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Sunday, August 19th 2007 : "New York, New York"
OK, so you'll have gathered I didn't much enjoy my trip on the Queen Mary. But New York was a different matter altogether. We arrived at dawn, a hot airless morning, and suddenly there was the Statue of Liberty on one side of the ship and the Manhattan skyline on the other, and all the romance of the city was captured in that moment. Then a yellow cab over the Brooklyn Bidge to my hotel on Washington Square in Greenwich Village. I'd thought New York would be a soulless city, glass and concrete and people too busy to talk, but the village isn't like that at all. It's a green space, with kids playing in the park and in the evening people hanging out in the square to play music together. A couple I'd met on the trip took me into their home and then out to dinner, introduced me to a poet who lit up New York with her words. Fran and Norm explained buses and subways, suggested places to visit. Kindness to a stranger which helped me see a city, a whole country in a different light.
So, already seduced, I went off to meet my US editor. St Martin's has offices in the Flatiron, an iconic triangular building, with its point facing uptown. Moses, my agent had said he thought we'd get on and we did. Marcia is passionate about books. We went to lunch talking translated crime fiction and libraries and Shetland. I went back to the Flatiron on Monday morning to meet some of the other members of the team. Now it looks as if we've come to a deal on the three remaining books in the Shetland quartet. WHITE NIGHTS will come out in the US in Autumn 2008. That gives me an excuse to go back to the east coast. Bouchercon is in Baltimore next year, so I'll go there and also try to fix up a few gigs in Boston and Washington. And of course New York.
Posted by Ann at 04:38 PM GMT
