Like a Death in the Family

Hello Guys and Gals!

Welcome back! I’m glad to be with you. These last few months have seen your correspondent hunkered down, never far from the keyboard, putting the final touches on a new book with the working title of Me and Nancy Drew: Life in River Heights.

Now that the manuscript has made its way across-country to my hard-working editor, Elizabeth Kracht, I’m hoping to be a flâneuse once again, hoping to resume the walks around town seeking bits of beauty a la Française to share with you. But lest I forget: This is a momentous week for Elizabeth who will see her own book The Author’s Checklist: An Agent’s Guide to Developing and Editing Your Manuscript published February 4th. As someone who has worked with and benefited from Elizabeth’s editorial talents, this is a handy reference book that deserves to be on every writer’s bookshelf. Check it out!

Another momentous occasion this week, if one that saddens me greatly, was the death of Mary Higgins Clark, a writer who befriended me at a time when I needed a helping hand, who gave of her time a few years ago to read and review Veronica’s Grave: A Daughter’s Memoir. That was a time when my publisher at She Writes Press, Brooke Warner, told us to contact authors, the more famous the better, to see if we could interest them in reading and reviewing our books. I took her at her word! The exercise was instructive. For starters, I sent a letter to a wonderful memoir writer, another Girl of the Bronx (as am I), who was so enraged by the chutzpah of the request she called my publisher to complain. Loudly. Then there was a Boy of the Bronx who wrote to say he regretted he only had time to do favors for friends and family. Everyone has a book in them.

Undeterred, I wrote the author of one of my favorite memoirs of growing up in the Bronx, none other than the Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor who graciously explained that Supreme Court Justices were prohibited from engaging in or lending their names to any money-making activities. Yet, the mere sight of her gold-embossed letterhead and the kindness with which she turned me down gladdened my heart, made it worthwhile; when the book was published, I sent her a copy. Within days, there it was —another note, another gold-embossed letterhead, another kind word: She was looking forward to reading it. The Supreme Court must be the last bastion of courtesy and respect in the entire country.

Running low on hope for finding a blurb for the book cover, I wrote Mary Higgins Clark, the ‘Queen of Suspense,’ drawing upon the parallels in our lives. Mary and I grew up in the Bronx, attended Catholic schools, and went on to Fordham University. If she worked as a hotel switchboard operator, I worked for the New York Telephone Company in Fordham, only blocks from where she grew up. Eventually, she would go on to fly for Pan American Airways, whereas I, a few years later, would fly with Trans World Airlines.

And then the parallels stopped, as she then went on to become one of America’s best-selling authors, with more than 100,000,000 copies sold. In a statement on Friday, Simon & Schuster said that all of her 40 + books beginning with “Where Are the Children?” had been bestsellers.

Yet when I wrote to thank this super-star and tell her that Veronica’s Grave had been picked up by Harper Collins Canada who would be doing a first run of 20,000 under the title, Missing Mother, she was overjoyed, thought it absolutely marvelous.

I’ll miss her, miss her elegance and enthusiasm, and I shall never forget the bigheartedness of that Girl of the Bronx. Somehow, it feels like a death in the family. Godspeed, Mary!

Do come back again soon dear Reader; I’ll have the coffee at the ready…