Laura Ellen Scott's Blog

I’m into true crime. I always have been, since I was a kid buying paperbacks about serial killers. My novels in the New Royal Mysteries series are set in a crime writing program, and the central concern of the books is about so-called truths and hidden realities, and many of my characters are nonfiction writers who set out to create truth rather than discover it. Created truth is a concept I’ve always played with. And even though a lot of people have read The Mean Bone in Her Body, no one has yet to point out that the opening scene directly contradicts the conclusion. So, when a friend made a comment about the veracity of the series The Staircase, I started thinking about the particular power of the long form documentary, which is akin to the power of a book length narrative, isn’t it? I watched The Making of a Murderer and The Staircase with the same sort of binge-urge that I bring to a show like Shetland or The Night Of, and I think I see a problem. With an hour-long documentary, like an episode of Dateline, I come away with my critical skills intact, no matter how engrossing the tale. However, with a series I’m asked to invest my time and commit to the layered proposition of the filmmaker; in short, I’m asked to suspend my disbelief as if I’m watching a fictional drama. Perhaps I’m not being asked directly, but the sad romance of the camera eye, supported by a haunting musical score . . . you get what I mean. The premise of these series is the “in depth, detailed examination of the evidence,” that a shorter presentation can’t provide, but the reality is that a lot of these shows are padded with sadness and bullshit that is irrelevant and even boring sometimes. Seriously, there is no excuse for the slowness of either Staircase or Making, if we are talking about information. And we’re not. Pardon my crude comparison, but we’re getting an artistic form of the Brendon Dassey interrogation—repetitions and time, repetitions and time. Until we believe. Though I hungrily watched both series, I distinctly recall a feeling of confusion followed by light betrayal after they were over, as if I’d been asked to confirm someone’s identity by looking at their nose, only. So, does this even matter? Well, if television tells us anything, it’s that trials are all about storytelling. As a fiction writer, I promise that the success of any story is as dependent on what you leave out as what you leave in. If stories didn’t exclude information for dramatic effect, the form would be impossible. Reality abhors beginnings, middles, and ends. Even death is a state of transition. Which is fun when you’re fantasizing, but fantasy shouldn’t be part of criminal justice. (I know, I’m naive. But this is my blog and my coffee.)Watch Episode One of Staircase again, only this time watch it like a fiction writer. Watch it like a fiction writer in a workshop who is asked to provide feedback to another fiction writer—let’s say novelist Michael Peterson—and you may see something interesting in the way he takes us through the events of the terrible night his wife died. He becomes a narrator. That may be his nature, but I still find it chilling. You'll think it’s strange for me to say this, but beware the storyteller. In a time when information has become opt out rather than opt in, we’ve never been more powerful. We live in the misty gaps between facts, where it is easiest to grab your attention and hold it.

Read Part One at the Pandamoon BlogWe had a plan. A good, responsible plan. A plan for the realistic future. My husband and I are both 55-year-old college professors who have started thinking about “life after work.” A lot of professors retire feet first, but we’ve been modestly lucky just following our instincts, especially in home/land buying. So, we go with what appears to be our strength—looking for a home that can be used as a vacation rental for the next 10+ years, with a practical checklist in hand: a cottage with at least one ground floor bedroom, a walk-in shower, and outbuildings for workshops, studios, etc. We’ve always been attracted to the notion of a compound, but not the culty-kind with a gun shed. The artist-enclave kind with a greenhouse. Specifically, we’re looking in Chincoteague, because we’ve always wanted to live in on an island, but we’re not ex-pat material. Chincoteague is an old eastern shore community—yes, the one with the wild ponies. Because there are no homes or businesses on the beach itself, it’s a lot quieter and less cheesy than nearby Ocean City, and Chincoteague prides itself on historic charm and local entrepreneurship. There’s a McDonald’s, a Valero, a Subway, a KOA, and a few hotels with names you’d recognize, but beyond that, very few franchise operations. Think food trucks, coffee shops, ice cream, craft beer, a handful of kids’ attractions, bait and t-shirt shops, fishing charters, and miles of kayak trails. Ducks and cats rule the streets. But back to our plan. We started the search in late August. Here are a few things we learned while looking for our dream home:Compounds are not built, they accrue their forms gradually over time, and each new room or shed is an organic expression of the “handy” person of the house. This person thinks putting a hot tub and large screen tv in a windowless, concrete floored garage is cool. This person has a blind rescue dog that has to wear a thundershirt at all times. This person has replaced every cell of their own body with compressed cigarette smoke. This person won’t tell you why they are leaving their home after all these years, but it sure seems like some kind of molting situation. Related to the above—if your agent says, “the tenant has opted to stay on the premises while I show you the property,” just run away. People’s homes are creepy. People in their homes, while you are looking at their bathrooms are even creepier. Oh, and beware. Your agent may not know 100% of the time if there are people inside. (We actually surprised a couple having an impromptu anniversary weekend.) How’s that make you feel? Like building your own house from scratch, right?Your buyer’s agent isn’t joking when she says, “Now, just so you know, there’s a cat urine situation at this home.”The reason those 100+ year old homes on the coast are still standing is because they’re pretty much solid blocks of asbestos and plaster with “rooms” that are just tiny holes carved out where the residents can go curl up and wait to die from asphyxiation. Plus, no dishwasher.If you are being shown a house that is strewn with toys and school crafts, you’re looking at an eviction that will only happen when someone makes an offer on the joint. Try not to worry about framed school pics of children with eyes that follow you like the extra background ghosts from Hill House.If you are staying in a rental cottage while looking for a cottage to buy, every single utensil and dish in the kitchen will taste/smell faintly of Old Bay Seasoning, no matter how much you scrub. Enjoy your cereal. Also, it’s a damned shame that paper coffee filters can’t be used for currency, because there’s thousands of them. Behind the Old Bay. The coffee’s going to taste a little funny. Somehow, the stranger hanging her hammock chair on her balcony and popping the tab on a beer at 5pm knows more about what you really want than you do yourself:“I saw you here yesterday,” she says. “You looking to buy the unit?”The unit. Nine weeks and dozens of properties later, we find ourselves nowhere near a cottage with a ground floor bathroom or outbuildings or anything that’s on our list. We are —please mom don’t read this—at a townhousebuilt in 1992. Townhouses with HOAs are awesome, especially if you can’t be there all the time, but if you come from a family of stubborn bastard carpenters, attached housing is scandalous. But this is not just any townhouse. This one has three balconies and a pier. The lighthouse is across the marsh crisscrossed with navigable waterways that lead to the national refuge, the ocean, and ponies. And off to the right: Wallops Island, where the rockets go off. The vista strikes a perfect balance between serenity and action. Our agent has gone home for the day. My husband and I have snuck out onto the pier for another look. I say to the woman on her balcony, “We’re falling in love with this view.”She says, “Yeah, I did just what you’re doing. I wasn’t sure, and then a Clapper Rale and her chicks scooted by. And I said, ‘Well, that’s it for me.’” My husband’s eyes go all weird. “Clapper Rails are hard to spot.”The Lady of The Hammock Swing: “Not here.”And boom. You don’t always see love creeping up on you, but you know when it hits. So now we’re in the zone, smack dab between having our offer accepted and coping with the inspection report. The insurance is lining up, and it’s looking like an end of November closing. We’ve done all the things and are rattling around until there are more things to do. In the meantime, I’m trying to stay sane by counting forks. Do I already own enough forks to supply another household? I hope so, because to be honest, I never want to procure another fork in my lifetime. I know that kind of mindset is all about the stress—not a legit stress, like what you feel during your annual review or when you drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in a windy storm—but the stress of expecting delivery of something great that you don’t need or deserve. (In our house we call it the “Christmas Badness.”) Exactly NO ONE is going to feel sorry for you, except maybe your agent. Last night our agent called to update us on a few crucial things, and I made a crack about being worried about sofa slipcovers. She then advised me about sofa slipcovers for about twenty minutes. I’m pretty sure that was a therapy move. Wow this thing’s gotten long. I’ll be back after the deal is done. And if you have any tips on how to transform a peach and avocado household into something blue and breezy without spending any money, let me know. Also, we need ideas for rental names. The leading, but too weird contender is “Moonish Buoy.”

We make it feel like a quick decision. We make it look like an impulse. We don’t take signs, and I don’t own a pussy hat. On those occasions when we do make plans to attend a protest, we almost always find an excuse not to go at the last minute. That’s how we got ourselves out to the Vienna Metro when the fascists came by bus to grab a train to the #UniteTheRight2 rally in DC. The rumor was that the bus was hired by a Virginia pastor, and driven by his nephew, a college student who went by the handle “Lion of God 1488.”We’d just gone to the gym, I’d just walked the dog, and my husband casually said, “Oh hey, let’s drive by the metro and see what’s happening.” Never mind that the calendar has had “Punch a Nazi Day” scrawled on August 12 for weeks. We knew the event was going to be a bust, and that most of the major white nationalist groups and figures had decided to stay home, but social media was panicking about the low turnout of counter-protestors at the station. What we didn’t know was that the police presence was enormous. Their vehicles lined the long curving drives leading to the station, and there were various teams of enforcement, ranging from officers in helmets and body gear, to ones with bikes and reflective vests. The gates to the North entrance were closed, and a few metro riders trickling in and out. Inside there were a couple of young rally-goers, and Julie Carey from NBC News was trying to interview them, but they weren’t talking. Outside, it was mainly press and a few counter-protesters. There was also a group of men in matching black shirts and brown khakis who turned out to be a reporter, his video crew, and security. They would not reveal their affiliation, but a couple of them had undercuts and a man who was with them but not in uniform wore a t-shirt with a Russian beer logo on it. Interesting choices. In the large DC demonstrations of the past year, if you were on the ground you had little to no information, limited ability to move, and unless you were right in front of the speakers, you couldn’t hear a thing. It was frightening and claustrophobic, so everyone had to trust each other. And they generally did. But in this small crowd, the trust was rationed. A couple with signs walked right up to us, and the woman announced, “We’re going to stand next to you.” Meaning, she recognized that we were there for the same reasons she was. As our small crowd grew into a modest one, a man said to me, “You really can’t tell what side people are on if they don’t have signs.” Really? I wanted to point out to him that he wouldn’t have been talking to me if he couldn’t tell. Because you can tell. And let’s forget the clothes and the haircuts. Those are the cheap clues. You can tell by how a person stands and interacts, especially when in a small gathering. You can tell when a person is just off. There were a few off people at the metro that day. Men alone, away from the group, staring. We were paying special attention to the guy we were already calling “Bowtie,” because of the Chevy logo on his shirt. He was on his own and obviously anxious. He seemed to have expectations. Finally, the police marched a tiny parade of fascists towards us. They were carrying flags on poles that they would have to surrender inside the station. Many did not have metro cards. Eventually, the group would be loaded into their own exclusive train car and led to Lafayette Square where they would be dwarfed by thousands. But for now it was just us, a wee collection of counter-protesters that still out-numbered them. We chanted and shouted as they passed--which lasted 41 seconds according to the crummy video I took--and just before the last of them went inside, Bowtie spat on two troopers. The cops brought him down in an instant, just about two feet from us. It was an explosive though minor event. There are conflicting reports as to his ideology, but I don’t think it matters if he ever claimed to be a liberal, a conservative, or an extremist of any flavor—if you spit on an armored cop in front of dozens and dozens of armored cops, you’re asking for something awfully special from the cosmos. And in true Fairfax County style, many of the counter-protesters were politely embarrassed for the guy. After they hauled him away, I saw a young Latina mother and her son, who couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7. They were holding anti hate signs, and the boy was in quiet distress. I asked if he was okay, and his mother said, petting his hair, “Oh, it’s a little scary. But that’s how things are, now.”I said to him, “Well, you’re a hero for coming out today.” His mother agreed, but I don’t think he was buying it. I can’t imagine what the day looked like to him.

An apology is not a CYA memo. But if CYA is all you do, you have two tone options. One is whiny, the other is humble. Do the humble. Instead of “you gave me no choice but to shoot the dog,” try “shooting the dog seemed like my only option, but now I see that was wrong.” (In this instance, the shooting and the dog are metaphors for errors that you resolved by crushing a soul instead of asking for help)Oh, but you did ask for help, didn’t you? You went across the street to the 7 Eleven, and you saw the guy servicing the Slushee machine, and you said, “Hey, what would you do if you were me?” Now, the Slushee Tech is great at his job, but asking him if Internet Native Banner 9 will still work if you update Java is about as effective as singing “Emotional Rescue” to a cat. We’ve all done it, so we know it doesn’t help. (These are all metaphors, too. Not great ones)Do not detail the massive importance and scope of your project. Remember, you shot a dog. And maybe sang to a cat. (I’m a little confused) Acknowledge that, if the only solution offered to you by a third party (the cat? I think I get it now) includes soul crushing, perhaps you want to use your own judgment. Think: is an administrator who would paint a target on a Shih Tzu really going to be the best mentor? Remember, cats get where they are by helping no one. And they don’t climb ladders to success, they just literally climb ladders for fun or to knock things down. Not sure if that’s useful info, but my point is, don’t be an ass-cat.Send your message to the right person. I ain’t her.Don’t cc the message to the six nearest suits you know. They don’t have your back. They don’t have anybody’s back. They’re just excited that we’re fighting. Don’t use my first name six times, and especially never with commas before and after, as in “So you see, Laura, you gave me no choice . . . ” I know what that bullshit is about. I do language for a living. In fact, for your own safety, don’t use my first name at all. I’m Professor Scott to you.

I’m delighted to be participating in this bloghop event, but the theme-- “How does Washington DC inspire your writing”—is going to force me into a round about, beltway sort of approach, because even though I write regional fiction, I don’t write about the DC area. (Though I talk about certain content influences in a conversation with E. A. Aymar, Nik Korpon, and Colleen Shogan in an interview for The Thrill Begins.) My first published novel, Death Wishing, takes place in New Orleans. My second, The Juliet, is set in Death Valley. And my third and fourth novels, The Mean Bone in Her Body and Crybaby Lane, are part of a mysteries series about a fictional college/prison town in Ohio that is a mash-up of Athens and Chillicothe. I probably won't write about where I live now until I leave it. And yet, living in the DC/VA area has a tremendous impact on my life as an indie writer. When my first novel came out, and my then publisher set up events for me in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and New Orleans, I said “sure thing!” and used my own resources to travel to those cities. No way was I going to pass up reading at legendary places like City Lights Books or Elliot Bay. That tour turned out to be a mess for reasons out of my control, but it was a thrilling experience that was worth doing—once. Everybody’s first baby is special, but the second, third, and fourth? Those books came out roughly nine months apart (make your own joke here), and there was no way I could mount traditional, cross-country tours to promote them. So, what’s an indie gal supposed to do if her platinum card has been frozen and her private jet is in the shop indefinitely? Well, in my case, all I need to do is reach out. The DC Metro area is nothing if not writer-friendly, with great independent bookstores, several thriving reading series, supportive organizations, and frequent festivals/conferences. If you're new to all this, here's a starter kit of places, orgs, and events to consider if you're in my neck of the woods. BookstoresOne More Page BooksScrawl BooksUpshur Street BooksKramerbooks & Afterwords CafeReston's Used Book ShopReading SeriesReston ReadingsThe Inner LoopThe Edge Reading Series at Bridge Street BooksAnything Jen Michalski organizes Anything E. A. Aymar organizesConferences/FestivalsFall for the BookConversations and ConnectionsGaithersburg Book FestivalEat Local/Read LocalCreatures, Crime, and Creativity (C3) ConOrganizations The Writer's CenterSisters in Crime—Chesapeake ChapterSisters in Crime—Central VAWriters Guild of Virginia826DCSo to answer the question, “How does Washington DC inspire your writing?" I'd say that the organic support system of a community that LOVES BOOKS is very inspiring. I may not write about the DC area, but I sure as heck write for it. Thanks for reading! To return to the #ReadLocalDC Blog Hop on Ellen Smith’s website, click here.

Last night after dark, a neighbor we haven’t seen in months came outside to light fireworks in the middle of the street. We call him The Man of Constant Sorrow, which was funny when he was 19. Now not so much. He's in his 30s, still lives "at home." It was a cloudy, humid night, and the smoke stayed low to the ground. He had an extensive collection of aerial fireworks as well as plenty of basic firecrackers—enough to put on a twenty-minute display of flash and bang with no significant pauses. As he hopped away from each lit fuse, his dark form in the smoke looked eerie, like he was dancing. No one from the neighborhood, not even his family, came out to watch.I have spent the whole day writing more about TMOCS, and what he’s been like over the years, but I just deleted about 1100 words. I think the above gives you all you need. No need to write a ballad.

Up until a few weeks ago, I’ve been in the same office for the duration of my job. It was a great space with a large window that overlooked the University’s main plaza, and the first thing I did was paint it lavender, cover the bookcases with batik throws and quirky knick-knacks, and pin up some posters just because they were colorful. I made no attempt at creating a specific atmosphere. And things just sort of stayed that way. The only thing that changed was the natural accumulation of paperweights, coffee mugs, knick-knacky gifts, and—according to one former assistant—several randomly distributed steak knives. Clearly, I wasn’t taking things very seriously. For 25 years. Seriously, every wall of my my office looked like a refrigerator door. No arrangement, just stuff battling for space. Now we’ve been moved out to make way for a re-build, and my new office is smaller. It has a great window that looks into the branches of a gorgeous tree. I deliberately threw out all my old stuff, and now I’m taking the decoration of my new office very seriously. Sort of. We’re probably going to be in this building for 3-5 years before it gets torn down as well, but for some reason I’m being way pickier about how I want the room to feel. Because here’s a bit of a secret: I actually plan to work in this new space. By that I mean write. Writing wasn’t possible in the old office because it was too close to the action. The English Department is big, and we have a terrific staff that gets along really, really well, and let’s face it--a happy office is a noisy one. Now I’m in an area that may be quieter, and I want to take advantage of that. Which is not to say my decorative instincts have matured. I think that the only real difference to my approach this time around is that I’m not so dirt poor that I have to cut out pictures from old calendars or scavenge wrinkled Hamlet posters from the recycling. Now I have resources that might allow me to create my environment more carefully. Thing is, I’m terrible at that. Here’s where I’m at, so far. I have glitter trees stenciled on pallet wood (from a Berkeley Springs Artist) to take the edge off the row of Weird Tales prints. I loved horror comics as a kid, but the trick was to find covers that didn't feature women being torn to shreds or tossed into hot lava. I've had my trusty red herring for a couple of years--I got it at a mother's day plant sale at the State Arboretum of Virginia. I found the fortune telling goat on ebay. The artist has a whole series of "goats at the circus," but the other pieces were kind of scary. I like the goat reading tarot cards because one of my duties is academic advising. I'm calling it the Advising Goat. I'm not sure what kind of vibe I'm building, but so far it's not a wreck, nor is it a dentist's waiting room. Somewhere in between those moods is me. Remains to be seen whether these choices help me write a better book.

I'm not sure everyone is aware of this, but the book club discussion questions you see in the backs of your favorite novels are often written by the authors themselves. I think that's sort of funny because my urge in composing questions is to try to encourage a Polly Prissy Pants style conversation:But that's not how book club discussions go, is it? Even when the author is present, the group is usually pretty frank about what they liked, disliked, or flat-out didn't get about your book. That's cool. That kind of feedback has been very influential in my development as a novelist, and I've been working hard at becoming more direct with each book. That said, I'll probably never let go of my love for twisty, weird storytelling. I've come up with a set of questions about The Mean Bone in Her Bodythat I think will drive the conversation into rich areas. I'll create other sets for my other books--and possibly work on adding a book club page to my site, eventually.If you've read Mean Bone, what do you think of these questions as a staring point? And if you haven't read Mean Bone yet, what do you expect, based on these questions?

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity for my fellow authors, especially the crimey-wimey ones, and it's all I can do to keep up with the news. End-of -semester activities usually prevent me from attending events like Malice Domestic of the Noir at the Bar Crawl, but I was able to pop into Barrelhouse's Conversations & Connections this year, if only to say howdy to Dave Housley and Erin Fitzgerald. Here they are tolerating "let's fall backward" approach to selfie-taking. The Barrelhouse collective hustle their butts off to make the one day conference the huge success that it always is, and this year, in addition to offering great panels and selling terrific books, they've added new stuff to the goodie table. Above, you'll see Harriet showing off the latest in apparel and dining ware. Yes, the shirt is already sweat-stained, and you are correct if you're assuming the cup has beer dregs in it. Dean got to both items before I thought to get a pic. The shirts a little tight, but the cup is juuuussst right. Holds a full can of Arrogant Bastard. Next Saturday I'll be an exhibiting author at the Gaithersburg Book Festival, so please come see me in Exhibitor area D, near the Politics and Prose tent. Here's a map: It'll be the day after graduation, and the official start day of my vacation, and I won't know what to do with myself. PS, Go ahead an Pre-order Dave Housley's loopy vampires and Grateful Dead novel, THIS DARKNESS GOT TO GIVE.

Even though people think I write some freaky shit*, I’m actually a classically repressed, can’t-high-five-without-cringing, Northern Ohioan when it comes to talking about “the realness.”But that doesn’t stop people from talking to me--or within obvious earshot--about everything. I mean, holy crap. Supposedly, Stephen King said he got the inspiration for IT when a cigarette-smoking clown sat next to him on an airplane. I think King referred to himself as a “weirdness magnet.” That’s how I feel sometimes. But my friend Debra, the folklorist, likes to remind me that the most interesting part of a story is not the story itself, but why the teller is telling it. Deb’s a professional interviewer and listener, so her “why” is the curious, caring kind. My “why” is more like this: (I love this pic, and I'm going to keep posting it where appropriate. For the record, Trilly had that hat on all of 12 seconds. I never do awful things to her) What does this have to do with the Main Street Martinsburg Chocolate Festival and Book Faire, you never asked? Well, last Saturday was my second time as a participant author, and same as last year, it was both profitable and weird.Last year’s highlight was meeting a man who was a frequent extra on SeaQuest 2032. He told me Michael York was awesomely cool, but Michael Ironsides was a jerk. This year brought full slate of folks with stories to tell. Here's me before the weird set in: Beginning with the author next to me, who had just self-published a memoir. By the time I arrived at the gallery to set up my display of books, she was already on site and settled in with three friends, and they were all in a “lively” conversation about how they had picked out the suits they would bury their spouses in and how they wanted their own remains to be dealt with. When the conversation turned to a 96-year-old relative who underwent a double mastectomy and refused to be put to sleep for the procedure, demanding that the doctors just put some headphones on her with decent music, and she'd be fine. I was beginning to dread the thought of being there for the next 6 hours.Let me be clear. The gallery was lovely. The day was lovely. The author with whom I was sharing the space was lovely. The buffet table of brownies and other chocolate delights was lovely. The only problem was I felt like I was at a stranger’s Thanksgiving dinner. As if reading my mind, one of the women remarked, “Well, some people don’t like to talk about death. Some families are that way, but I don’t see any sense in it.” And then she started listing the places where she wanted her ashes scattered, using the term “bucket list” in a way I’d never heard before. In this case, the bucket was the container for her ashes, and the list was of the places she’d go aftershe passed away. At this point, I was texting “helllp meeee” to Pandamoon central on our Glip channel, letting the other authors know what was happening.(And help eventually arrived, in the form of the lovely Pandamoon Publishing Editor, Ashley Hammond. The pandas are so well distributed that there is at least one of us everywhere)Later, I learned that the memoirist had taken twenty years to writer her book, and that she’d never done an event like this before. Her companions had quite suddenly—like, that morning—decided to take the 3-hour journey to sit with her, basically turning this new world of being an author into their kitchen table, where dammit, they could talk about whatever they wanted to. Okay, that “why” was a pretty good one.Up next was an energetic hat-lady who hovered over my table and said, “Crybaby Lane! What an interesting title.” Now, on the occasions that I tell stories, I am often testing people to see what their fear-to-humor ratio is. So, I took the opportunity to tell her the Crybaby Lane legend about how folks claimed to still hear the ghost cries of children down a road where an orphanage was burned down by a priest. The woman screwed up her face and said, “Oh, that reminds me--” And she started to tell me a story about a local factory where they couldn’t keep workers because they were all driven out by the ghost cries of children and horses. Somehow the locomotive had been disabled, and all the train cars had to be moved by hitching them to draft horses that pulled them to the railyard. It was a community spectacle, so all the children were let out of school to watch. Everything was going along fine until the horses collapsed on a steep incline. The train cars pulled the horses down, jumped the tracks, and slammed into the children. Carnage everywhere. The point goes to the hat-lady. Horses and children haunting a factory? That’s the Applebee’s Topped & Loaded of ghost stories. By the way, I casually searched for this story, though I didn’t find it, there is a book called HAUNTED MARTINSBURG that includes a story about Stonewall Jackson’s troops seizing the train cars and fitting them with road wheels, so that horses could drag them to Virginia. Finally, I met C--- , a man I believe is a time traveler who has crossed his own timeline so many times that it’s permanently scrambled. He swooped by my table and announced, “My favorite book is Catcher in the Rye, by William Faulkner.”** “I think you mean J. D. Salinger.”“That’s right, Salinger. Faulkner was the other guy. Anyway, I read that when I was in 9thgrade, living in Germany. I really like how he doesn’t like the F-word.”C--- then started to spout some German and push his sleeve up, like he wanted to show me something but was afraid of getting in trouble. According to C---, the Martinsburg police harassed him daily. “I lived in Las Vegas for 29 years and nobody bothered me.” Then he added, “People don’t know prostitution isn’t legal in Vegas. You have to travel sixty miles out of the county for that.” Finally, he got his sleeve up to show me a crude 1957 tattooed on his upper arm. “I’m a spades man.” He paused to deal from an invisible deck. “But these three guys cheated me when I was in prison, so when I lost the game they gave me this tattoo with a staple.” So, I’ve met a few former “guests of the state” in my time, and I know the etiquette is to be kind, listen, and try not to ask too many questions. Questions will take you down the rabbit hole.*** But dang, C---. That was a lot of life, right there, all balled up. I fully expected Chapter Two to introduce the aliens, but a crowd entered the gallery, and that spooked him. He scuttled out, leaving the faint perfume of booze in his wake.By four pm, the festival was over and the streets were empty except for a couple of screaming guys up the block. You couldn’t tell if they were happy or mad, but I knew I’d had a good day because I had a pile of cash. I wouldn’t know how good until later, because you never count your money when you’re sitting at the book table. As soon as I started stacking up my books, the memoirist and her friends whipped out rolling suitcases and scooped up her books. They half-apologized for being so chatty, and I half-joked that I would put them in my next book.The truth is that I probably will use some of the more memorable moments from the day in my fiction. My characters are quirky because people are quirky, and the story of my life is about everyone else. You can’t make this shit up. Not entirely, anyway. FEET NOTES--*I’ve been reading Matt Coleman’s passionately funny blog and listening to Tyler Mahan Coe’s excellent Cocaine and Rhinestones podcast, so I’m feeling a bit sweary these days.**Now, this is not unusual at book fairs. Anyone who comes to your table intentionally, will do one of two things: 1) Ask you about your books/how you got published, or 2) tell you about their relationship to literature.***My brother Sam would disagree. He was a passionate talker/ranter/musician who hated silence. Once I called him to find that one of his kids recorded several minutes of one of his tirade-style lectures on the answering machine. I couldn't tell what he was going on about, because there weren't many concrete nouns in the sample. At thanksgiving one year, my mentally ill sister stood on her chair to announce that God was coming down in a spaceship to marry her. Sam started arguing with her--on her own terms--choosing to treat her delusions as debate points, while the rest of us were contentedly eating turkey. That was the weirdest thanksgiving ever. And, oh yeah--there was the time when Sam went to visit a relative incarcerated in Leavenworth, and he asked the other prisoners, "So, what are you in for?" like it was small talk.