As faithful readers of the Buffalo News probably already know, Rebecca and I have done a book together. It's called "Niagara Falls Confidential" and, as a book reviewer of many years' experience, I can tell you it's pretty doggone good.
In fact, of all the books I've ever reviewed, I'd have to say this is the best one. Whether you read a lot of books or maybe just one a year, "Niagara Falls Confidential" is absolutely the book for you. And even if you can't read, there are pictures to look at, and when people see you walking down the street with it tucked confidently under your arm, they'll think you know how to read and a whole new world will open up to you.
It's available here at the Book Corner and the Daredevil Museum or, for those who like a stiff drink when doing their book buying, Cocktail Bob's, Marsil's and La Bruschetta have them as well. You can also get it online at Amazon.com. Tuscarora Books, launched by the same people who brought you the Niagara Falls Reporter, is the publisher.
Prisoners seem especially interested in the book. Some of our first orders came from the federal correctional facility at McKean and the state prison at Attica. I don't know where those guys came up with the dough and, frankly, I don't want to know. We decided early on that we wouldn't discriminate against anyone in selling books and, just yesterday, sold one to a high-ranking official in the Anello administration.
We've only been at it about a week, but this book-writing business has it all over the newspaper racket. Think about it: When you write for the newspaper, the best you can hope for is that there will be another one to write for next week, seven short days away. In fact, we're often working on next week's paper before this week's issue even comes out. But with book writing, you get six months, a year even, before you have to do another one. Is that sweet or what?
And whereas writing for a newspaper is a pretty thankless job, one that almost everyone feels they can do as well as you, writing a book can earn you the respect of your peers.
Well, most of your peers. One lady, whom they quoted in the Buffalo News article, said she'd like to see a book highlighting how the state park is the oldest state park anywhere in the country and how the Maid of the Mist boat ride is the oldest tourist attraction. A book about cold cases and unsolved murders and haunted houses and gangsters couldn't possibly be of any interest to anyone, she said.
Well, to each his own. As for me, this is the most fun I've had since I stopped selling crack, which is saying a lot.
I suppose there's room on the shelf for yet another breezy tome covering Charles Lyell's fascinating 1841 geological study of the Lewiston Escarpment, the flora and fauna of Goat Island or the story about how the apartment building I live in happens to bear the mysterious and evocative name of Hennepin, but it's going to take someone better than me to write it.
It's going to take a person of sunny disposition, whose myopia remains unaffected even by the tint of rose-colored glasses, a person possessing a boundless capacity for watching paint dry and grass grow.
My favorite author is Ernest Hemingway, who was famous for going to wars and shooting lions and elephants in darkest Africa and beating other writers up in nightclubs. A real man's man he was, but he never was brave enough to try and write a book with his own wife, any one of them. That didn't stop me, though. I forged right ahead. The Redhead's one smart cookie and her contributions were invaluable. Things got dicey at times -- Were there too many commas in that sentence? Ellipses? How could I have used a semicolon rather than the dashes? -- and there were moments when tensions ran high around the Hudson household.
But it was with a steely resolve that I soldiered on, only unplugging the telephone, crawling into bed and pulling the covers up over my head on a couple of occasions. She responded by slamming the door and going in to the office to work on the book, and I knew everything would be fine.
Anyway, over the past week, any number of people have asked me why I decided to write a book. And I tell them there were two reasons: vengeance and money. Yes, the exact same motives of many of the killers whose stories are told in "Niagara Falls Confidential" were mine as well. Ironic, isn't it? And let's face it, everybody's lucky they got off with just a book.
It all started a couple months ago in Chicago's O'Hare Airport. The Redhead and I were waiting for our flight east when Reporter Sports Editor David Staba, in an effort to make my vacation even more perfect than it already was, called to tell me that Terry Shaw was going to have his first book published this fall.
Terry Shaw, the loathsome former editor of the Niagara Gazette, whom I had to run out of town some years back for crimes against journalism and for annoying me personally. Didn't that just take the cake? Here was a guy whose idea of clever was writing his columns from the point of view of his poodle dog, and somebody gave him a book deal? When I got home, I did a little checking on the Internet and found out it wasn't as bad as it seemed. He'd won some sort of contest for aspiring amateurs, and first prize was that they'd publish your book.
I almost felt sorry for him, sitting night after night in his newly adopted hometown of Sorryass, Tenn., the walls of the double-wide closing in on him as he clipped coupons or whatever humiliating thing it was he had to do in order to win the contest. But that weak moment quickly passed and I realized that he needed once again to be squashed like a fat bug on the sidewalk, his pitiful hopes and dreams oozing out like entrails on the hot pavement. There was only one thing to do -- I'd write a book myself and have it published before Sept. 18, the day his feeble effort was slated to see the light of day.
That didn't leave us with much time, but mission accomplished, as they say. As newspaper people we're used to writing under deadline, and when there's revenge to be wrought, a tinge of excitement and blood lust permeates the very air that we breathe.
As for the money part, I remain confident. After all, the president of Tuscarora Books is none other than Bruce Battaglia, who is also the publisher of the Reporter, and his is a great business mind. He's well known for his potential profit-making abilities and has some exciting ideas about running a buy-two-get-one special on the week of his birthday. That's not buy two and get one free, either, it's buy two and just get one. I wish I could come up with ideas like that.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Aug. 28 2007 |