08/28/2007: "Back from Edinburgh..."

...and a good time was had. By me. Maybe not by all, but by me. Great to see my editor at Picador, Kate, agent Paul, publicist Chloe, to read with Nathan Englander, and malinger about the Scottish moors. I will have a full report later, as it is owed to someone else, but will be linked through here.

For now, something I wrote for Esquire. Called THE LAST LINE. The idea is that you tell why you wrote the last line you did---the last line of a story, the last line you wrote yesterday, whatever. I chose the last line to a short story, the first I've written in years:

Have you ever seen anything burning so brightly trapped so close to earth?

I think I will end up changing "brightly" to "fiercely" but otherwise that's the line. Anyway, you go ahead and read why I wrote it following the link. My thanks to Lisa Myers, wife of Stephen, my Penguin publicist, for the photo; it's not "tough," though that is what was aimed for. Not her fault; she's a great photographer, and as I recall the area we shot in, a depressed section of Toronto, was tough; I was not suitably tough enough for the environs, is all. But credit to Lisa, who couldn't quite pull the silk purse/sow's ear trick, but gave it her damndest.

And of course, all due love and respect to my father, who I wrote this about, though by following this link he'll be reading it for the first time as with the rest of you. I hope he's cool with it---anyway, I'm 2,000km away at the moment, so at least he can't come beat my ass. I don't think he'd want to.

Here it is.

http://www.esquire.com/fiction/last-line/lastline082807

All best, Craig.