It's ""Hey, you!""

I'm pretty sure the publisher of Nina Bonita is Kane Miller Books. They specialize in books from other countries, published in translation, and they have lots of good stuff. Nina Bonita is a very nice book to look at as well.

I think that picture of me and Jacques in the BMW (735i 1985) is on this website too. I just sold it yesterday. I want something even roomier. I have a 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300TD Turbodiesel station wagon, and that is very nice. If someone had an even more perfect one than mine, I would consider buying it, or maybe one of those SDL models, great big land yachts.

You are my hero too. Please do not use the powers you derive from reading my books to play cruel tricks on the innocent. This is why I left out the principal secret of time travel in Borgel. If only humans were more mature.

THE HOBOKEN CHICKEN EMERGENCY is supposed to be in print! You can contact the office of Ellen Krieger, Aladdin Books, Simon and Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the America, New York, NY 10020. Ask them to help with this. There is also a newly-designed and illustrated edition scheduled for later this year or next year. WINGMAN is out of print, but copies can be found in used book stores, through internet booksellers, and offered for sale on ebay.com . The price can range from less than original retail to something ridiculous. I am going to try to get it back in print--a process that takes a long time. Publishers are slow, in every sense of the word. If you like Chinwag Theater, please, please, tell the radio station on which you hear it. Thanks for your kind words.

The fact is I don't like fame, such as I have. I like my readers, and when I meet them, or talk to them here, I feel quite happy, but I try not to do things for exclusively promotional reasons. Doug Berman, the producer of Car Talk is a good guy, and he asked me to be on--so I agreed, and since the brothers are cheap bastards and resist paying anything reasonable, I took a plug as recompense. The radio program must grow in order to survive. Please pester your local radio station, and get friends, relations and total strangers to do it also.

While it is true that I tend to like my readers, (some authors don't, you know...but I do), you have to understand that this doesn't mean you can drop by the house around lunchtime, or ask to borrow $25. It's not that I wouldn't like it, it's just that you shouldn't. With that understood, you are welcome to be my reader all you like. _Fish Whistle_ and _Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights_ will soon be publilshed in one volume, titled: _Hobokenfish and Chicagowhistle_ from xlibris. You can find out about xlibris by clicking where it says to click vis-a-vis _The Afterlife Diet_ on the firstpage of this sire. Thank you for being my reader. I would suggest you order _5 Novels_ from amazon.com for less than 9 dollars.

Let me get this straight. You want information _more_ or _other_ than that which is to be found on this web site? You want me, personally, to tell you stuff you can use in writing your paper. OK. I will tell you something you can use: Somewhere on the campus of the State University of New York at New Paltz is a large building inscribed with this strange device: ""LIBRARY."" Locate this building. Go inside. Do not be afraid. There you will find actual books and periodicals, and can read what I wrote, and what others wrote about what I wrote. I am happy to share this tip with you. Feel free to pass it along to other candidates for the Masters degree.

Gorgonzola is the king, the queen, and the jack of the blue cheeses. Gorgonzola is to cheese as I am to writers. Only a real good Stilton, which we never get here, comes close. If there is ever a religion which worships cheese, (and I would consider joining it), Gorgonzola is the one it would worship. Danish blue is nice too. And some of those semi-soft blues like Castello and Saga. Oh, and Roquefort.

Wake up, Damon! It's a mug's game, writing. You cannot win. They won't let you win. Suppose you send copies of your book to me, (Margaret Raymo has my address), and my producer at Weekend Edition Saturday, (Houghton Mifflin's promotions and publicity dept. knows how to do that). And suppose we all think it's suitable for the program, and we discuss it on the air, and read out of it and have a good time with it....it will sell out the 147 copies in the warehouse, the publisher will take 3 weeks to decide to reprint, and 6 weeks to do it, then it has to get shipped--everybody will have forgotten about it, your next contract won't be any better than the last one, the publishing house will be bought up by an Icelandic conglomerate, your editor will be transfered to work on the accounting-for-kids project in the non-fiction department, and you will be back in the wholesale fish market before you know it. But feel free to try, prisoner of hope that you are.

It's by me! The first picture I have drawn since Jill took over the art department around here. (I tell a lie--I did the shading on the cover art for The Education of Robert Nifkin--so it's by both of us).

I agree about Xlibris being a nifty idea. I'm surprised how good I feel after thinking I had gotten over being skunked by Random House when that book was first published. It's just nice that the book is available, and anybody who wants to own a copy can do so. After a while, you need some kind of experience that offsets the stupidity, inefficiency, dishonesty you experience continually if you write books and get them published.

What is it, the Jewish Cultural Council of Grand Rapids, Michigan? If that isn't a made-up name, I never heard one. You must think my brain has deteriorated way more than it has. Listen, Joey-boy, I happen to be one of the 40,000 Americans abducted by space aliens each year, and I know a set-up when I see one. Also, if you were legitimate Jews, and not green or grey men, (quite possibly Jewish--I don't know), from another galaxy, you'd hardly suggest I eat chili while wearing a tallis--not directly proscribed, as far as I know, but somehow not in the very best of taste. So, if I were simple enough to accept your invitation, I'd be snatched once again, and then the annoying medical exam, and the prodding by curious space-types. No thanks. I'll just sit here and write my little books, you paskudniak.

You may have spelled Alan Mendelsohn correctly, but you appear to have typed it wrong--twice. Thanks for reading it, which is more important than spelling it.

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death is included in 5 NOVELS, which also has 4 other books and costs something like $8.76 from amazon.com. Baconburg Horror and 3 other books will be in a similar collection which isn't out yet. Meanwhile, you can sometimes find a used copy in a shop--and I've been told my titles come up for auction on e-bay.

Well, it's a true story. I improved it a little. No, you may not buy tapes of Chinwag Theater at this time. You have to get your local public radio station to carry it. Then you can tape it yourself. 100 letters to the Station Manager and Program Director should do the trick.