brianrayfiction.com Blog

Netlix’s “Watch Instantly” becomes my best friend in the slow weeks between May and June. Although I’ve stayed productive, I still manage to squeeze in a movie every day or so and yesterday saw the ‘07 adaptation of Harold Pinter’s play “Sleuth,” with Jude Law and Michael Caine – who plays a mystery writer a bit preoccupied with his estranged wife. So I’m thinking as I watch this: this mystery writer has a helluva nice house out in the country with tons of security cameras and a closet full of his wife’s $5,000 coats. Oh, he also owns a shiny string of bling-bling valued at a million pounds. So in many ways this movie should be included in the fantasy genre. Or should it? I remember being pretty stunned that author Don DeLillo – once one of the most obscure writers in America – now lives in the most expensive neighborhood in the US. (Of course, I think his wife’s a banker.) Now, I would do anything to find a house out in the country, or else just have enough cash to completely soundproof a room in my 1-bedroom apartment, or invent earplugs that block 100 percent of the sound coming from my ridiculous upstairs neighbors’ two pet dogs.

Booklist just notified my publisher and me that they’re giving Through the Pale Door a starred review. I’ve been called a “talent to watch.” To celebrate I’m going to drive up to New England and start looking for a summer cabin. But I can’t decide which $5,000 dinner jacket to put on my credit card. Or should I get a blazer, a smoking jacket? How about a writing jacket? Do they make those?

And before I forget, and to end on a less solipsistic note, here’s a link to a recent NPR interview with that reporter, Roxana Saberi, that was locked up in Iran for four months: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104612989&sc=fb&cc=fp. I’m glad she’s free now. Of course anybody would understand why she would want to return to Iran. But in her shoes I sure would think twice.