In the days following a blog or a newsletter posting, my mailbox usually fills up with any number of interesting comments, some good; some not. Today I thought I’d share a few of those, but first some late-breaking news. The Poisoned Pen just sent me links to the Facebook Live event on March 13 at 6 PM. It’s Daylight Savings time. Arizona does NOT observe Daylight Savings Time. As a result, 6 PM in Arizona is also 6 PM Pacific, so be advised, and you don’t need to belong to Facebook to sign in to watch. Here are the links:
Now as promised, the feedback:
First off, let’s start with the glaring typo that got past me—Thereby hangs the tail. That’s actually the title of a Spencer Quinn Chet and Bernie novel. (By the way, if you haven’t read any of those, you might enjoy them. They’re fun, and the canine narrator’s observations are hilarious.) But that’s not what I meant when I was writing the blog. I meant “Thereby hangs the tale.” Big difference. Not only do I know the difference between tail and tale, I actually typed T-A-L-E, but my old friend autocorrect miscorrected it. (Incidentally, the inventor of auto correct died recently. His funnel is tomato!)
I heard from a woman who was a girlhood friend of my two older sisters and someone I haven’t seen in more than seventy years. It was fun to reconnect with her by email.
And speaking of reconnection, two separate replies made it possible for me to reunite a pair of old friends who had fallen out of touch for a number of years. That felt good.
One woman wrote to say she knew of a place where I could get a good new head shot for a very reasonable price. I appreciated the suggestion, but I think she missed the point. At age eighty, there are no good NEW headshots!
Someone else, an audio reader, wrote to say how much she dislikes the musical interludes between chapters. Unfortunately, that’s not something I can fix. Audio book production practices are above my pay grade.
Someone else said that she likes the Beaumonts and Bradys but not the Ali Reynolds books. That’s fine. The world is made up of different kinds of people and readers, and we’re all entitled to our own opinions. In the eighties I remember what seemed like an elderly woman telling me, “Honey, thank God we’re not all just alike. Otherwise, we’d all be married to the same man and drive a Mustang.”
Another woman mentioned finding a timeline issue concerning one character who died in one book and then miraculously reappeared alive and well in another. She blamed it on my editors. I blame it on me. Over the course of writing more than sixty books in forty years, it’s hard to remember each and every tiny detail, and there are bound to be errors, but here’s the thing.
When I was on the reservation, I learned that each work of art—each basket; each piece of beadwork; each piece of pottery—has to have at least one error because only the Great Spirit is perfect.
That works for me!
PS. Last but not least, here’s a late-breaking response that showed up just in time to make the blog deadline.
There is a guy and his gal from Guelph,
Who found you up there on a shelf.
We’ve read all you’ve written
And with you are quite smitten,
Even if you don’t look like yourself.
Turns out that one, coming from fans in Guelph, Ontario, Canada is the highlight of my week and my all-time favorite limerick! Thank you, David and Joanie!