Journalism: My work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Globe & Mail (Canada), The Times- Picayune (New Orleans), The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, as well as in magazines including Details, Vogue, Publishers Weekly, and Portland Monthly.
Publishing: Tight Shot, my first novel, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Its sequel, Hot Shot, was roundly ignored by everyone, but was a far better book. I'm also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Stage: I was a member of the Groundlings and Circle Repertory West in Los Angeles, and am a playwright (see "Stage" in the right-hand rail).
« December 2007 | Main | February 2008 »
A 'do not deliver' list for those free newspapers that litter driveways and apartment lobbies? That's what one fed-up Maryland woman is proposing:
Connie Finch doesn't read a newspaper, but she picks up plenty each morning. At least one free newspaper is dropped at the end of her driveway each day, and she picks up more newspapers left by her neighbors.
All of them end up in the garbage.
"We're not asking for it," Finch said. "And it's just littering our streets."
Complaints from the Westminster resident Finch and others about free home-delivery newspapers in Maryland have inspired State Del. Tanya Shewell to propose a "Do Not Deliver" registry that would work similarly to the "Do Not Call" registry for telemarketers. If approved, would be the first of its kind in the nation.
Naturally, newspaper publishers are tremendously sympathetic to Ms. Finch...just not sympathetic enough to actually do anything about it:
"My desire for the newspaper to not go to those who don't want it far exceeds their desire to stop getting it. ... I hate it when we annoy readers, and keeping that annoyance to a minimum is among my highest priorities," said Michael Phelps, CEO of Clarity Media Group's Baltimore-Washington Examiner Newspaper Group.
The newspaper industry is fighting the proposed registry, saying it isn't needed.
"Nobody wants to send out papers that are wasted, that people just throw away," said Jack Murphy, executive director of the Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Association.
Of course they do, because they're not newspapers at all; they're advertising vehicles, with recipes and week-old community features gluing them together into a simulacrum of a weekly paper. And the ads are sold on a circulation-number basis, not on the actual number of eyeballs that actually look at the thing before it heads to the recycle bin or the trash.
I hate legal solutions to problems that could be solved with a little common sense and courtesy, but I hate this waste more. And if Ms. Finch can make headway on this, I'll take up a collection for her to attack an even bigger pestilence: stacks of unwanted telephone books from no-name companies.
(Image courtesy Paige Royer. Thanks, Paige!)
And now, it's time for another round of: Who Said It?
How different things are today. Now our streets are patrolled by parking code enforcement officers.
No heels.
No hose.
No little white book.
Rita totes a fierce-looking computer that, we suspect, lets her know whether we're in arrears on everything from our car insurance to our Macy's card.
In the 1970s, pants replaced skirts as the standard uniform for female officers. There are those who think life downtown has been going downhill ever since.
Who said it?
a) Rush Limbaugh
b) Hugh Hefner
c) Some random weenie-wagger on Tri-Met
For more than a week now, the publishing world has been talking about Cassie Edwards, the bestselling romance novelist who seems unclear on the difference between research and plagiarism. The romance fans who operate the blog Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books were the first to publicize the similarities between Edwards' prose and that of a number of other writers (some of whose works are in the public domain, and some of whose are not). As more examples were found by the Smart Bitches and their readers, Signet Books, Edwards' publisher, seems to have morphed its response from "nothing to see here" to "um...we're looking into it."
Edwards seems hurt and puzzled by the whole matter. She isn't talking to the press, but an alleged response from her has surfaced, which reads in part:
The sad thing is that I am writing these books now in a way to honor our Native Americans, past, present and in the future. And I am honoring my great grandmother who was a full blood Cheyenne. She would be so proud of me if she could read what I am writing about the Indians who have been so maligned for so long. And do you know? I feel picked on now as our Native American Indians have always been picked on throughout history. I am trying to spread the word about them and what do I get? Spiteful women who have found a way to bring attention to themselves, by getting in the media in this horrible way.
Paul Tolmé, a nature writer, Newsweek contributor, and plagiaree, is also feeling picked on. He wrote a remarkably generous, funny column about the experience of having his research about black-footed ferrets inserted clumsily into the sweet savage mouths of Edwards' characters:
First I was angry. Then I had to laugh. To see my textbook descriptions of ferrets in a bodice-ripper, as dialogue between a hunky American Indian and a lustful pioneer woman who several pages later have sex on a mossy riverbank, is the height of absurdity....
The prose is standard romance-novel shlock. Bramlett's bosom heaves. Shadow Bear feels a longing in his loins. On page 195, after several false starts to stoke the furnaces of readers, Bramlett and Shadow Bear finally get down to business. They have sex in his teepee on some animal pelts. Hungrily, their sinuous bodies rock and quake until both explode in rapturous pleasure. When the teepee flaps are rocking, don't come a-knocking.
Then, a few pages later, as Bramlett and Shadow Bear bask in their postcoital glow, my ferrets arrive on the scene....
"They are so named because of their dark legs," Shadow Bear says, to which Shiona responds: "They are so small, surely weighing only about two pounds and measuring two feet from tip to tail."
Shiona then tells Shadow Bear how she once read about ferrets in a book she took from the study of her father. "I discovered they are related to minks and otters. It is said their closest relations are European ferrets and Siberian polecats," she says. "Researchers theorize that polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska, to establish the New World population."
Ohmygod that is so hot.
I think that Edwards truly believes that she's done nothing wrong (which doesn't excuse her behavior, of course), and that a very patient attorney will be explaining things to her.
Can't give the same benefit-doubt ratio in an alleged plagiarism case closer to home -- a case that, like Edwards', was originally discussed online and is now finding its way into local media. But I do hear that one of the Paul Tolmés in this particular tempest-in-a-tepee is weighing his options and his response, and other media are working on stories, stories that promise to be more savage than sweet.
Patty Friedmann: A Little Bit Ruined
One of the first post-Katrina novels, and probably destined to be one of the best. Friedmann's sequel to Eleanor Rushing finds her crazy heroine still holding everything together after the storm (after a fashion), until she has to leave New Orleans and she falls apart physically as well as mentally. Mordantly, morbidly funny.
Tom Piazza: Why New Orleans Matters
The best post-Katrina book I've read. In 150 small pages, Piazza explicates the New Orleans experience simply and beautifully. I'll be passing this one on to anyone who wonders "But why would anyone want to live there?".
