Found dialogue

I love summer (or, ok, spring) in the city. Everyone lives outdoors, from the shirtless man in mardi gras beads to the couples returning from dinner out. And as we did the same, we encountered these random bits of conversation:

2.

" ... I don' t think anyone could live 20 minutes underwater..."

2.

"It has a little bit of everything."

"No, it doesn't."

3.

"My father always kept his shotguns (plural) under the bed."

All dialogue, as Stan Mack used to say, verbatim.

Talon show

I love living in Cambridge. I was walking into Inman Square. Had my head down to look for icy patches, and suddenly I see a movement to my right. There, sitting on a fence, was a hawk, eating a pigeon. He looked at me - we were just about eye level - as if to say, "Yeah, lady? Whadya want?" I'm afraid I went "eep," and he flew off, right in front of me - INCHES away – across very urban Inman Square, to finish his meal on the awning of Cambridge Family Health Center. Not a healthy place for pigeons, I guess.

I watched him for a while, along with a few other people – a man unloading a truck who confessed to being a little afraid of him (I pointed out that the hawk would be scarier if it were still hungry), a woman who had my reaction when we pointed the hawk out ("eep!" followed by laughter), another who said that she sees hawks all the time from her office window - and the ground below is always littered with pigeon bits! - and a guy in a car who looked up and asked, "Is that a gull?" Oh, please.

(This is a US Wildlife photo. Substitute in a busy city intersection, hawk sitting first on wire fence, then on purple awning.)

Happy anniversary, Kate!

Today, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Kate's Mystery Books. Owned and operated by Kate Mattes, one of the first directors of Sisters in Crime and the recent winner of a Raven from the Mystery Writers of America, this tiny shop has been instrumental in launching a thousand careers. Others at the party tonight (6:30-8:30 if you're in the neighborhood) will tell the more famous tales. This is mine.

I've told this story a dozen times or more, and it's all true. Kate Mattes got me started writing mysteries.

You see, I used to write serious nonfiction. I was a journalist who wrote books. Which meant I wrote serious, researched books on serious, heavy topics. But what I read for fun, obsessively and happily, were mysteries. Which meant that I got to know Kate Mattes, because her store, Kate's Mystery Books here in Cambridge, is sort of ground zero for mystery lovers – a place where authors sign, writers meet, and the recommendations are always good.

So when my last, maybe not so heavy book came out, I ended up talking to Kate about it. That book, The Feline Mystique, came out in 2002. That December, as Kate was planning her usual holiday bash, she said I should come sign at the party. I said, "But Kate, Feline Mystique is not a mystery."

She responded, "Believe it or not, Clea, there's a big crossover between women who love cats and mystery readers." (Those of you know Kate's store, by the way, will know that in addition to books, the first floor is packed with black cat memorabilia.)

And so I did. I happily joined the ranks of Linda Barnes and Robert Parker, Kate Flora and Dana Cameron, BarbaraNeely, and more than a dozen others in signing and greeting and laughing and eating. And drinking. There was drinking. And so, at the end of the evening, when Kate turned to me and said, "Clea, you should write a mystery," it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

I started the next day. Happy anniversary, Kate.

(Pictured: Kate and her Raven at the 2008 Edgar Awards.)