I Couldn't Help Rooting for the Giants

I wanted to root for Kansas City, because I know my grandpa, a onetime manager of the Kansas Wheat League, would have loved to see Kansas City win.  My oldest son is also for KC, having gone to college in Missouri.  But the Giants kept pulling me toward them. Being of a (sometimes unfortunately) analytical mind, I had to figure out why.
In 2010 I traveled to San Francisco to attend Bouchercon, which is the be-all, end-all of mystery conferences.  I didn't have a book out and didn't  ask to be on a panel or ask a bookseller to flog my old novel, but I was hoping to have fun and meet some folks, network  and eat, breathe and sleep  crime fiction for a few days.
We didn't stay at the conference hotel, but parked ourselves across town at the Seal Rock Inn, a funky place where Hunter Thompson wrote one of his books.  The rooms are big, the parking is free,  the restaurant serves a mean  breakfast and down the hill sits the historic Cliff House for drinking and dining. 
  I went to a great pre-conference workshop and I'm still digging out Elizabeth Lyons' advice whenever I  begin to write something.   Next came the Noir Evening somewhere in North Beach with the Ramshackle Romeos providing the music. Famous and near-famous writers read noir passages, and it was so cool except for my excruciating jet lag that had me dozing off at nine p.m.
A first-ever trip to City Lights Bookstore, long a dream of mine came to pass.  We ate at The Stinking Rose, a garlic lover's paradise.
But the confernece?  Disappointing and kind of blah.  I would see someone I knew across the huge room, wave, and never see that person again.  I met no one.  Hardly talked to anyone.  All the so-called mid-list writers were courting the  a-list writers, and  well, I  suppose I was a no-list writer, or a low-list writer.  Low, as in lower than whale shit.  The same conference in Chicago had been friendly and fun.  This was neither.  And there was the one-hour bus ride across town every morning.  Was the ghost of Hunter Thompson traveling along making snide remarks about my writing?  Chastising me for wanting to be part of things?  That's how it felt. Alienation was my constant companion.  Sometimes one just has to suck it up.


The Spanish Civil War Lincoln Brigade Monument in the neighborhood of the conference hotel was unexpected.  And moving.  Only in San Francisco. The city itself was splendid. No complaints about SF. 



Then, like the surf crashing into the Seal Rocks, a huge feeling of relief washed over me when Bouchercon was over.  We spent a day or so sightseeing, and ended up in the late afternoon in the bar of the Cliff House, watching the Giants play.  Everyone was friendly, just what I had been missing. We focused on the game.  The food rocked, the drinks rolled and for the first time all week I was enjoying myself.  Loved every minute.  Go Giants!   And they did win everything including their first world series since moving to the West Coast in 1958. 
Bouchercon is in California again, but I'm not going.  Been there.  Done that. But I rooted for the Giants again this year, recalling the happy confines of the Cliff House bar and the excitement and camaraderie and cheering.  Sometimes a trip takes an unexpected turn.  And sometimes you have to face the fact that you are a minnow in a big lake and that the muskies and the catfish and the pike will swim on by.  Observing the feeding frenzy is not always a bad thing.                                  

Swedish Meatballs and other delights

Sometimes "retro" food tastes so good.  The last time I cooked up a batch of Swedish Meatballs is lost to history, but certainly not within recent memory, like the six years we've been in this house.  With the cooler weather, this dish just seemed right.  I got a good quality ground beef from the butcher shop and ground up 1.5 pork chops in the food processor, because I didn't like the look of the ground pork at the meat counter.  I had the rest of the ingredients except for white bread and heavy cream, but a trip to Shaw's solved that.  Then I forgot to add the cream, but we didn't miss it.  Making a huge tray of one ounce meatballs was tedious, as was the browning of same, and they were so lean that they rendered no fat, and when it came time to make the gravy I had to had butter to the pan.  Still not enough fat, and I fought the lumps battle (successfully), but then the low-salt low-fat beef broth did not thicken and I had to sneak some cornstarch in.  No problemo.

The end result was toothsome and for once I made enough mashed potatoes such that we could ladle on spoons of the savory gravy.  (Diet freaks stop reading now.) Confession:  last night and this morning when I walked by the fridge I reached under the foil and sneaked a meatball.  Plenty left for tonight's dinner, which will be noodles instead of mashed and carrots instead of peas.  Variety, etc.

I am finishing my novel, maybe even this week.  The following will happen:  a huge sense of accomplishment and then a big letdown.  I'll let the manuscript lie fallow for a while, with the distasteful task of cutting a huge number of words to look forward to.  Good words, all.  Well, maybe not all.

Grapeshot will try to do NaNoWriMo  this year, as I don't have involvement in a writer's conference which has sucked up the last eight Novembers.  I want to get an uncensored leg up on my 1928 California novel, Such Stuff as Dreams.  It's going to be hard to write.  I already know that, so maybe a vault into the story without too much thinking about it.  I do have an outline of sorts, which I must get out and add to.  Then I am at least following a story line. 

Very excited about going to Bouchercon in San Francisco next month.  Bouchercon by the Bay.  What a city!  And then a side trip to Reno to find the very final details for In Flight, stuff I may not be able to add or will have to cut!  Grrrr.

Onward.