I never thought I would admire some of what Gandhi did. Simplicity and cutting back.

Last Friday, I watched the NBC show Who do You Think You Are? The show profiled Emmitt Smith. DNA studies interest me and they did Emmit Smith. He is 81% African, 15% European and 4% Native American. What does that tell me? Emmitt Smith can only BE an AMERICAN. Let's get past the hyphenated American and those who don't like it, he is one of us.

Laurie Schenbly Campbell spoke about rejection for writers at the Society for Southwest Authors meeting. The six members from Saguaro Romance Writers, are known as "Laurie's Roadies." There is none to keep in mind.

So Wyclef Jean wants to be President of Haiti. I will have to ask my old friend Patrick what he thinks.

Book news this weekend. Dorchester Press going to ebooks and Barnes and Noble putting itself up for sale.
I remember trips to Barnes and Noble as a child. I worked in a Barnes and Noble. We hang out and get work done in Barnes and Noble.
The Economist had an interesting article about Barnes and Noble. They want to go private, because they want to concentrate on e-books and many investors still have trouble with the idea of an e-book. Amazon already sells more e-books than bound.
I keep saying it is hard to predict the future, but with ebooks and publishing on demand, you can imagine instead of a bookstore with a coffee shop, a coffee shop that is a bookstore.
Food and coffee for thought.

I mentioned last week that Brenda Novak was signing at the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona. A group of writers met first at Grazie Pizzeria and Wine Bar. The owner, Maurizio is a really nice guy. The food is good and the company was great. There were lots of laughs.
The Poisoned Pen is 387 feet away according to Google Maps. Great store, lots of major mystery writers have signed there.
Glad I went, but Brenda is a good friend and her new book, White Heat is great.

Baron Haussmann was the Prefect of Paris in the Mid Nineteenth Century. He is responsible for the grand boulevards of Paris. The original reason was to tear up the unsanitary Medieval streets, but the government also found they could prevent Les Miserables from occurring again. No barricades in backstreets, easier to send the troops and shoot at people. Napoleon the Third was pleased.

I saw an ad on a bus stop. Can you afford to die? I didn't think the money entered into it for the deceased, but for your loved ones.

The voice on the tow truck GPS was a sexy upper crust English voice. It didn't get the guy towing the car to my garage, but almost on the Union Pacific tracks. Hmmmmm