At long last a LiveJournal by Jeri Smith-Ready

According to an article in the New York Times, a Philadelphia Poe scholar wants to dig up the remains of Edgar Allen Poe from the city where he died (Baltimore) and move them to the City of Brotherly Love.

Edward Pettit argues that Poe wrote much of his best work in Philadelphia and "that city’s rampant crime and violence in the mid-19th century framed Poe’s sinister outlook and inspired his creation of the detective fiction genre."

“So, Philadelphians, let’s hop in our cars, drive down I-95 and appropriate a body from a certain Baltimore cemetery,” Mr. Pettit wrote in an article for the Philadelphia City Paper in October. “I’ll bring the shovel.”

Not so fast, mister. We've got the Poe Toaster, a mysterious figure who visits the author's grave every year on his birthday and leaves three red roses and a half-bottle of cognac. We even named our football team in honor of his most famous work, "The Raven." Poe is ours--or rather, we are his.

“Philadelphia can keep its broken bell and its cheese steak, but Poe’s body isn’t going anywhere,” said Jeff Jerome, the curator of the Poe House in Baltimore. He'll be debating Pettit on January 13 at the Philadelphia Free Library.

Mr. Jerome added that everything would be settled at the debate, and in exactly the way that Poe would have wanted.

“I will argue the other guy down with grace and facts,” Mr. Jerome said. “Then I will walk over to him like a gentleman and punch him square in the nose.”

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Now playing: Nine Below Zero - Sonny Boy Williamson
via FoxyTunes

Yesterday's event at Constellation Books went amazingly well. I'm always astonished when people I don't know show up at these things. Some of them had read the article in the Westminster Eagle and discovered the book takes place in a fictional version of our little town.

The store sold out of copies of Wicked Game and Eyes of Crow, so I had to send my Knight in Polo Shirt home to fetch some more books, which the store bought from me on commission and then resold to the folks who wanted one.

Bizarre coincidence: the owner of Constellation Books, Lauretta, used to work with my husband at the Space Telescope Science Institute. As my friend Jason says, "Maryland: Two Degrees of Separation."

Anyway, it's a fantastic store, and I'm definitely going back next year for Bad to the Bone. I'll post pictures as soon as I get them from our friends (I remembered my camera but forgot the batteries were dead).

Note to Maryland vampire fans: Constellation Books is having a Breaking Dawn party to celebrate the release of Stephenie Meyer's next novel. So pre-order your copy today!

In other news, I discovered we aren't actually supposed to pick up Baron until next Saturday. It was right there in the e-mail from the shelter, but I missed it, just assuming that the first day I could take the dog (today) would be the day he would come, so I only looked at the time and place, not the date. Oops.

So today I'm going to:

a) work on Monroe's story (the first line of which I wrote yesterday)
b) dive into my e-mail inbox and try not to drown
c) start a new online class that will help me rewrite Bad to the Bone and write the proposal for my new Young Adult series

I'm still working on the slowing-down-for-the-summer thing.


***Don't forget, you have until 5PM Monday to enter to win a signed copy of Sarah Beth Durst's Into the Wild or Out of the Wild.***

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Now playing: Muddy Waters - I Want to be Loved
via FoxyTunes