Headin' for High Ground

We're in the last stages of boarding up the house and hauling what's movable from the first floor up to the second. Then it's off to the lake house with seven cats for a fun-filled weekend of wind and rain and high anxiety. 'Till next week.

Katrina Day Number Three and Counting

Friday will mark the third anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf shore, essentially wiping out the New Orleans we all knew and loved, and altering forever those of us who lived through it. It’s a story the rest of the country has long since grown tired of hearing. But for those of us who still live here, the storm is a part of our lives. It’s become a tradition for a group of us to take a tour of the city, then meet for lunch at a local restaurant before heading over to the home of author Laura Joh Rowland for desert. Laura’s house in Gentilly took about four feet of water on the bottom floor, and she says organizing the annual event means she has something to look forward to on that day, rather than simply dreading the memories the anniversary inevitably brings.

I’m not sure that works for me. But the get-togethers make for a fun day, and since it’s been a while since I’ve driven out to Chalmette and the Ninth Ward, I’m also curious to see how things are progressing down there.

In my own neighborhood, probably one out of every fifteen or so houses is still empty—gutted and abandoned. I often look at those houses when I go for a walk and try to understand what happened to the people who used to live there. Are they dead? Are they someplace else, still paying mortgages on houses they don’t inhabit? Why don’t they sell the houses? Or if the bank has repossessed them, why doesn’t the bank sell the properties? Of course, in the truly devastated neighborhoods, selling probably isn’t an option.

With Hurricane Gustav now taking aim at the Gulf, we're also all reviewing our evacuation plans...which has added a nasty fillip to the looming anniversary.

Updates

We’ve finally updated the C.S. Harris website, with the stunning new cover of Where Serpents Sleep, the fourth book in the Sebastian St. Cyr series due out this November 4. You’ll also find the cover copy and an excerpt of the first chapter, as well as some of the events/appearances I’ll be making this fall.

There’s a new section on the website, too: Special Features. The first “special feature” is an article on porphyria, the genetic disorder from which the British royal family has suffered since the days of Mary, Queen of Scotts, and that helped drive King George III mad. Check it all out at csharris.net.

You’ll notice we also updated the blog a bit and fixed some old links. And the RSS feed finally works—or so I’m told.

And one more update from my Florida daughter: seems the third time's the charm. Fay is finally hitting her college--now that the evacuation is over and they're all back on campus!

And You Thought That Signed First Edition Was Worth Something

A reporter for the Guardian spotted this ad on Craig’s List: Wanted. Fourteen people to fake authors’ autographs on 53,760 hardcovers at a Los Angeles warehouse. “You will need to be able to copy the look and style of both authors’ signatures,” says the ad. You also must be able to stand the rigor of signing books for 8 hours a day, at an estimated rate of one book every 15 seconds. If you’re good at forgery, go for it: They’re paying $25 for every 200 books signed.

Exactly who are the lazy authors who can’t be bothered to sign their own books? That’s a deep dark secret.

Enquiring minds want to know.

And here's the news from Florida: "I told you not to worry. All we got was a little rain shower."

Fay and the Faint-hearted

**


It doesn’t help that we’re just days away from the three-year anniversary of Katrina. But the truth is, no one with hurricane-induced posttraumatic stress syndrome should send their youngest child to college in Florida.

Fay isn’t a hurricane yet, but they expect it to turn into one before it comes ashore. The path has been vibrating back and forth across the western coast of Florida, with landfall expected close enough to my daughter’s college that they’re ordering an evacuation. That means they close the campus, and where the students go and how they get there is up to them.

“Keep yourself safe,” I tell my daughter in one of the thousand phone calls I’ve made to Florida in the last 48 hours.

Her response is predictable. “I can’t believe you said that. It’s just a little Category 1. I went through Katrina, remember?”

Like I could possibly have forgotten? I say, “It’s not the hurricane I’m worried about; it’s the evacuation traffic.”

“Oh. I’ll be careful.”

But I lied, of course. I am worried about the evacuation traffic, but I’m also worried about falling trees and rampaging storm surges and roving lawless gangs and all the other nasties that come with hurricanes.

I’m really great at worrying. Unfortunately, from here, it’s all I can do.