It's NEWS!-Release Day

I have been eagerly awaiting today--the release date of my new novel, NEWS!, for a year and a few days, since signing a publishing contract with Propertius Press and Susannah Smith. It doubles as my birthday, so the party is on at Hollins. 

Publisher Susannah Smith and me.

This book is a joyful celebration of my career, journalism, which has held me captive for 58 years. In it, I take a fictional look at the creation of a journalist at a time when honest journalism was the rule, not the exception, and when most people got their daily news from mid-sized daily publications. 

Journalists have always topped my list of heroes and in NEWS! that shows without reservation. It is an unapologetically uplifting book, a celebration of journalism as a keystone of our now-fading culture. One of the important reasons it is facing is because journalism has faded.

Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we get back to reality. 

 

Writer Megan Gogerty gave me a peach of a role as an Evangelical judge.

TheWelcome  Return of Overnight Sensations

The Overnight Sensations crew got back on state at Hollins University last night and, even though we didn't have a full house, we had a full belly of fun. Wonderful writing, directing and acting throughout and the place was alive with laughter and warmth. 

It is always such a good time that even those of us can't act and who blow the hell out of lines have a good time. 

On the night before the plays, we met and planned what we were doing (the writers went off overnight and wrote the plays), I suggested to Megan Gogerty that she cast me as an evangelical nutjob and she came up with an overblown Southern judge who thought he was a god-like figure. He was also a redneck and an overt misogynist. 

I loved the part and think maybe it's the best I've had (and I've had some damn good ones) in all the years I've worked Overnight Sensations. Even though I blew a line or two.

I thought Lauren Brooke Ellis' direction was inspired and despite a judge who couldn't remember his name, our cast was inspired with Mark Johnson, Mary Jean Levin, Katie Stueckle and the estimable Gwyneth Strope doing the heavy lifting. 

Here's some of what our play "Interregnum? I Hardly Know 'Em!" (no, I have no idea what that means) looked like. My friend Susan took these photos and did a dang good job of it. 

Bringing out the judge in me. 

Mary Jean Levin and Gwyneth Strope. 

Mark Johnson and Katie Stueckle. 

 

Alphonso Caal on my roof.

If There Is a God, She Is Smiling on Me

Mom Ana Patricia and Ana Violeta.

When the mini-Doratio came through my neighborhood yesterday, it left some of my roof tiles spread across the yard. I found them and the mess on the roof this morning. I have put a roof on a house before, but I was 40 years younger than I am now and in much more flexible condition.

I decided to give repairing the roof a try anyway. I went to Lowe's and got some tiles (a really nice guy who works there gave me four tiles that had come out of a package) and a box of roofing nails. I got home and went at it.

I was hammering away when a car stopped in front of my house and a Guatemalan family got out of the car and approached me, speaking Spanish, which I don't speak beyond gracias or hola. He went to the translator on his phone and I got a vague idea why he stopped. He wanted to do the roofing. I told him he was hired. But he shook his head.

I called my daughter-in-law Kara in Texas, who is fluent in Spanish. She got to the heart of it. Alphonso Maaz Caal is a professional roofer, newly arrived from Guatemala with his wife, Ana Patricia and daughter, Ana Violeta. He was offering to fix the roof for me. No charge. Just a friendly neighbor.

They went home and got his work truck and gear and he was on the roof in a jiffy, finishing a fine repair job in 10 to 15 minutes. I gave his daughter, Ana Violeta, who is about 6, a copy of my children's book "Saving Homer" and a stuffed Homer animal. She seemed pleased.

These are truly nice people. Good neighbors. The kind of neighbors I want.