David Thayer

In an exciting development Hizzoner announced that Wellington Leg has been selected as a test site for Moderne Maudlin Enterprises a high tech marketing firm and brand consultancy. MME intends to solve the riddle of book reading habits of Legians, apply that knowledge to Goth and Henley Hornbrook and to life on other planets should that prove cost-effective.

Not everyone in towne is pleased with the news. Mrs. Amanda Tedeschi, herself a fictional character, recalls the last time Wellington Leg was singled out for such attention. “The Leg was subjected to a sustained bombardment by the Navy in an effort to gauge the effects of noise pollution.”

This time will be different. In a podcast from the Lean Hogs Pit, Hizzoner demonstrated how Moderne Maudlin will calibrate the reading tastes of the average Legian. Gus Broome-Street, a former Mr. Goth, is strapped to a chair on an elevated train platform shortly before rush hour. Gus will ask for spare change from harried commuters quoting from popular authors like Doctor Phil. MME technicians will employ a straight laser to probe the minds of passersby utilizing “pingbacks” from the celebral cortex.

Thus Mrs. Edna Miles of the Outer Hebrides seeking to catch the 5:19 train from Baldwin revealed “I like Doctor Phil” when she threw a signed Carl Pavano card at Gus in lieu of cash. On the other hand Vice Admiral Howe, fresh from his conquest of Canada, demonstrated that Mitch Albom is his favorite author.

Gus will be available after the morning commute for interviews and informal chat at the Long Island Railroad Information booth on the Lower Concourse. If you’re a Rick Moody fan, MME techs will cleanse your palate with Krispy Kreme laser donuts between 10am and midnight. If you hate postmodernism, try reading the train schedule to the Hamptons excluding Saturdays, Sundays, Holidays, except when the double asterisk indicates that all bets are off.  Forty percent of respondents indicated no desire to go the Hamptons, twenty percent expressed some desire, and a solid thirty percent wanted to visit the Valley of the Dolls, but that train had left the station. L. Tolstoy reporting.

Wellington Leg: The tulip fields in Skagit County are showing color after a remarkable burst of sunlight on Good Friday. Your reporter navigated the Roosengaarte and surrounding fields of red, yellow, pink, purple, and variegated tulips at five miles per hour.

I finished Alex Carr’s AN ACCIDENTAL AMERICAN a novel I will review for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The novel is due out April 17 from Mortalis, a new program from Random House. The press kit indicates that Mortalis will publish “intelligent thrillers and stories of international intrigue.” The format will be trade paper; beyond that, I don’t know much about Mortalis but I wish them the best of luck.

Cody’s Bookstore is closing their Union Square location in San Francisco. Union Square is not the place I would open a bookstore unless it was a haute couture kind of place where exhausted shoppers fleeing Saks and Nordstrom might linger. Not only the high rent district, Union Square is the gateway to the Tenderloin where confused tourists can be stripped of their valuables and deposited on the Powell & Hyde for the return trip to the Bay. Since Dirty Harry retired the San Francisco Police Department has developed  new strategies to fight crime: criminals are sternly criticized before being returned to Union Square refreshed and ready to mug again.

RN Morris’ A GENTLE AXE was reviewed by Patrick Anderson in the WAPO. Congrats, Roger, that’s the big time on these shores.

Ian Rankin’s latest The NAMING OF THE DEAD is good, really good, reminiscent of THE FALLS or RESURRECTION MEN, two of his finest Rebus novels. Good on ye, Ian.

Dan Conaway is joining Writers House as a literary agent. The news broke late last week via Sarah Weinman.  Dan will be a terrific agent, and I’m sure we’ll be reading about him at Publishers Marketplace.

Pegasus is Charlie Stella’s publisher now. His latest novel SHAKEDOWN is out. It’s a good story set in Little Italy where Stella recalls the Colombo wars, the shooting of Joey Gallo at Umberto’s. I think one of Gallo’s crew actually robbed Ferrara’s way back when. Charlie would know: SHAKEDOWN is a great throwback stuff even if the mob has been downsized.

Just a quick reminder to all and sundry that I’m not a literary agent. If you send me your novel or your plans for a novel nothing will happen. I realize that may not distinguish me from legitimate literary agents from whom a certain quiessence may be interpreted in many ways, my silence is more like the permafrost in Siberia which may or not begin melting over the coming centuries.

How to spot literary agents: I met a famous literary agent in the men’s room at a writer’s conference. We did the urinal nod that guys do, if only to acknowledge that pissing in the wind is not okay, that our momentary occupation was both necessary and fleeting, that whatever bonhommie might exist would dissipate with the zipper’s final tug, to wash our hands at identical sinks provided no long lasting bond.

After he dried his hands he bestowed a second nod, a bittersweet farewell, bittersweet because I found it difficult to make a three hundred page manuscript into a paper airplane landing gently at his feet. It can take forever to dry your hands and by the time my manuscript was ready to launch he was gone.

Miss Snark has links to agents like Rachel Vater, Jennifer Jackson, Kristen Nelson, and I have a link to Jessica Faust at Bookends. If you read their blogs you’ll get a sense of what they represent who they represent and what might pique their interest in a query.

In an astrological sense it was the perfect time for Clive James to write a New Yorker article explaining crime fiction to the readership. In close proximity to April Fools Day, Opening Day, Passover, Easter, and the dark shadow of April 15th, a full moon and a wobbly stock market, his thoughts clarify the murky world of genre fiction. We love Rebus because…

The New Yorker is best read in elegant surroundings while perched on traditional furniture. Your reporter cannot understand the text, doomed by a Naugahyde recliner and a can of room temperature Budweiser, a vestigial urge to know how Pavano did at home, and a lingering sense that life is so much simpler when Carmen Elektra is in the story ( Clive didn’t mention her. He never does.)

Perhaps like a string quartet opening for the Rolling Stones literary fiction is doomed to be outgunned by the sheer pageantry of commercial fiction, the cool cover art, clever titles, tons of promotion and advertising. I can foresee a day when halftime at the Super Bowl features crime guy John Banville reading aloud from the fifty yard line backed up by a chorus line of Vegas showgirls while the Blue Angels manuever with subsonic precision high above the luxury boxes.

There were some odd moments in the article. I thought Clive was implying that Henning Menkel’s settings were glamorous. He liked Donna Leon’s outsider status but knocked her for choosing Italy, Venice, no less, the Serenissima. Banville set his novel fifty years in the past so that his characters could smoke and drink. He seems to think this is cheating and he lingers around a valid point that place is trumping story in some cases in yet another attempt to signal readers that they will love the book because they love Venice, Sweden, South Florida, or the Rockies. Maybe he fears that success is subversive, that wretched excess lurks beneath the tawdry covers of pulp. Let’s hope so. It’s the revenge of the working class.

Financial reporter Stanley Morgan knew he had a major scoop when he overheard floor traders from the Piltdown Exchange gossiping at the ninth hole of the Wellington Leg Country Club late Saturday afternoon. Stanley crawled on his belly through sand traps, lush greens, and rolling fairways before backstroking across Bunny Lake to find his laptop. When he realized that his Mini-Cooper was parked in, he hitchhiked back to the newsroom somewhat shocked to discover that Culture Editor Concetta Comedia del Arta also drives a Mini.

Wellington Leg: A planned merger with an alternative reality is about to rock the investment community. The acquisition of an alternative universe has been discussed before but this time excess liquidity in our reality coupled with a dearth of imagination makes the deal all the more attractive. The addition of a pink moon and a “thought modem” are enhancements being examined by anti-trust lawyers sequestered on Planet Gofigure. Regulators have sought to avoid multiple moons in the past for fear of driving commodity prices down.

Under the proposal Wellington Leg would become a suburb of Seattle, a fog shrouded city in the pacific northwest. Vancouver Island will be towed south then anchored off Malibu. Portland will shift up to BC and coastal Idaho will share a lengthy boundary with Los Angeles County. Administrative control of the region will be transferred to Las Vegas the city that most resembles the alternative world envisioned by the merger partners.

Our own Dowager Princess is in the running to be Chairman of the Board. Her Super Bowl themed wedding chapel is already Wellington Leg’s favorite roadside attraction. A call for five thousand Elvis impersonators should drive the unemployment rate down just in time for Spring Break. Stanley Morgan reporting.