Harry N. MacLean's Blog, page 6
November 8, 2014
In Broad Daylight–Audio
In Broad Daylight is finally available on audio. http://tiny.cc/d8r0ox. It was quite an experience producing it. After listening to 80 auditions, I selected Dave Clark, an excellent narrator from Colorado Springs. It’s a bit strange hearing your words in another’s voice. Thanks to friend and true crime writer Gregg Olsen for pushing me to do it. “The Story Behind In Broad Daylight” is next.
Related posts:
Interview — The Past Is Never Dead
Once Upon A Time — The Miracle of E-Books
Amazon Ranked...
August 8, 2014
Amazon Ranked No 2
I opened my e-mail a few minutes ago to see that Amazon had ranked me the number 2 most popular author for biographies and memoirs, behind Laura Hildebrand, the author of Unbroken. Friend and author Gregg Olsen has been marketing Once Upon A Time as an e-book, so he deserves a lot of credit. But still it feels good, and I think will set up the scene well for the upcoming “The Joy of Killing,” due out next spring.
July 8, 2014
On the Road Again
On the Road Again
You know you’re in trouble when a road trip to Lincoln, Nebraska, sounds exciting.
We’ve been back from our year on the road for two weeks now, and, I wouldn’t say that the re-entry has smooth, or that we’ve managed to achieve even a mild state of euphoria being back in the home and city we left last summer with such high expectations. Quite the opposite. We seem to be back in form only.
Julya has been tired since the minute we pulled to a stop in our Honda alongside the house...
June 28, 2014
COMING HOME
COMING HOME
So, what’s it like coming home after a year on the road? After driving 24,000 miles in the new Honda, visiting seven countries, cruising through 38 of the 50 states, spending almost 24 hours a day with each other, staying in a new motel every second or third night, wearing out two credit cards, meeting an incredible array of interesting people from around the world. Is it all back to the past?
One word seems to fit the best: out of synch. Our rhythms of the road are not the rhythms...
May 20, 2014
An Honest Man
An Honest Man.
The statue is of the Greek philosopher Diogenes who is carrying a lantern and “looking for an honest man” on the streets of Sinop, a town on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. Both Diogenes and Julya were born and grew up here. The story goes that Alexander the Great, who vacationed in Sinop in between his wars and kept his mistresses here, approached Diogenes one day as the philosopher was sitting in the town square.
“What can I do for you?” the Emperor asked.
“Stand aside,” Diogenes...
May 7, 2014
Biutiful
Biutiful
Remember the movie “Biutiful?” Javier Bardem’s dark character runs a group of Senegalese immigrants who sell knockoffs of famous designer goods on “La Rambla,” the main drag of Barcelona. The immigrants are always ready to run from the police, who descend on them with sirens blaring and haul them off to jail.
The other day, Julya and I were walking La Rambla when she spotted the very characters. They stood in front of a collection of handbags and wallets laid out on a square of canvas....
April 14, 2014
Nine Months Gone
Nine Months Gone.
Our speedometer shows over 23,000 miles since we left home last July. The calendar says we have three months before we’re due back in Denver. A slight panic sets in; where has the time gone? All those places we wanted to go, things we wanted to do. Yet three months is still a long time. Already the early part of the trip—Maine and Vermont—are turning into memories. We talk about the places wistfully, as if our time there was five or ten years ago.
Sometimes it feels like we ne...
April 2, 2014
The Not-So-Accidental Party
I still have no idea why we decided to visit South Padre Island a week ago. We knew it was spring break, for God’s sake. And I had been there before, and was well aware that there was nothing particularly attractive about the place. It must have been that we simply missed the ocean and beach, having been in San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico, studying Spanish for three weeks.
It was the last few days of spring break the desk clerk told us. You should have seen it two days ago. The first thing I...
March 20, 2014
The Indigenous Christ
The other day I posted a photo and a question about the Catholic Church’s seeming obsession with suffering. In a recent trip to Guanajuato, the home of Diego Rivera, I heard an interesting bit of history. The religion of the pre-Hispanic Indigenous in the area was quite bloody in the sense that their depictions involved blood and pain and suffering. In fact, some of their practices involved self-mutilations.
The friars who had come to convert the Indians in the 1500s noticed this, or course, a...
March 11, 2014
The Accidental Party
The Accidental Party, Continued.
Our streak of stumbling into towns a day or so before a major festival continues. From the blueberry festival in Macias, Maine last fall, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans a few weeks ago, we seem to have a knack for arriving in town on the brink of one of their grand gatherings. (We missed SXSW in Austin by only a few days).
We arrived in San Miguel Allende, a mountain town in central Mexico, for three weeks of intensive Spanish study, only to find ourselves on the...
