O Christmas tree..

How early is too early to put up the Christmas tree? I moved all the furniture in my kitchen last night and thought I'd get my tree today. Then I realized that by little Christmas (January 6, for all you Epiphany celebrants out there) it would have been up for a month and it would be a total fire hazard no matter how many times I crawled underneath, risking life, limb and sap stains to water it.

Once again I was the Chief Elf for Mystery Writers of America - NY Chapter's holiday party. It was a fun event at the legendary National Arts Club in Gramercy Park enlivened by the presence of Honorary Santas Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark, the excruciatingly cool Lee Child, the alluring Alafair Burke..you get the picture.

Anyway, for two years I've had custody of a wrought iron holiday tree like the one in this holiday catalog picture.

Last year it was decorated with members' book covers and this year it was barnacled with white minilights. Instant tree which my elves and I were able to put up in minutes. A minilight bulb flashed. Could I use this instead of a real tree? Weighs just a few pounds. No pine needles. No sticky black sap in my hair. Six nuts and an allen wrench would knock it down instead of my having to haul it to the Christmas tree cemetery I've started behind my kitchen (I've convinced myself I'm creating a berm.)

I slept on it and then came to my senses.

Pictures of the real tree to come.
Happy holidays,
Rosemary
www.rosemaryharris.com

Rock and roll Friday - JoBoxers - Just Got Lucky

Have a great weekend!

Happy Halloween

This is the last year I go high concept. If I had to tell one more person that I was Amelia Earhart and Bruce was her husband, GP Putnam I would have gone home and changed into my Cruella DeVille costume. True, I couldn't find goggles or a leather cap but the rest of the outfit and props were pretty good including a map and a black box. The truly scary thing was that Bruce really owned a suit that looked like one Putnam wore.
Next year, Elvira.
Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!
Rosemary
www.rosemaryharris.com

Friday Rock ROCKABILLY BOOGIE - ROBERT GORDON

Robert Gordon - still rocking! How did he ever keep that hair up while he was shaking like that?
Enjoy the weekend!
Rosemary

Risotto for Dogs

It's 7am and I'm making risotto for my dog. It's not that he's a picky eater..the poor thing has an upset stomach and he's been out for walks twice since 2am (I'll be going back to sleep as soon as the risotto is done and has cooled.)

I don't keep much food in my apartment in NY. When I'm in the city I'm usually going out to dinner. The cans of tuna and emergency soups are so old their Best By dates are illegible. Will Smith would have passed on these - in the movie I Am Legend, where he's one of the few survivors of a nuclear attack or a pandemic, I forget which. Viggo Mortensen might have said yes, but The Road hasn't been released yet so I don't know.

Anyway wedged behind an envelope of madras lentils which I didn't think would help my dog's digestion - was a box of arborio rice. Lovely. I'd skip the black truffles and cheese - didn't have them anyway - just make it straight. There's one moment when risotto is done and then in a flash, it's overdone. The stirring is key. I added nothing. Why complicate things for the pooch?

The last time I had had rice for breakfast I was snowed in in a little village in China and that was all we had to eat. I sampled. Not bad.

I offered the bowl to Max. He sniffed warily, thinking perhaps "what about the truffles?" Then the grains of rice started to fly out of the bowl. He liked it. Not much of a surprise since my dog will eat just about anything, but I was glad. We cooks like to be appreciated. Maybe polenta for lunch.
Rosemary
www.rosemaryharris.com

I said I'd do what??

The things new writers agree to.

In a few hours I will be on a Poe panel at the Rye Arts Center with Lee Child, Chris Grabenstein and Frnakie Bailey. It's something I said yes to last December when all of 2009 stretched ahead of me and I thought I had plenty of time to brush up my Poe, so to speak (see "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" from Kiss Me Kate - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSmZfnax1yw for mobsters singing about Coriolanus...pretty clever.) Then real life intervened...book two, my tour, lots o' trips, some navel-gazing. How did it get to be October?

No worries. I was going to Bouchercon and there was to be a Poe panel with none other than Michael Connelly and Sue Grafton on it. I would simply suck up everything the masters had to say. Not to be - my own panel was scheduled opposite them.
I bought the Complete Works of Poe (enormous tome - imagine if the guy had lived longer and written more. And the type is so small. It's hit me in the nose more times than I care to remember.. Mad!? They say I'm mad!?) I bought the slim but supposedly wonderful Poe biography by Peter Ackroyd. (Yes, yes, where the hell was he for those few days before he died...) Buying them was a good start - finishing them would have been better.

It's 8am and I realize that most of what I know about Poe comes from Vincent Price and Saturday morning television when I was a kid. A local New York station used to run horror films every Saturday. But which were Poe's...I thought everything scary was written by Poe when I was 10.Maybe I should Google Thriller Theatre...
With any luck Lee Child will be brilliant (as usual) and I can just sit there and nod knowingly.
Wish me luck!
Rosemary
www.rosemaryharris.com
Dead Head Minotaur, Spring 2010

CYNICAL GIRLS

Kick off the weekend with some great old rock and roll from Marshall Crenshaw and some very cynical girls.
Cheers,
Rosemary
www.rosemaryharris.com