I've Made it!

 RHYS BOWEN:  Dear Reds and Readers, I'm happy to report that after years of hard work and struggle, I have finally made it to the top. I am officially a writer of stature! An A lister!

How do I know this?  Because FAKE RHYS BOWEN has been contacting other writers, just like fake James Patterson and Fake Julia Quinn.  I only learned this because fake Rhys Bowen happened to contact my friend Lee Goldberg.  Of course he contacted me with great glee. He posted on Facebook saying "You've never said that you'd love to share about your creative journey, what inspires the worlds and characters you create and how you keep your storytelling fresh and engaging when working with complex or layered material."

He added, but you did once throw yourself down a flight of stairs and get medi-vacced out of a hotel just to avoid talking with me! (that was when I fell and broke my pelvis!)

No, in real life we talk about the latest place he's found to eat on Oahu. I don't think real writers talk much about our creative journeys to each other.  I know we Reds don't. We talk of more mundane matters like sick dogs, children and occasionally publishing gripes. 

If you're a fellow writer you have probably been contacted by fake famous person.  I'm not sure what they hope to get out of it. Would someone be expected to pay five hundred dollars to talk to fake Rhys Bowen?

I get daily scammers offering to bring my book to book clubs, get more visibility on Amazon etc. Occasionally I reply, as when they offered to take the German version of a Molly book to a book club in Manhattan.  Mostly I ignore. Sometimes I write back to the book clubs and say that I'd love to meet with them and my usual fee is $2000.  I don't hear back.

Lee, with more time than me, does engage in a most amusing way.  He wrote back to fake Tana French, if I remember correctly, saying he was amazed she still wanted to talk to him after what happened. He was still in prison but the rape charge had been dropped.  To a fake famous guy he replied, "You have a nerve to contact me after what you did to my wife."

The stupid thing is that these scammers don't seem to realize that we writers know each other!  But I wonder how many self published authors do take the bait?

So dear Reds and Reddies, have you been getting these annoying scams? Do you just ignore and delete or try to respond?

The Importance of Art.

 RHYS BOWEN:  I've been spending a lot of time sitting in my living room lately as John recovers from pneumonia in his recliner.  This has given me time to look around and realize the importance of the art on my walls.  We have art on the walls of every room in our house. In fact sometimes we are on vacation and we see a lovely piece of art work and want to buy it. But then we look at each other. Where would we put it? No walls left.  John has even suggested getting a bigger house to allow for more art work. 

But I do enjoy the art we already own. The major piece in our living room is a simple sketch. Can you guess who it is by? 

The answer is Gaugin. Not his usual style or part of the Earth. We acquired it when John was helping a friend with his moving business when we were first married. He was emptying a house for a woman after a nasty divorce and she told him to take what she didn't want.  He brought home this picture. We loved it. And didn't think any more about it until we were at the Gaugin museum in Tahiti and there was its sibling, identical. So we came home and looked and it is a numbered print!  Not worth as much as an original Gaugin but definitely not to be sneezed at.

Apart from that we have a lot of Chinese plates I'm not very fond of. But they came from John's grandfather when he was the British district officer in Malaysia.  I'm sure they are valuable too, but I don't really care.  I like art that means something to me:  my favorite piece is this:

I was in Cornwall with my daughter and son-in-law and we visited an art gallery. We each decided which work we liked best and Tom and I agreed on one of St. Michael's Mount.  Behind my back Tom had it shipped back to me for Christmas... best Christmas gift ever!  I sit on my sofa and stare at it and sigh.

Also in the living room we have a print of Sutton Place, which was where his grandmother grew up. When we took our daughter Anne to visit she asked "And why did we give this up?"  Good question.

But most of the other art on our walls is only of sentimental value. It reminds me of places we have loved. So I suppose that art has to mean something to me personally, to take me somewhere and provide beauty. I have no abstract art at all. I certainly wouldn't want anything too unsettling or unharmonious on my walls. We also have a lot of family photos in hallways and in my office are framed Edgar certificates and other awards.  And there is my award shelf, halfway down the stairs, which gives me encouragement when I most need it.

So how about you?  Is art important to you? Do you have a particular piece you love?

Are you there, God? It's me, Rhys.

 RHYS BOWEN:  Dear God, if you're listening and you don't mind I have a small question.  Why did you create fruit flies?  And for that matter house flies that only spread disease or mosquitos that spread disease and also bite? What use are they in the great fabric of things?  Fruit flies breed on decaying fruit and as far as i can see don't do anything useful.  In fact they infect good fruit and here in California where the fruit industry is huge, we are supposed to trap and eradicate them.

Were you not concentrating the day that fruit flies were made? Were you already bored or tired after the creation of large things like dinosaurs and wooly mammoths so that you handed over the last few days of creation to a lesser heavenly being, one slightly less competent? 

Anyway this blunder in creation has turned a peaceful, gentle being like myself into a ruthless killer. It all started a week ago when I brought home some organic tomatoes.  When I opened the plastic box one small creature flew out. One tiny, harmless flying thing.. or so I thought. Until the next night when I was sitting, enjoying a glass of wine.  I looked up and two tiny creatures were happily swimming around in my glass.

Then it was quite a few around the flowers I had just bought. I carried them out to the garbage bin. But the darned things kept appearing.  I Googled and tried various traps: apple cider vinegar (didn't work). Honey (didn't work). Red wine... works well.  At one stage my kitchen counter looked like a science experiment. 

Where were they coming from? I had put all fruit and veg into the fridge but there they were, sitting on the rim of the bowl containing the wine. And cunning little buggers too.. If I moved my hand near to squash them they flew away. I tried bringing down the fly swatter rapidly, thus knocking them down into the wine.  They swam across to the side and started to climb out. I squashed one on my thumb, then watched as he readjusted his wings and tried to fly off. 

It was only when I found some in the pantry that I learned the horrid truth. At the back of the potato bin was a rotting potato where they were happily breeding. I've taken it out, scrubbed it, scrubbed the floor and now I hope it's just a case of rounding up the last survivors.  But I've been spending half my day killing!  Every time I come into the kitchen I see one, sitting at the edge of the wine. I creep up, fly swatter in hand and bring it down. Only to find the wretched thing has escaped again. It is becoming an obsession.  So... if anyone knows a brilliant way to get rid of fruit flies, please share.

And God, if you can share a moment from more pressing things like defending Greenland from invasion or protecting innocent people from ICE, could you possible un-make the fruit flies?