SJ Rozan

Flock of gulls lifts off,

Seven chasing after one

Who grabbed up a fish.

Contrails fan like rays

Behind skyline on far shore

As though towers glowed.

Single leaf drifts down,

Seems to hesitate, then drops,

Settles on water.

Shop independent, shop local! And what could be more independent and local than me, a writer? Plus, I’m small. So I encourage you to trot down to your local indie bookstore and pick up a few SJ Rozans. (By which I mean also, of course, Sam Cabots.) They make great holiday gifts, I promise you. If you don’t have a bookstore close by, Indie Bound can help you find one who’ll be happy to ship you your SJ Rozan fix. (And if you choose one near me — say, Three Lives and Co — I’ll happily amble down there and sign it for you.)

Now, okay, I have to accept the possibility that a lot of folks reading this, on account of it’s on my blog, after all, have already gone cross-eyed devouring my entire output. To you, I have three things to say.

One: thank you!

Two: then rush right out and buy someone else! The world is so full of good books you can’t possibly have read everything you want to. Buy books! From independent bookstores!

Three: after you’ve got yourself and your friends lots of new books, if you’re really wondering what else there is to buy that’s independent, local, and small, well, there are these:

the SJ Rozan 2014 New York Calendar

and

the SJ Rozan 2014 Accordion Calendar

So go go go! SHOP INDEPENDENT, SHOP LOCAL, SHOP SMALL!

On my way to eat and hang out with family and friends, but before I leave I want to say, in an unaccustomed burst of sappiness, that one of the things I’m most grateful for is all you guys. Writing’s a lonely way to spend a day, and the result and the rewards are far between. Hearing from you guys, or just knowing you’re reading these posts (yes, I can tell how many of you checked in on any given day) (but no, not who) is a great joy to me. So, thanks, and have a relaxing, family-and-friend-and-food-filled day!

Seventeen million times, huh? I’m writing the end of the new Sam Cabot book, SKIN OF THE WOLF, and so help me, it’s a giant action scene with a bonfire and fifteen characters all running around trying to get in each other’s ways. Five are inside the property and the rest have to climb the fence in three different groups and none of them knows the others are there — well, okay, everyone knows the five by the bonfire are there — and four are cops, three are Noantri by which I mean vampires, two are priests, three are Shapeshifters, four are Native American, one wishes he were, one’s a bodyguard, and one is blind. If that adds up to more than fifteen it’s because some of these people are more than one of these things. In BLOOD OF THE LAMB my problem was getting all the characters to the same place for the big scene at the end. In this book that wasn’t an issue; they all headed enthusiastically over. I wish some of them had decided to stay home.

There’s Katy Perry’s, and then there’s Mike Hale’s. Anyone have any idea what Lydia Chin (and Ma Chin) would say?

Two helicopters

Nose to tail, do figure eights.

Sparrows ignore them.

Black airplane, white moon,

Black construction crane, white clouds,

Black shadows, white foam.

Paddling bufflehead

Threads through piling field, dives down.

Seagull bobs on waves.

To An Athlete Dying Young

— A. E. Housman

THE time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Had to show you this, from a Filipino friend. It’s from a newspaper, and not from this latest hurricane but a previous one.

Go, Filipinos!

The NY Times is running a feature on the real mayors of NYC. What does that mean? Exactly what you think it does. The link will get you to the first three, all of them, for various reasons, dear to my heart.

Sawtoothed morning sky.

Sharp gray clouds part, revealing

Orange, white, pale blue.

Under low dark lid

High river runs. Rain last night.

Path looks liquid, too.

Single cormorant,

Black against silver water,

His wings spread out wide.