget it.”

She watched him drive away. They’d lived on Long Island three years now. Brenda could not get used to it; there were no sidewalks, only driveways and lawns, trees and cars. She’d grown up in Bay Ridge, far from the Manhattan, but Brooklyn had its own rhythm, and smells. Brooklyn had sidewalks, stoops, street corners, bakeries and Laundromats on the bigger streets. People gathered at these places, they talked, they knew one another.

Brenda didn’t see Danny until he was behind her. He snatched the twenty of her hand, pushing her onto the sofa with a harsh laugh. “You’re too stupid to take up space,” he said.

“That’s dad’s money,” she said.

“You don’t get it, do you? He ain’t coming back. Twenty bucks? Since when does he hand out that kind of money?”

“Since mom died.”

Danny looked stricken. “What? There’s more?”

He searched the house, smashing the cookie jar he’d made in the fifth grade, turning their mother’s dresser inside out, throwing her clothes and underwear all over the bedroom. Tears ran down his cheeks as he screamed and threatened her, but Brenda had hidden the money well, Her father had given Brenda four hundred dollars to buy groceries; she knew why Danny wanted the money. She was not going to let him take their food money to buy a gun.

He smacked her a few times before rushing out of the house, slamming the door behind him. Brenda waited for twenty minutes in case he came back. Then she peeled out of her bathing suit, took a shower in her mother’s bathroom, and got dressed. She called for a station taxi and when it arrived, Brenda went over to Massapequa Park to wait for a train.

Wellington Leg: As the towne slowly merges with the Sea of Japan it is time to take stock of Week One in the parallel universe Nano event undertaken by your reporter at the beginning of November. I didn’t register for Nano, preferring a kinder gentler approach. Here’s what has happened so far.

Black Forest has grown by 11,000 words. Some of those words have gathered together in complete sentences while others have set their own course and speed for Parts Unknown. Still others want to go to Maui. I’ve borrowed the earl’s Writer’s Blocke Insurance Policy and read the fine print: “The wordes must cohere together in some recognizable way.” Now they tell me.

I can no longer spell. But the novel has an opening now, ninety pages of front story. That’s good. It no longer reads like a narrative outline and that’s good too. As to setting, 1964 was an interesting year, still the Fifties in many ways, but the Beatles landed and the Rolling Stones played the New York Academy of Music on 14th Street. The New York World’s Fair opened in April a month after Kitty Genovese was murdered, a killing that rattled the Big Apple like no other.

The Mets left the Polo Grounds ( Coogan’s Bluff) for Shea Stadium. Marvelous Marv Thornberry covered first base and Al Downing went 6-19 and pitched well. Idlewild became JFK. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution set the stage for massive involvement in Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination based on race, gender, creed, color or national origin. The fuse was lit. The final year of the Pax Americana was anything but tranquil. RFK went after the Mob and Malcolm X made his speech The Black Revolution.

Louie Louie was on the charts. Scholars still parse the lyrics searching for hidden meaning.

MacMillan UK will publish David Isaak’s TO SMITE THE WATERS under the auspices of its MacMillan New Writing imprint. MNW editor Will Atkins acquired the novel a few weeks ago; the contracts are signed and I don’t know the pub date but I’m guessing summer of 2007. David Isaak is the first American living in the US to be signed by MNW. A previous American author is residing in London.

SMITE is a very cool book as indeed all of David’s books are. I’ve read four of them in manuscript, and he and I have been to Kinko’s together for one of those print out your work moments before it’s due experiences. If it weren’t for David, I’d still be in Kinkos trying to use my major credit card under duress.

Why is David being published in the UK, but not the US? Why did Warren Moon play in the Canadian Football League? Moon threw about 500 touchdown passes in the NFL. It turned out he was a pretty good quarterback.

Score a big one for MacMillan UK. David wrote of Editor Will Atkins and MNW publicist Sophie Portas, “they are friendly, open, prompt, encouraging, and even welcoming. These people seem to like writers and like books.”

MNW prints a newsletter detailing the events planned as each new title is launched. German rights to Matt Curran’s THE SECRET WAR have been sold while a British production company has optioned another MNW title THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Steven Fuchs.

MacMillan New Writing was launched as an over the transom author to publisher imprint that doesn’t look at work submitted by literary agents. The theory is that this approach keeps the cost of acquiring fiction down while launching careers of authors agents may have overlooked or been unable to place. Some UK agents reacted harshly to MNW’s business model. Michael Barnard, the Macmillan exec who created MNW, wrote a book called The Transparent Imprint that spells out his vision.

Congratulations to David Isaak and MNW.

Exit polls revealed that residents of Wellington Leg enjoy feudalism and have embraced the Dowager Princess despite her alleged attempts to rig last season’s Super Bowl. The scandal heightened after she was ejected from the New York Jets training camp for taunting. The Princess dissolved the People’s Assembly and declared a general amnesty after being swept to electoral triumph over the Whigs who favored a Gershwin tune and New York in June. The glitterati gathered at a post-election Polka Party believed to be one of the largest assemblages in the history of Wellington Leg.

The Big Winner? Pundits point to The Earl who will be released from HRH J Mansfield Prison before it goes condo. “He’s free to pursue a literary career that may well skyrocket now that his epic poem Jowl is complete,” said an unnamed source who may have been making things up.

DCI Borchardt reported the only disruption to Election Night was a cavalry charge by the Decima Augusta Legion near Goth. His personal Crown Victoria suffered numerous javelin strikes and four flat tires. The Roman artillery, catapults, launched Abalone entrails and green tea at the defenders who struck back with stale Halloween candy and a Britney Spears music video. Roman troops broke ranks during the video because they think Ms. Spears is the goddess Minerva. “It’s almost too easy,” Borchardt said.

An AMC Pacer fell to earth near Hizzoner’s Family Gambling Den on Greasemypalm Strasse downtown. No one was injured but receipts suffered after the crash. “The Pacer experienced orbit decay,” noted Professor Moriarity. “And I had Bingo,” he added.

Election Day: While America heads to the polls and Seattle recovers from a visit from Da Raiders on Monday Night, a number of inexplicable events have escaped the notice of the media, events worth exploring. For instance you may have noticed that it was raining indoors at Qwest Field last night. It might be time for the president to fly over western Washington as most of the rivers have left their banks and Portland, far to the south, had an earthquake. How are we going to see Borat if this keeps up?

Publishers Weekly reports that St. Martin’s Press is publishing Posh, a novel written by “Lucy Jackson” a woman who does not exist, well, an author who does not exist as “Lucy Jackson.” Paula Zahn will stop by later to ask what this means before bearding Wolf Blitzer in his den. Here’s my take on Posh: Senior Editor Elizabeth Beier, who is editing Posh, has her wits about her. She thinks the author wishes to remain anonymous because of her “connection to the world she writes about.” Maria Massie, the author’s agent, notes that her client is a notable literary author and that  releasing a commercial novel under a psuedonym makes sense as a career move. The scary thing? It does make sense. “Lucy Jackson” has received great reviews but disappointing sales although not as “Lucy Jackson” but as herself, whoever that may be. And, because of this blog entry, Posh will rocket to the top in Japan, Costa Rica, parts of Italy and the Russian Federation.

It must be a little strange for the writer and her editor because by the time Posh is released the secret will be out. Then the author will discuss the ploy rather than the book which has a somewhat weird vibe of Joe versus the Volcano or Lucy in the Sky with Bookscan.

By the way VP Dick Cheney announced plans for a hunting trip today. If you’re a Republican lawyer, you might want Kevlar up or keep a low profile.

Few things are more prestigious for an author than an invitation to Eddy’s Book Nook in downtown Wellington Leg. I can’t speak for Eddy or Marge who handles author events when she isn’t inventing the graphic novel or serving time. Eddy has a mind of his own. He marches to his own drummer at a time when many in the Leg come into his store because they remember the ill-fated gummi bear promotion during last summer’s heat wave.

Theresa Schwegel’s second novel Probable Cause is due for release in January 2007. Her debut Officer Down won the Edgar this year. I read Probable Cause and enjoyed every minute of it. I’m going to call Eddy and recommend it to him.

The Sweet and the Dead by Milton T. Burton is a good read, a period piece set in the deep south back in the day. Burton gets into the Dixie Mafia setting his story in Biloxi, Mississippi. The book is from SMP-Minotaur and is available now.

Also worth mentioning is Bloody Harvests by Richard Kunzmann, a South African writer who explores a gruesome aspect of ritual killing in Johannesburg.

I also wanted to mention Laura Joh Rowland’s Red Chrysanthemum set for release this month. This is the latest in her series set in feudal Japan featuring Chamberlain Sano Ichiro.

Back to Theresa Schwegel for a moment. In Probable Cause she manages to nail several male pov characters with total assurance and make them all believable. In fact the book is told entirely from a male character’s view as a newbie on the Chicago PD. Schwegel integrates her female characters into the story without flinching or diminishing her character’s responses with authorial riffs or sly attempts at judgment. I think that takes talent and guts and she has both.

Dateline: Wellington Leg. A writers conference at the Hotel Faz was interrupted this morning when the Earl of Watership Down tunneled to freedom, emerging between tables set aside for “agent pitches.” The Earl was wrestled to the ground by alert volunteers who demanded to see his appointment card. When all he could produce was a terra cotta reproduction of Winged Victory, he was escorted from the Hoffa Ballroom by members of the rock band, Golden Earring.

Though covered with dust the Earl was able to dispense words of encouragement despite a deafening live rendition of Twilight Zone. As to his means of escape, he described the construction of a mile long shield tunnel beneath the foaming froth of Gastropod Alley using only a tablespoon and Martha Stewart’s Big Cat tunnel boring appliance. The result is a clean and friendly environment for any get together of a subterranean nature.

After subsisting for weeks on abalone entrails and green tea, the earl reports he’s ready to plunge into the icy waters of local politics and endorse Metroplex Manager Ed Lebowsky for Mayor of Goth. Lebowsky is running on a reform platform, promising to accept checks as well as cash if he’s elected. Ed says the future of film making may hinge of the election: “My opponent doesn’t even have a manager,” he said.

Dateline Wellington Leg: Scientists at the Bog Institute have developed a fully automated book writing program they call Flying Fingers. Doctor Ernst Kartoffelsalat made the announcement from the upper balcony of the Institute to a crowd of writers, critics, and professional mourners. Some of them were still in their Halloween costumes for Famous Writers Day, a Wellington Leg tradition. This column was written using the fully automated Flying Fingers approach, with the optional blindfold and cigarette.

This is how it works: while you sleep your thoughts are scanned by a flashlight and uploaded into a small tube. The tube is carefully crushed in a large vat then poured into a computer. After a few moments in a stainless steel tank the computer is plugged in and your book is pulverized, subjected to extreme heat, then extruded into the familiar book like shape so dear to tradionalists.

“We wanted the tactile experience,” Dr. Kartoffelsalat said. His roman a clef, Entropy in Cannes, came out to a clap of thunder and a brief power outage.

“This will revolutionize writing,” said efficiency expert Otto von Otto. “And, it will order moo shoo pork.” Make sure your flashlight has a fresh battery. Otherwise the program will plagiarize work already stored in memory and it will short circuit and the author will become a Nevada domiciled corporation enjoying certain tax advantages but suffering withering critical fire.

The Book Will Write Itself is not available in stores. Try not to think about Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes near bedtime. So far all of the stories are about a talking squirrel who owns a Way Back Machine. That’s derivative, people. I’m looking at you, Dick Cheney. Dish it baby.