SHE WROTE: A Few Clarifications

There seem to be a few misconceptions out there, so I thought I'd clear some things up:

Sister Sites: Those are sites that Mollie and I actually control, so the only links that will be posted there are the ones that are there now except for the Unfortunate Miss Fortunes site that will go up sometime in June. The internet: We love it.

The Coffee: I don’t do mornings; Bob does. I don’t drink coffee; Bob does. Bob spends a fair amount of time at my house so he is no longer a guest. He gets up when he wants to and he makes his own coffee when he wants it, and eventually we wander into each other and work, but it’s not like he needs a hostess, which is why I figure it’s up to him to empty the coffee pot rather than leave it to me to guess if he’s made any that morning. He knows where the sink is, he used it to fill the coffeemaker with water in the first place. This week I was really in a crunch getting Agnes off to Fed Ex, so Friday at 4 AM I was printing out two copies of the ms to send to Jen and Meg while typing the handout for our seminar the next day, setting up the Fed Ex pick up, running the sweeper in his room and making sure his bathroom was clean and his bed was made, and I noticed there were a couple of pieces of paper in the wastepaper basket next to his desk from the last time he was there, and I meant to empty that but forgot, but I made sure there were bottles of water in the car so that when, after about six hours of sleep, I picked him up at the airport, he’d have water and he would be properly hydrated. I also offered to let him drive my new car, put up with some of the most obnoxious back seat driving ever, took him out for lunch, took him back to the house, and then printed out the hand-outs for the seminar we were doing the next day. The seminar went beautifully, we talked about Agnes and the new book and the essay we were going to do, everything was lovely. Then Sunday morning he said, “The coffee was still in there from the last time I was here and it was moldy.” I thought, “What the hell?” but I did not say, “Well, why didn’t you empty it before you left the last time, you goober?” or “Gee, I guess the coffee fairies must have taken the last couple of weeks off,” or even “Bite me, Bob, you can walk to the airport,” I just said, “I’m sorry.” Then he said, “And you didn’t empty the wastebasket in my room.” [Crickets here.] Yes, it was a near death moment for the Bobster, folks. The only reason he’s still with us is that he’s never been like that before. I have no idea what was wrong with him. I’m just assuming it was a short personality blip and that we will now return to our regular Bob. The fact that he then posted it on the blog, I am lumping with the rest of the Bob-had-a-senior-moment phenom. I am quite sure it won’t happen again. Quite. Sure.

The New Series: I was going to say that the stripper nun and the religious assassin idea was an idle daydream of Bob’s fertile brain and not a real project but I’m getting to like it. My girl would not be a stripper nun but she’d be some kind of undercover something who had identities as both a stripper and a nun, and I can see her getting stuck with Bob’s religious assassin on a mission--although the last religion he tried to saddle a character with was Buddhism and when I asked him what he knew about Buddhism he said, “Nothing,” so I’d have to wait and see exactly what religion he came up with there, I’m think the guy would probably be a Thuggee—and then the vampires and the mermaids kind of threw me because I thought, “Where the hell did Bob come up with mermaids?” but then I remembered we’d just been in the Norfolk airport and he’d had to sit and look at this sculpture of a half-naked mermaid for quite some time and it probably imprinted on him. The religious assassin’s vow of chastity is not a problem because my girl has more sense than to get carnally involved with a guy who’s both a killer and a monk, but she does not get frustrated. My girl knows how to take care of herself. Then the whole thing about her having sex with the mermaids is just Bob and his assassin monk wanting to watch, so they’ll have to go play somewhere else. Same thing with my girl opening the assassin’s armor like he’s a can of tuna. Sometimes I worry about Bob and his fantasies. Then I remember: Not my problem. Where was I? Oh, yeah, my girl’s not taking a vow of chastity, either. This is Bob’s idea of conflict? He can have the vicious mermaids nursing his monk back to health if he wants although it sounds like Monty Python’s Holy Grail to me. And stretching this whole who’s-chaste-and-who’s-not thing out over three books? I don’t see it. But I kind of like my undercover whoever and the nun’s habit, and Bob writing a chaste assassin, that I’d like to see, and the mermaids and the vampires could be a lot of fun, so maybe it’s not a joke. It’s not Sanctuary, either, but you never know. Maybe we’ll do a really perverse fantasy where my stripper nun gets all the action and his assassin monk never gets laid.

Because he won’t rinse out his own damn coffee pot, the bastard.