Dateline: LaGuardia Airport, NYC, 30 April
Last night I put on my tux and headed through Times Square around 5:30 to make it to the Grand Hyatt on 42nd and Lex to attend the annual Edgars Awards dinner and ceremony. The Edgars awards are giving by the Mystery Writers Association to the best fiction and non-fiction material published or written for the screen and TV. My Mom Colleen Barnett was nominated in the Critical/Biographical for the 3rd and final volume of her Mystery Women series that chronicles the role of female protagonists in English and American mystery literature. Alas, she did not win, but I don’t think she ever looked more beautiful to me. My eldest brother and sister were also in attendance. Naturally, the hole created by our father’s death seemed huge at such an event. I could not help but occasionally crane my neck to see when he might approach the table.
Still, all in all a fabulous honor and a great vindication for my Mom. She’s also up for an Agatha this year from the Mystery Fans Association.
I know I drank too much, and getting to bed at 1am didn’t help, because my “national radio satellite tour” began at 6am. It was engineered by Auritt Communications Group. Debby was the operator and Brenda the producer. I just stayed on the line until 11am (sometime employing speaker phone during short breaks. Debby would patch me in to whatever station we were doing (about half live and half taped, either 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 30 minutes)) and Brenda would prep me and coach me throughout the proceedings. Both were great professionals and a joy to work with, and both had very nice telephone persona, as one might imagine. About as painless as talking about five hours straight on the phone can get.
It went like this:
1) 6:05 to 6:10
2) 6:40 to 6:50
3) 7:05 to 7:20
4) 7:30 to 7:40
5) 7:50 to 8:00
6) 8:05 to 8:12
7) 8:30 to 9:00
8) 9:00 to 9:10
9) 9:10 to 9:20
10) 9:30 to 10:00
11) 10:00 to 10:10
12) 10:10 to 10:20
13) 10:20 to 10:30
14) 10:40 to 10:50
15) 10:50 to 11:00
Then I got in a car with driver and went to WNYC (Public Radio) and did a show (#16, from 12:05 to 12:40) with Leonard Lopate, a local institution according to all. He will be my “James Lipton” at the CUNY event on Tuesday, 4 May in Manhattan.
Then back in the car to the hotel.
17) 1:35 to 1:45
18) 2:05 to 2:20
Then I ran out the room screaming and over to Virgil’s BBQ on 44th just off Times Square for a Dos Equus, Memphis ribs, mashed potatoes, and beans. Then ran back to hotel room.
19) 3:30 to 3:50 with Voice of America and I was done for the day.
Then I walked to Esquire on Broadway and Mark Warren gave me almost the very first copy of the June issue. Carmen Electra on the cover in parody of old Coppertone ad (pretty cool). I get 6 pages in a row at the end of the issue—almost 4,000 words. It is entitled, “Mr. President, Here’s How to Make Sense of Our Iraq Strategy.” Mark is very happy with the piece.
We head out to Molyvos, the same great Greek restaurant where we had our first great discussion about how to write the book back on 21 July 2003. We had baklava again and some stiff drinks, and we talked over how the book was doing (sad to say, it slipped to 103 on Amazon today).
Here’s hoping all those radio spots did some good.
I am beat and ready to go home on US Airways. Unfortunately it’s a small commuter.
Tomorrow I get up and drive to Boston for Fox and their national weekend news program, supposedly with Tony Snow, their main weekend guy. I cross my fingers it won’t get canceled. But if it does, I get to coach Kev in his second baseball game of the year, so a great gain to be had if it comes to that.
An exhausting week. I am so talked out I can barely utter a complete sentence. Putnam seems happy with how it all went. Lots of compliments on the book from basically everyone who interviewed me on the radio “tour.” I could not have asked for better, in many ways, from this week.
So endeth Day 5, and I feel grateful.
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