Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Prince Charles, you have my sympathy.

So I met Carl Hiaasen last night. Yeah, that Carl Hiaasen. My favorite living author. The undisputed king of that tiniest of sub-genres: comic suspense. Turns out he's not ready to pack it in yet. And here I was, ready to step in with my two comic suspense manuscripts and assume the throne.

The guy's friends with Jimmy Buffett--isn't that enough of an achievement for one lifetime? Does he really need to keep writing these...books? The tireless and exceedingly nice guy has just brought out a third YA (young adult) book ("Scat," which my son and I started last night and is very promising) and is working on another adult one as we speak. Which of course means less shelf space for me.

I had a nice, if brief, conversation with him. I do regret not pushing a business card on him with a link to this blog, or at least cramming my query letter in his jacket pocket. Still, I thanked him for all the years of entertainment and the inspiration.

Back to work.

4 comments:

Timothy Carter said...

It's awesome meeting one of your heroes, isn't it? I had a similar experience when I met Robert Rankin at a sci-fi convention in England. Being able to say thanks for the inspiration is a great thing.

Bill Cokas said...

It is, and especially when he's so down-to-earth. I'm sure he hears it all the time, but at least it was better than blathering "I'm your biggest fan!"

Timothy Carter said...

I got around blathering that when I met Robert Rankin by telling him I was his Canadian fan. At that time his books weren't available in Canada (I discovered them on a previous trip to my homeland), so my statement may well have been accurate!

Anonymous said...

Has he said anything about the "kick me" sign you put on his jacket?